Arty Farty Green

The trouble with talking about the Arts is that this is all very middle class and will put working class people off.

Let’s take a step back from this statement and consider the assumptions underpinning it.

1)      Art and Culture belongs to the people who have the money. Art is for the elite, educated few, not for the masses.

2)      Popular culture doesn’t really count as either Art or Culture, because anything that is popular must, by definition be trashy.

3)      Anything that is trashy might well be popular, so entertainment aimed at the masses needs to be low brow, simple, colourful and must require no thought.

4)      Anything that is truly great as Art or Culture will not be understood or appreciated by the masses, so anyone talking Art is not addressing that troubling fantasy creature – the regular guy in the street.

Underpinning apparently normal attitudes to the Arts, are some pretty horrendous assumptions about class and quality. Further, ‘Culture’ should not be some fabulous bonus only available to the rich. Culture is the consequence of people connecting with each other, and whatever that produces, is a culture.

When it comes to Arts, we have some very old fashioned ideas about what’s good, and it all comes down to the money. Really expensive art is good. Never mind that Van Gogh could barely make ends meet when he was alive – now the rich will pay millions for his work, so he has a worth denied him in his own lifetime. If you can sell your dirty underwear for thousands as part of an instillation, you’re golden. If not, you’re just dirty. If your book requires a degree in English literature to have a shot at making proper sense of it, you are ‘Literature’ in the highest sense, and if your book inspires millions of children to read, you are low, and part of pop culture. Our measurements are nuts, and have nothing to do with innate worth, quality, capacity to move, inspire, uplift or do any of the other things you might want from a cultural experience. Green Party policy is helpfully clear that we should not value our arts in purely economic terms.

Culture shouldn’t be there to enable us to be smug, self important and to show off material wealth. Culture should enrich life. Everyone’s lives.

I’ve worked in the arts for all of my adult life – I’ve run a folk club, worked as an editor, written books. I’m married to an illustrator. I have friends who are professional musicians, artists and performers. I write comics – that most low brow of popular forms. I’ve worked in erotica – and many people will automatically make value judgements about the literary worth of that genre. In my experience, good stuff happens in all forms, and so does self indulgent rubbish.

Because of all of this, I am tremendously excited by GreenParty arts policy.   It’s all about engagement, rather than passive consumption. It’s about enabling people to get involved, as both creators and audience, and it is very much about grass roots, too. Green Party policy is clear that culture should be something we’re entitled to. Our own culture, not something foisted on us by a self-appointed elite with a political agenda. Traditions and innovations, localism, originality, and participation are what we need.

Media blackout and Green options

How do most people find out about parties, policy issues and what’s going on in politics at the moment? Well, if you’re passionate about politics you probably read political blogs. You might go so far as to join a party – and that party will keep you informed with their take on things and the work they are doing. For most people though, it comes down to the media. Newspapers, television, radio. This is how we know what’s going on, what the issues are and what our options might be.

In order to have a decent democracy, we’ve got to have good information. You can’t make a good voting decision if you don’t know what’s going on. You aren’t going to make it to a party website to check out their policies if you don’t know the party exists. If you’re not much interested in politics in the first place, you might not want to go that far, you just want enough insight to make some choices.

At the last elections for councils and MEPs, about two thirds of people did not vote. We need to be asking why. How we talk about politics and how we get political ideas in front of people who feel intimidated, bored, or despairing in face of politics, is a big issue for anyone who cares about democracy.

If you mostly followed the BBC, you could be forgiven for thinking that UKIP were the only party out there some of the time and you’d have had no idea the Greens exist, much less how good the odds were you had a Green to vote for. Is that fair? We don’t think so! If all you hear from the media is the politics of hatred, fear and despair – and that’s my personal assessment of the mainstream right now – if that’s all you hear, why would you vote? Small differences of emphasis between the main parties and no real alternatives, versus the alarming UKIP brigade. Our local example announced herself to the world in a series of letters establishing that she doesn’t understand the difference between geographical climate difference, and climate change. It doesn’t inspire confidence, much less hope!

If a desire to blame and hate other people doesn’t get you out of bed of a morning, what else is there? This is why the silence around Green politics is so troubling. You can’t have a proper debate unless there are a range of options on the table. We’re being offered the same narrow choices, as though real alternatives could not possibly exist. They do.

If you’ve been uncomfortable with recent broadcasting, you can join the thousands of people who have already signed this petition of protest. Let’s open the media up a bit to some proper debates!

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/bbc-news-stop-this-media-blackout-of-the-green-party

Wool against Weapons

c. Jaine Rose.

Green County Councillor Sarah Lunnon joined others for the sew-up session at Hawkwood, near Stroud, on the 23rd Feburary. See minute film on Stroud Community TV here.

Wool against Weapons is a protest against the renewal of Trident. The Green Party feels that nuclear weapons are political weapons of terror, and are disproportionate to any threat we might face. More on our defence policy here.

For more information about Wool against weapons, visit http://www.woolagainstweapons.co.uk/
or the facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wool-Against-Weapons/570747079617581?fref=ts