"The marks and leavings of good work..."
"Good work was on that place in a way that granted and collaborated in its own endurance, that had carried them thus far, and would carry them on" (Wendell Berry)
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Second City Sickness
What do these places have in common: Cape Town, Aarhus, Marseille, Hamburg, Osaka, Melbourne, Montreal, Bergen, Gothenburg, Rotterdam?
They are all the second largest cities in their respective countries. They are all cultural centres in some way. You cannot imagine their councils and Mayors allowing major museums and venues to close for lack of funding.
They are the equivalent to Birmingham in England, a city whose council has just announced plan to withdraw all but a tiny, weeny element of funding for culture and to close almost all its libraries. Birmingham is an example of the difficulties most local authorities in England are facing right now, due to national government funding policies. It is also, inconveniently for bashing the government, an example of long-term bad management, and of what happens when a combined authority elected mayor and a city council don’t collaborate effectively.
None of which is the fault of the cultural sector now facing terrible cuts. Birmingham’s cultural sector has responded brilliantly to major events in recent years, adding to the Commonwealth Games for instance, and these cuts must feel like a slap in the face for organisations and freelancers who have gone the extra mile several times. Solutions and partial fixes may yet be found. Sympathy can be shared all round – the position of local councillors and staff is invidious. But it is hard times.
That was also apparent at a Clore Leadership ‘Leadership Now’ assembly I attended last week in Leeds. There was a lot of stress in the room, even patches of negativity. But there was also hope, ingenuity, commitment and – I will use the word – resilience.
One of the most positive ideas I came away with related to shifting the timeframe for our strategies and our work, as a stimulus to more imaginative problem-solving and to generate more commitment. (The example given was thinking how a museum could serve 2092 as well as 2029.) I might extend this to thinking of the current moment in a longer-term way. Would it help the anxiety and over-work if we think of the present moment as not starting with today or this week or this month’s latest bad news, but as having begun 10, 15 or 20 years ago? How would we feel and act if our SWOTs and PESTLEs were less narrow in their timeframes?
If nothing else, it might remind us that what feels ‘structural’ is sometimes momentary or seasonal, if we are aware enough of the season. (Sometimes, not all the time, which is the tricky thing.) In one of those ‘art finds you when you need it’ moments, as I headed home on the train from the event I read this passage in a short story by Wendell Berry, a farmer and his son talking:
"Well, I’ve seen dry years before this, and I'll tell you something, it's so miserable you think you'll never get over it. You're ready for the world to end. But it'll pass. There'll come a time when you won't think about it." ….
It was a moment that would live with Wheeler for the rest of his life, for he saw his father then as he had at last grown old enough to see him, not only as he declared himself, but as he was. And in that seeing Wheeler became aware of a pattern, that his father both embodied and was embodied in, that also contained the drouth and made light of it, that contained other hardships also and made light of them. For his father's good work was on that place in a way that granted and collaborated in its own endurance, that had carried them thus far, and would carry them on. Looking at his father, Wheeler knew, and would not forget, that though they were surrounded by the marks and leavings of a bad year, they were surrounded also by the marks and leavings of good work, which for that year and any other proposed an end and a new beginning.”
The idea that all the good work done remains in or on a place and “grants and collaborates in its own endurance”, that we can contain the hard times but also the effects of previous good work, I find reassuringly in tune with the best of what I had heard that afternoon.
Creatively Minded Men
The Baring Foundation recently published Creatively Minded Men a fascinating collection of essays and case studies exploring men’s participation in arts and mental health activities. I was pleased to contribute an essay, and – unusually – a poem.
The publication had its start in Baring Director David Cutler’s sense that men’s participation in arts and mental health projects had not received the attention it deserved, and that, interestingly, people weren’t too bothered by that. Evaluation of the Thriving Communities social prescribing funding programme found that women were almost three times as likely to take part as men. A Baring Foundation survey also found that half of respondents thought men were under-represented in such activity, but only just under a quarter thought that was a problem. As the report concludes, “concern that men with mental health problems be given attractive opportunities to participate in the arts certainly should not be seen as a vote in favour of the patriarchy, but rather a vote for us all being able to express ourselves through the arts, whoever we are.”
The 18 op-eds and case studies in the publication illustrate and explore a varied range of activities and situations. Intersectionality with gender identity is core to several of them, with class, sexuality and ethnic community backgrounds all creating barriers and potential enablers to be considered.
My essay looks at some of the research into men’s participation in mental health activities, especially creative ones, and then zooms in on Mike McGrother and the `Infant Hercules’ men’s choir in Stockton. I draw on research that suggests men working in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing are more likely to experience depression. Those brought up in cultures historically shaped by such work – such as Teesside - may not be rooted in discourse, in meetings, emails or conversation, but in doing. Talk is not the ‘natural’ element it may appear. This may mean you are not drawn to expressing your feelings, or to talking therapies should you become unwell.
I pose the question “What is the opposite of a lonely, silent man? Perhaps a choir of men singing.” I describe Mike’s practice in the context of his learning from the writer Christopher Small, who argued that “music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do.”39 Perhaps the same can be said of mental health – it is not a state, but an activity. This might be especially true for men who frame their thinking within activity, within doing and making. Musicking can, therefore, perhaps be attractive to men because it is a doing therapy rather than a talking therapy.”
The Baring Foundation have also launched a new fund providing Grants of £20k to £50k for developing new participatory arts opportunities for men with mental health problems. The deadline in 23rd April, so have a look at the guidance and get those applications in.
An Appearing Man
I mentioned that a poem also featured in Creatively Minded Men. “The Disappearing Men” forms a kind of coda to the publication, illustrating, I think, what’s at stake in the work people are doing in this area. The poem begins: “The disappearing men /are folding themselves into/ the corners of their silences.”
It can be found in my new Smokestack Press collection night The Infinite Town, launched at an event just last night. The reading, which also featured Smokestackers Bill Herbert and Bob Beagrie, was in my brilliant local venue The Waiting Room. I couldn’t help but think Patrick “parochialism is universal” Kavanagh would have approved of walking from your house to your book launch. As well as our own books, we all also read some poems from Smokestack’s new and extraordinary anthology “Out of Gaza” which you can buy now from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
“The Disappearing Men’ is (are?) also in a new and highly recommended anthology exploring contemporary masculinity published by Broken Sleep Books this month. Masculinity features a massive range of poetic styles and takes on aspects of masculinity right now. It’s a rich achievement by editors by Rick Dove, Aaron Kent and Stuart McPherson.