I woke up this morning with a strange realisation. I work in four areas that are endangered species: public service broadcasting, university arts and humanities, book-publishing, arts in schools. OMG! I thought, if I was paranoid, I could almost think it was a conspiracy!
Going through each - public service broadcasting. It's difficult for me to figure out how this is going to survive on the present model. I can see that it's being cornered into being allotted the status of elite entertainment, which makes it ripe for populists to say that keeping it going is subsidising the elite etc etc etc.
University arts and humanities are being crushed at a rate of knots. Departments are closing, universities are shrinking. Justifying the place of arts and humanities in higher education is proving to be difficult - whether that's on an intellectual basis or even on a financial one (ie that there is a huge arts industry in the UK and the world).
The book as an object - in particular in the sphere of education and childhood is under threat. Publishers talk of it as a 'challenging' environment. I'm communicating these thoughts in a digital form (Facebook) and not as a pamphlet or as a chapter in a book.
The arts in schools have taken a hammering. The old justifications for why children should paint, dance, sing, do pottery, write poems, play musical instruments etc have been pushed aside by the demand for the 'STEM' subjects to be taught.
Then I had an additional thought: these four areas have traditionally helped each other. One example, for several years I worked in what was called Schools Broadcasting. Thousands of schools tuned into programmes produced by the BBC, on many parts of the curriculum, including 'my' corner, poetry. It's actually where I started. It was my 'nursery'. Or again, an active arts presence in HE is supported by, and supports, arts in education, community and broadcasting. A book is a great object for 'holding' the arts and/or information and analysis of the arts. It's portable, it's a slow read, and with books for young people and young children, it's a pleasurable object to have with you.
I don't know what all this adds up to. Does it mean that we are impoverishing ourselves? Or, (I might argue) does it simply mean that the need for people to express themselves will flourish even more through digital and electronic means? I'm the last person to find fault with films, TV, or any digital form of entertainment, simply or only because it is electronic. And, I might argue, the medium (media) that used to be entirely controlled by big business, has opened up access for people to make films on their phones, and for alternative outlets to flourish. When I was in my teens and twenties, it was an incredibly difficult thing to make forms of entertainment and information that we can now do very easily. (It's OK, I'm fully aware that the machinery and technology is owned by huge corporations, but that's another argument.)
However, I see education stumbling along to keep up with this huge upsurge and change. As you might imagine, this is not me calling for more electronic worksheets and monitoring of pupils! Far from it, it's me wondering why it is that education hasn't kept arts education going, in part, through the imaginative use of digital media. I've seen 6 year olds making films and animations. It's easy to imagine what it could be like if schools could be places where students developed many of the 'skills' that are of course highly rated by 'education' (literacy, numeracy etc) through digital forms. (I could expand on this!)
I'll leave it there for the moment.
