Honestly, I think it just depends if you want to be recognized by money elite. We have been doing work that has gotten press for decades on a small budget, but I agree it gets tiring to do work continually that is never funded for decades. It leaves you a little tired and with a lot less money than you might have had for retirement (I mean at 90, you gits!)
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael szpakowski Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2014 11:04 AM To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] The privileged few are tightening their grip on the arts It's interesting that the original article uses theatre as a starting point. Having started out in the late seventies working in the theatre and keeping a toe in that camp until very recently I can vouch for the change. I remember on my second job ever in 1977 I asked one of the guys in the small touring company I was working for what he'd been before he became an actor. "A burglar", he replied. It was true - he came from a poor working class area of a big industrial town and rebelled in perhaps not the most social of ways. He'd wanted out though & learned to play the bass, joined a band and then got into acting through the many connections and opportunities there were then ( and which were not tied to expensive training). He later became quite a celebrated TV performer playing a part that was related to his earlier life and authentically so. Many of the people I worked with at that time came from similar working class backgrounds to my own - I myself am the child of a Polish refugee turned furnaceman in the Sheffield steel. Now , unless it is someone who worked their way in through the soaps, working class accents are produced to order by the "skills" of the largely privileged cadre who can afford to make it through drama school. In the 90s I taught theatre to FE students one of whom (the daughter of a classroom teacher from Essex) went to RADA, through merit not connections. I went to see her rather star studded West End debut ( a triumph which gave her a good deal of class satisfaction) and she told me she'd spent three years at RADA playing "second secretary" or similar whilst the sons and daughters of those already in the "biz" or simply the well heeled and confident scooped the leads. What is the timeline? - I can tell you exactly what it is - when the working class were fighting and winning in the UK, mid-sixties to 74ish, miraculously there were ways for us to "better ourselves" in other ways than struggle. It took awhile for these gains to be chipped away but it has been downhill in proportion to the series of (often entirely unnecessary) defeats that have been the outcome of workers' struggles since the Winter of Discontent in the late seventies. The marginalisation of working class voices in the arts is a consequence of the fact that our rulers believe they have us licked and under control in general. My greatest hope (and belief) is that sometime before I shuffle off we will show them how wrong they were. michael _____ From: ruth catlow <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2014 1:53 PM Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] The privileged few are tightening their grip on the arts Do we care if our arts are increasingly practiced, disseminated and discussed in the media by a privileged few? Were the post-WWII gains in diversity an illusion? or did time really stop, and start going backwards? If so when did this reversal start? Early 80s, mid 90s, early noughties? On 14/09/2014 11:12, marc garrett wrote: The privileged few are tightening their grip on the arts | The Guardian - http://go.shr.lc/1wsoLXu <http://t.co/LqXQEQDy72> -- ---> A living - breathing - thriving networked neighbourhood - proud of free culture - claiming it with others ;) Other reviews,articles,interviews http://www.furtherfield.org/reviews.php Furtherfield – online arts community, platforms for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change. http://www.furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/> Furtherfield Gallery – Finsbury Park (London). http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community. http://www.netbehaviour.org <http://www.netbehaviour.org/> http://identi.ca/furtherfield http://twitter.com/furtherfield _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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