HOUSING MARKET RENEWAL PATHFINDER

The Arts Council of England is so over-stretched that it seems to have come to the stage where it only regards someone as an artist if they write in and ask for money. To them an artist is someone they fund or someone attached to an organisation which they fund.

Sadly because of the nature of their workloads the officers don't know the local artists what they know is their bidding for money document number. This is because ACE is centralised and has recently sent out an ukase instructing that grants are processed at their central office in London.

Of course the serious arts go on without the arts officers. There is always an under-swell of artists who are known to the people and to the trade. They are regional artists. Ian McMillan of Darfield and Barnsley, was one until he made it big time, and Ray Hearne of Wath and Rotherham is another.

Tonight I received the following song from that stalwart of the left and the WEA Ray Hearne. It isn't his best to my way of thinking but then I am reading it cold. And not seeing it performed. This is poetry for the day. Some of his best work is beautiful, lyrical. This is a rant that echoes the tradition of his hero Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. It shows a political commitment and a wish to deflate the pomposity – and to come to my theme of the day – Gov Lang.

As stakeholders say in PC circles 'I would like to share this with you.'

FINDING PATHS WITH THE PATH FINDER

Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder x 4
Cranking up the rhythm like an organ-grinder
‘One skips in and another one behind her….’
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
Whoever named it played a blinder
But from such a mouthful what can we glean?
In down-to-Earth English, what does it mean?

I’ll tell yer if yer listen

It’s government parlance for more than a scheme
More than the vapours of a bureaucrat’s dream
And it’s more than the sum of the words as they stand
As easy as this to dismiss out of hand

Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
In case you’d forgotten, that’s a reminder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
(This is more like the monkey, than the organ-grinder!)

Well what kind of pathfinder? Where to? And who’ll
Reap the ultimate benefits of renewal?

I’ll tell yer if yer listen

It’s called a Pathfinder ‘cos it’s blazing a trail
Through substandard housing, on a major scale
Northwards and Southwards, upwards and down
The entire country, cities, towns,
Wherever community spirit’s been blighted
Environment rubbished and local views slighted
That par-for-the-course kind of status quo
We’d come to expect from History and Co.
Degeneration and degradation
The poor relation’s desperation
We remember all that, those of us not yet dead
‘There is no alternative’ that’s what they said
We remember the closures, the screws as they tightened
Around our lives, the un-enlightened
Attitudes of chancers and clones
With fat wallets and hearts like stones
Who bulldozed our cultures of coal and steel
Our rolling mills and winding wheels
Who pole-axed our giants to make us feel small
‘The pits must shut’ we remember it all
Who doesn’t remember, around this room?
Pride as it sank into doom and gloom?
Jobs that vanished at haemorrhage rate
Money that learned to evaporate

You could get on yer bike or strap on yer skates
But stuck in the middle of a run-down estate
In a maisonette up a cul-de-sac
Or a mid-Victorian back-to-back
All of a sudden the future looked bleak
The borough’s goose was cooked, so to speak
Ways of life in rapid decline
Aspiration withering on the vine
Through tyranny’s not unintelligent designs
And bloody princesses dolled up the nines
And apart from these curses embellished as rhymes
The buggers have never paid for their crimes

We remember that whole sad performance, and more
Closure on closure, other closures in store
Councils backed up against the wall
And nothing to spend on housing at all
Dilapidation mythologised
Entire communities demonised
In local lads’ and lasses dreams.
We wanted employment, they gave us schemes

The waters under our bridges burned
But the big mill of history rolled on and turned

And all of a sudden the language changed
Priorities got re-arranged
A government of a different hue
Picked up the nation’s IOU
And even though it seemed like an age
‘Neighbourhoods’ became the rage
Resources at last began to flow
From the highest levels to the streets below
‘Community’ back on every map
‘There’s no such thing as society’ crap
Consigned to the dustbin of fatuous phrases
For which small mercy, praise upon praises

The rhetoric today is somewhat kinder
And if you’ve forgotten here’s another reminder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
The ODPM did play a blinder
And it’s not a bad attempt at a metaphor, you know
Cutting a road through what once was ‘no go’
Defying the chaos of so many years
Block-paving futures through old vales of tears
And listening to what local people have said
(‘the little men’ as that big lad there said!)
Not just giving orders, consulting instead

Seeking out views from the quiet as well
As the eloquent and the ones who can spell
The harder to reach, the disabled, the shy
The youngsters, old soldiers tattooed ‘do or die’
The non-English speakers, the sad, the depressed
The ever hard-done-to, the chirpy, the stressed
And what do folk want if you ask them the question?

(I’ve nearly done now, but I’ll tell yer if yer listen!)

They’ll not be constrained by verbal congestion
There’s widespread consensus and they’ll tell you straight
Without the need to aspirate
A well built ‘ouse in a pleasant place
Well maintained in a bit of green space
Somewhere to garden, somewhere to park
Somewhere that still feels secure after dark
Somewhere that’s kept in consistent repair
Somewhere to love and to lavish with care
Where children can play in the way children play
What everyone wants at the end of the day
And I don’t mean a shop over Retail World way
A home of our own’s what I mean, OK?
A home of our own for us all – So I say
There’s reasons to welcome the Pathfinder
And if it makes mistakes as we’re all inclined ter
If it half achieves all the things it’s designed ter
(And I’ve heard her say’t same, no that other lass behind ‘er!)
Despite all the cynics, doom-merchants, sidewinders,
The whole procession of ministers and minders
Things all the Pathfinder folk are resigned ter
And that means the monkey and the organ-grinder
If we all work together we’ll have played a blinder
With the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder

Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
‘One skips in then another one behind her…’
Finding paths with the Pathfinder
Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder

Ray Hearne 15/5/06

EBENEZER ELLIOTT, THE CORN LAW RHYMER

To remember all I had forgotten about the Masborough Rhymer I googled his name plus Rotherham and not only got his autobiography but some of his works.
By extension – for it was not intended – I also got a rationale of why Ray writes as he does. Verse-mongers (in a minor way I am one myself) should take a look at Ray Hearne's work and see an alternative root into verse.

WHY THE FILM CREWS LODGED IN WAKEFIELD

We saw it in Castleford when a camera crew was seeking to embed itself into the local community. They brought up specialists from Kent and after convincing the locals that cared about the local economy of the town chose to get hotels in a city with a mainline station. Naturally for authenticity they ate in the local chippy. They needed to be home.

Bless.

WHY THE CAMERAS DIDN'T GET TO HULL

Think about it. Why did Doncaster get the oxygen of television publicity while Hull drowned.

Easy. A cameraman could drop the kids off at school in Pimlico, catch a train from Kings Cross, (90 minutes) and a taxi to Bentley (10 minutes) and be back in London to pick them up. Crews paddled for a while but not as far as Hull.

It took senior Labour politicians like Alan Johnson and John Prescott to get them to travel the extra sixty miles.

PANDORA FROM THE COURTAULD AND THAT SORT OF NAME

There is the sort of name that the upward settled or the upward aspiring will never give their children. Brian is such a name, and so is Gary and Tracy. There are also names that the lower classes do not give their offsprings: Tobias, Rupert, Randy.

This is in partly because to their parents or grandparents generation Toby is a jug, Rupert is not a Royalist general but a cartoon bear in yellow trousers and Randy is unfulfilled sexual arousal. Arts officers and gallery curators more often these days come from the middle or upper-middle classes and bear such names.

The girls have names which ends in 'a' such as Pandora, Cassandra, Julia, and Lucretia and degrees in subjects which have an intellectual bent and foster the critical faculty. They come to curatorship or the Arts via art history or English Literature faculties of particular universities. Oxford and Cambridge of course is still in the act but so is the Courtauld and Manchester.

This brings problems because they measure by the standards of the concert hall and white cube galleries and not by the street. They also bring with them an attitude to design and promotion that is not telephone led but led by smart publicity and business practice. They have to pursue expensive equal opportunities policies. Advertising for a lowly post in a community organisation in a place like Cudworth, near Barnsley could cost £2,000

At one time this was not the case. Ten years ago many officers came to the arts because they had been arts practitioners. This was a proactive age and they were street wise.

RENAISSANCE LANGUAGE

Barnsley Council was probably the first council to have published the 'f' word in its un-asterixed form. In an interview about Urban Renaissance values with the robust beer quaffing-fag smoking architect Will Alsop a reporter asked if the technology existed which would put a halo of light that could be seen sixteen miles away in Doncaster around the Town Hall tower.

Alsop said, 'How the f*** should I know.' Without it the man was only half himself.

Barnsley let all the letters in this revealing response count. Bravo Barnsley.

SO IT'S BULLSH** BINGO IS IT???

Ben , my cultural mentor, says that the modern day web-filter (an IT function without flesh and blood) is prim and proper. Ben is not. He wore black Chelsea boots under his tuxedo at the Bollywood premieres when the self-respecting wore patent black pumps.

That said he knows his way around the Computer circuit. When he saw my eight-letter header he struck the asterisk-key twice. 'We wont get away with it.' He knows his way around the government sites and said that a blocking device would cut us out. So I reluctantly agreed but not before I had told him that the battle to stop replacing letters with astericks was fought by a man who was born a few street away for the Round Foundry office in which we were sitting, in Holbeck, Leeds.

Richard Hoggart, the father of Simon, was born in Hunslet Leeds and appeared for the publishers in the Lady Chatterley trial in 1962. Hoggart had written an excellent book called the Uses of Literacy and he was in the witness box to defend truth and wordplay.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, is a surprising book. If a second-hand first edition is dropped spine upwards it always falls open at the same pages. A reader of these learns of a tryst that the gamekeeper Mellows had with M'Lady. This involves him stroking her spine after she had cried watching some eggs hatch and an post coital-enthusiasm which he relayed by saying to her, 'Eh thou's a nice bit of ****.

At the trial the prosecutor said, 'Can you tell us what is the difference between the word' (he spoke the word in its full form) and 'f***'.

Hoggart replied, 'A nasty suggestiveness. '

I felt that he is right. These days language used crudely but honestly will only offend a small minority.

AN EFFICIENT WAY TO PROCESS GRANTS

I believe that organisations processing application bids of less than £5000 from artists and arts organisations should not consider the merits of each case but leave the outcome to chance. They should look through the bidding documents to see that the bid makes sense, ensure that it is not pornographic, sexist or racist and then throw the name into a hat and wait for the month end. On the last Thursday of every month they should ask a pre-school child or a passing magpie to pick out a name. The names out of the bag get the money.

Too much time is spent filling in over complicated Arts Funding bidding documents for everyone's health. Who cannot possibly be qualified to assess which projects are likely to succeed and which to fail. There are too many variables.

Two of Yorkshire's most adventurous arts projects, Dean Clough and Saltaire, would not have got anywhere if officers had appeared offering money and asked Ernest Hall and Jonathan Silver what they intended to do with the grant and how the siting would help the host community.

Another virtue of this way of working is its morality. The Johns and Janes who invest in lottery tickets and scratch cards in the belief that luck is on their side would see this process mirrored in the way the money is doled out.

HOLBECK ON THE AIRE

Holbeck, Leeds is filled with building that are not quite what they seem. The three Renaissance towers that overlook the Aire and Calder Navigation were originally the chimneys of Colonel Hardinge's weaving mill and the Temple to Isis which stands close by was Marshall's textile factory. At one time sheep grazed on the roof.
However if the Arts Mandarins had had their way an ever mightier icon would have dominated the area.

GRANTS TO MAJOR ARTS PROJECTS

Anyone who wanting more than £5000 should be forced to present part of their case in the appropriate Art Form. At the £6000 end writers of sonnets would have fourteen rhyming lines to extol the virtues of Arts Council and show how a booklet called Ever Green Spacious Minutes would help women in the Bangladeshi community in Rotherham, while at the £0.5 Million-end Brit-Art could make marquettes for a memorial to Yorkshire's Olde Tea Shoppe. Anthony Gormley or Rachel Whitread would come up with something if the money was right. Personally I would look forward The Beggars Of Upper Briggate from Opera North.

THE DALEK WITH THE SHOPPING TROLLEY

In the hope that the name will catch on I am spreading the idea that the new Bridgewater Building that towers over the south shore of the River Aire in Leeds is based on the fusion Inter-Galactic Terror-warrior and an Asda charette. When I mentioned the idea to a friend who kindly supplied me with the building's Sunday name she said that I was not alone in my observation. Some local Joe in a vox pop interview on television had also called it 'the Dalek'.

At this very moment an advocacy firm will be drawing a publicity package running into hundreds of thousands telling the world that this 'iconic' building is the Bridgewater, me, the man on the top of the bus to Headingley and thousands of locals are making sure that it will be forever The Dalek.

If you want a long term bet with Uncle Hill see what odds you can get on our view prevailing in ten years time. Remember the Crystal Palace became the crystal palace by popular acclaim.

A MUSHAIRA

Since the Queen had knighted Salman Rushdie I had not been looking forward to the Bolton-Gudjarati Mushaira. In January when I was in India I had been forced to meet the Big Brother discourtesies head on and it had been a bore. Fortunately the expulsion of Jade had made life easier. 'Look,' I was able to say, 'we are a tolerant nation. The voting proves it.' Now I had another cross-cultural problem on my agenda.

The burning of the Satanic Verses in a Bradford Square all those years ago had really upset me. I knew the quote, 'Those who burn books will later burn men.' and that if led by those Muslims who show the Fascist face of Islam a crowd of people angered by this Imperial honour would take some confronting.

I also knew that since he deserved and seemed to want it, (though why he should was a bit of a mystery) I was bound to get up and defend if anything happened the principle of freedom of speech. Fortunately I knew enough about The Messenger (pbuh) his wives and Arabic history to not to be out-phased but that did not stop me getting down Sara Maitland' s excellent book on key document from what was called the Salman Rushdie Affair and trying to read the novel yet again. In the corners of my over fertile imagination dark shadows were lurking and threatening what was to be one of the high lights of the month.

I should not have bothered. It was a wonderful meeting. Everyone was courteous and in the best Islamic manner respectful of everyone else. This was a thousand miles from the Mad Mullahism peddled by some of the popular press

The community hall next to the church was packed, I love the way that Muslim and Hindu people approach poetry. They take it seriously. Some of the content is intensely political

BETTER TO BE A WHALE THAN AN OLD ARTIST

For the past two years I have been asking how many artists over the age of sixty are being funded by the Arts Council. No one can tell me because they do not collect the statistics. With Arts Council grant forms you are asked for gender and your ethnic origins in precise detail. They even ask you if you are Irish. What they do not ask is about age.

Having had a bus pass for some years now this is of interest and because I want to know if anyone is funded after they are three-score, I have taken to asking arts' officers if they know of anyone who is in that age group. Up to now no one has come up with a name. Recently I talked this over with a friend who is a 'diversity' officer in another region. She said that we are interested in the older person and age was about to become an 'Arts Council theme'.

Last year I went to Haddon Hall with a friend. As she paid the woman ibn the office said in the nicest possible tones, 'Is he a Concession.' It has come to this. A man who had offered his life to defend our country during the Suez crisis is not only a concession but is 'part of a theme'.

I will watch the development this 'theme' with interest. What will happen I suspect is that young people having done an 'age awareness workshop' with an 'age awareness consultant' ( starting price £750 a day) will be let loose on the elderly. Age will become a theme which will make someone money. No one will go in search of the elderly artist and ask him or her if they wish to sniff a money stuffed line. How can they, in Arts Culture terms they do not exist. If they did there would be statistics.

ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO FUND THE ARTS

When I was on the Board of Yorkshire Arts I took the view that a member of the board of a charity should not fund himself. As a consequence I found myself crossing regional boundaries looking for work. That meant that I did things up in the North East, in Loughborough and in Birmingham but most particularly I crossed the Pennines and discovered Bolton and became involved in projects there..

Initially I worked for Percent For Arts, (Housing) Bolton. This is an unusual project. About ten years ago the chief town's chief housing officer took the view that the arts were very important in regeneration and community cohesion and persuaded the Council that 1% of the annual housing budget should be used to foster arts in the community. A team of three part-timers was established, each one of them a practising free-lance artist. Led by the Yorkshire man who started Bannerworks in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield Kite Festival they got down to supporting writers, artists, crafts workers and dancers, in fact anyone who could bring life into the community. In the early days the budget was close to £1 million. Serious money.

Now it is less but still it points out alternative ways to promote the Arts and feed artists and their families.

BULLS**T BINGO

In Barnsley MDC and I suspect in other local authorities some of the best, and inevitably the most sceptical, play a game called 'Bulls**t Bingo'. If a group are going to conference they prepare a card with words and phases that you might expect to hear. 'Stake-holder', 'top down procedures', 'accountable body'; you know the sort of thing. Each is scored. 'Stakeholder' might be worth a 'one', 'moving the deckchairs' (as in on the deck of the Titanic) would get 'five' and my all time favourite, 'charette' Ten marks.

'Stake Holder' is bound to be there hence the low score. 'Deckchairs' gets a higher mark on account of being so naff. Charette is very high because it is rarely understood by anyone who has not worked for Yorkshire Forward or attended a community planning event in Pontefract Park in the summer of 2004. At that point the officers who advertised the charette to a volley of trumpets reminiscent of Handel did not even know what it meant. They thought that if Yorkshire Forward Renaissance Team knew then everyone would. Charette as a bulls**t word is a jewel so rare that it is not even mentioned in Graham Edmonds' Bulls**t Bingo (2005). Written long after the game was first played in Barnsley this is never the less the seminal work but still it is not there.

VISUAL BULLS**T AND THE ARTS AGENDA

I have started to play a variation which is very appropriate in an age where we are dumbing down because you don't have to be able to read to play. You look at pictures.

The focus should be on glossy publications that come from organisations which have a workload that touches the Arts. You look for who is in the pictures and who is not and score accordingly. If a child of mixed race is depicted that is worth a 'one', a Bharata Natyam dancer gets 'five' and 'a lady in welly bobs with chintz curtains and a Royal Worcester china plate on a Regency stripped wall gets 'ten'.

Such a document arrived through the letter box of our house a couple of days ag. It was called Our Agenda For the Arts in Yorkshire 2006-8, (Arts Council England). I like to collect Politically Correct objects and this sort of publication is the best there is.

There are sixteen pages and sixteen coloured illustrations. In page order we find a leaping black dancer (1 point), a visually impaired woman (1 pt), a ballet dancer in the manner tied up in the manner of St Sebastian (7pts), a trio of Eng-Afro-Caribbean, Eng-white and Eng-Indic people (3points), a woman from a disability-related theatre company (5 pts) , a writer from 'Afro-Asian heritage project (1pt) , an old Castleford woman talking with Asian artist (4 pts), a crowd scene in a mixed-cultures market place (1 pt), two black singers (1 pt), two southern African black acrobats (4 pts), a white jewellery maker (3 pts), a ceramic pot (8 points), a white man going through a well lighted doorway (5 pts) and a picture of Andy Carver, Executive Director of Arts Council England, Yorkshire in his best suit..

Now whatever booklet is supposed to represent it does not represent reality of the arts as I see them as a writer/publisher cum painter. And that is sad. If it was helping to create a more healthy mixed community it would have my vote. It does not. What it represents is the impression that if you are black or have a disability then the arts are for you and that you are getting more than your fair share of available funding when clearly you are not..

Rather than creating concord documents like this foster discord. People in poor areas begin to ask, 'Am I being denied funding and support because of my colour'. That leads to racism.