PUBLIC REALM, GRANDIOSE LANGUAGE AND UTILITARIAN LAPMPPOSTS

Anyone who has not seen it should take a look at what Sheffield Council are calling 'The Gold Route' and architects are parading as a good example of the 'Public Realm'.

When I first heard the the name and the term I was not happy. Gold Route was a bit grand. It put into my mind the Golden Road to Samarkam when it just went from Midland Road Station up to Barker's Pool via the esculators in the Millennium Gallery.

'What does public realm mean ?' I asked. The architect who was briefing me said, 'It is the area where people walk, and includes street furnishings, paving, benches and water features .'

It was only when I was asked to consider the public realm works in Sheffield that I was aware that given the chance and the money plus a very good idea architects and planners could come up with a grand idea of public realm which pushed the title to its limits.

As usual it is the grandiose nature of the language used that bothers me.

The problem I had was that I was not prepared for the totality of a utilitarian lamppost, a set of cracked concrete paving stones, a bench waiting to be covered with graffiti and a fountain to be called anything at all let alone the public realm. With two such grand words I expected something better. However when I came out of the station and walked the spine route I was prepared to accept 'public' and 'realm' for the more I thought about this neighbourhood I came to see that it was such a beautiful realm that here the public could be monarch.

I had hoped that Gordon Brown's government would show less interest in the Faith agenda than Tony Blair's. Although I recognise that Ed Balls, Schools Minister, is bound to give money to the existing Faith Schools I had hoped that he would not increase the money spent on that educational option. Faith divides and does not bind a country together.

We are putting too much money into promoting religion in general. Like sexual preference Wakefield MDC is inviting churches and mosques to bid in Local Strategic Partnership money, that when most church congregations are down into the low twenties, no one wants to be a vicar and those who are not fed up with Faith are indifferent. These approaches do not seem to work and although I can see that people from a variety of communitiies should come together if they need to, that is their option and should not involve taxes..

Having attended one in Wakefield inter-Faith conference a couple of years ago what interested me was how blinkered both the Christians and the Muslims were when it came to any idea about unity. The speeches by the Christians did not reference the Qur'an and the discussion was how to get more government money. They were united in that.



Having just received a copy of the diversity policy of my local authority team I have come to the conclusion that these teams, and teams like them, should be scrapped. Their work is done.

Today most acknowledge that we should design our environments to accommodate the special needs of mental and physical disabled individuals and groups of people, that sexism is wrong and that equality of wage and opportunity is a golden mean is understood by all but the very thick.

When it comes to homosexuality or bisexuality society, thank goodness, has changed so much that the only people who have serious adverse opinions are the very prejudiced, fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Old ideas will die as people die and the ethnic mixture of this great country slowly changes. There was a time when we needed to assure sloped entrances into buildings were there, that women were not abused in action or language and that people were not hit about because of their sexuality. That time has passed. The agendas are understood.

We are now at a point where people who are paid to explain and defend diversity are in danger of tipping the scales towards intolerance. The defence is becoming an aspect of attack. People can too easily cry, 'You are attacking me because of a prejudice and I will see that you suffer. I know the law and you are persecuting me.'

I love the enlightened tolerance that I have grown up with and I see on railway stations and encounter in corner shops. It does not reach into the ghettos and the same-skin-colour villages but it is there in most other places, thank goodness. I would hate to lose it because of unnecessary and unthought-through zeal.

It is almost Christmas and I should be prepared, or so Tescos are telling me.

I am and that includes being prepared for the extra dollop of Faith my grandchildren will receive in their State Schools.

How I wish teachers would give up telling stories of the virgin birth of God's son and get around to teaching philosophy and ethics. Don't get me wrong I can view with affection a grandchild with a tea towel round his head reckoning to be a Wiseman with the best but I really wish it would end there.

Hardly anyone is in church these days. Muslims and Sikhs stand outside the mosque and gurdwala, as immigrants do, looking for communal comfort, but in time they will settle down to other patterns of living, integrate and leave faith to those who need it most. It happened to the Jews and the Roman Catholic Irish.

Whether this is a Sheffield word or not it is often used when naming the city's public art works. Up in the Peace Gardens people are asked not to 'paddle in the rills'.

FOLK ART, WIDE SHOULDERS AND EXPANDING FACES

For many years now I have published books and therefore have a natural interest in type faces.

This morning when standing behind a young woman in an Asda queue I noticed that the type face on her tattoo was Helvetica Extra BOLD. Since if was fuzzy at the edges it occurred to me that it was probably applied when she was younger and thinner. Then It would have probably been Helvetica FINE.

I wonder if I can get an Arts Council grant or write a doctorate in Media Studies on how body change brought on by increases in fat affects someone's perception of themselves.

It is worth a shot. Afterall it is an aspect of community art.

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.