INEQUALITY HURTS: SO WHAT?
How to build on findings of The Spirit Level: a process for change
Aim: to open up discussion between those with most to gain from greater equality, those with most to lose (or give) and the majority in between. To record and diffuse that discussion as a stimulus to wider debate and action.
Objective: to get different class/income groups talking among themselves and between groups, to address differences and areas of agreement. With input from experts/thinkers and an opportunity to address their questions and conclusions to political parties.
Method
1.Select three focus groups drawn from
wealthiest 10%
poorest 30%
middling 60%
2. Focus: bring all groups together, intermixed as individuals, for outline of issues defined in Spirit Level: the damage done by inequality and the widening gap.
3. Discussion: Focus groups meet separately to discuss four questions:
why are the rich rich and the poor poor?
why has the gap widened?
c. what should be done?
what can WE (people in our position) do about it?
4. Confrontation: bring groups together to address points of difference and agreement.
5. Input: bring groups together with panel of experts and thinkers (who will have
previous session, either live or video) for questions and answers, in both directions.)
6. Review: reform focus groups, so each includes cross section, to see what has been learned, how views have changed and what can be done.
7. Demands: bring all participants, groups, experts etc together with a panel of
politicians from wide spectrum of UK parties (Ireland might have its own
version.)
8. Edit and diffuse video record: ideally a TV or film production company would
be involved from the start. This (as with BBC Choir series) could give
importance and urgency to the whole process. A film- or programme-maker might also want to follow some participants home.
Which leaves open several questions, apart from whether the process could work: who selects groups, who organises and chairs meetings, which producers/chanels might be interested, and who PAYS?.
Friday 13 November 2009
Swansea 'City of Sanctuary'
Ada's involved in a move to make Swansea a 'City of Sanctuary' to counter the nastiness of immigration controls and/or BNP. I was asked to do a piece on a dance-show called 'Oyster Bay' in which some asylum seekers had a hand:
What have asylum-seekers got to do with oysters? If Swansea still had oyster-beds, it might be a job, like cocklepicking. But overfishing and pollution killed the oysters, so there are no jobs in that. For anyone. Unless oysters can be helped to grow again. For the moment, oysters are Heritage, and Heritage is nothing if not Art.
Including Dance. Last summer Tandance – a local powerhouse I only heard about this month - did a show called Oyster Bay. All sorts of people were involved, from primary schools to colleges and several local, and not so local, dance groups. Tandance is funded to promote ‘education, integration, community engagement and social change.’ A tall order! But with research into once-and-future oystercatching went a widening net of local involvement, along the coast to Port Talbot and up the Swansea and Neath valleys.
One of the dance groups involved is Dynion, all male, another is Arabic, and behind the scenes, making boats and sails for props, asylum-seekers from several continents came and went. How many of them had their own experiences of setting sail? And getting washed up… And why dance, why art at all, for people just surviving?
Maybe it’s when you’re worst off that you most something to get you out of the rut. Unlike most other social activities, visual arts, music and dance don’t depend on language. In the Oyster show, these artforms went together. If asylum-seekers worked mainly on the artwork side, that’s because the long process through rehearsal to performance needs regular attendance. Which depends on a stability that most asylum seekers can only pray for.
Does it work, that little bit of distraction? Or does it just feel worse when you turn back to a painful past and uncertain future? Feedback was positive from the few asylum seekers who were able to see the show and report back. And some of us will know from our own hard times that a moment of warmth and light can go a long way. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, something better might be possible!
And for us, relatively secure in our ‘host community’, what’s in it for us? Walking along Swansea beach, I’ve often wondered about those oyster shells, and bits of coal that get washed up. Did somebody eat those oysters? Who dug the coal, did it fall in the sea, or was it pushed? In town, or on the bus, I wonder what’s behind different faces, darker skins.You can never tell what’s going on in someone else’s head, but the more sorts of people you get to know, the better you can guess, the more comfortable you feel in your own skin.
Carol Brown, the Arts Director of Tandance, recalls some little turning points over the past ten years or so. A white person saying. ‘That’s the first time I’ve touched a black skin.’ Like finding you can float! And a Townhill woman in a women’s yoga class who asked a Muslim woman - who’d somehow managed the session under her hijab - ‘What’s it like in there?’
Of course we’re different, Maybe the highest education of all is reaching out, exploring our differences together. Nothing human is foreign to me! Or as Carol put it when we talked in her Baglan office the other day ‘We are one whole…You cant be safe by closing your borders.’
What have asylum-seekers got to do with oysters? If Swansea still had oyster-beds, it might be a job, like cocklepicking. But overfishing and pollution killed the oysters, so there are no jobs in that. For anyone. Unless oysters can be helped to grow again. For the moment, oysters are Heritage, and Heritage is nothing if not Art.
Including Dance. Last summer Tandance – a local powerhouse I only heard about this month - did a show called Oyster Bay. All sorts of people were involved, from primary schools to colleges and several local, and not so local, dance groups. Tandance is funded to promote ‘education, integration, community engagement and social change.’ A tall order! But with research into once-and-future oystercatching went a widening net of local involvement, along the coast to Port Talbot and up the Swansea and Neath valleys.
One of the dance groups involved is Dynion, all male, another is Arabic, and behind the scenes, making boats and sails for props, asylum-seekers from several continents came and went. How many of them had their own experiences of setting sail? And getting washed up… And why dance, why art at all, for people just surviving?
Maybe it’s when you’re worst off that you most something to get you out of the rut. Unlike most other social activities, visual arts, music and dance don’t depend on language. In the Oyster show, these artforms went together. If asylum-seekers worked mainly on the artwork side, that’s because the long process through rehearsal to performance needs regular attendance. Which depends on a stability that most asylum seekers can only pray for.
Does it work, that little bit of distraction? Or does it just feel worse when you turn back to a painful past and uncertain future? Feedback was positive from the few asylum seekers who were able to see the show and report back. And some of us will know from our own hard times that a moment of warmth and light can go a long way. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, something better might be possible!
And for us, relatively secure in our ‘host community’, what’s in it for us? Walking along Swansea beach, I’ve often wondered about those oyster shells, and bits of coal that get washed up. Did somebody eat those oysters? Who dug the coal, did it fall in the sea, or was it pushed? In town, or on the bus, I wonder what’s behind different faces, darker skins.You can never tell what’s going on in someone else’s head, but the more sorts of people you get to know, the better you can guess, the more comfortable you feel in your own skin.
Carol Brown, the Arts Director of Tandance, recalls some little turning points over the past ten years or so. A white person saying. ‘That’s the first time I’ve touched a black skin.’ Like finding you can float! And a Townhill woman in a women’s yoga class who asked a Muslim woman - who’d somehow managed the session under her hijab - ‘What’s it like in there?’
Of course we’re different, Maybe the highest education of all is reaching out, exploring our differences together. Nothing human is foreign to me! Or as Carol put it when we talked in her Baglan office the other day ‘We are one whole…You cant be safe by closing your borders.’
Monday 9 November 2009
‘TROOPS OUT’ AT SWANSEA REMEMBRANCE EVENT
(Piece asked for by Quaker journal 'The Friend')
The banner said ‘Stop the war in Afghanistan. Remember the dead . Respect the living. Troops out!’ Holding the banner, standing in silence at the gate of St Mary’s Church, Swansea, were three people, two of them from Swansea Quaker Meeting.
Beside the main text of the banner were the words ‘welcome home’ and ‘peace’ (salaam) in Arabic. Round the border were scattered four black coffins and 40 white bundles – each standing for 50 dead. 200+ British servicemen and women, and about ten times as many Afghans. Another coffin was pinned to the fabric, representing the 30 soldiers killed since the banner was made.
The formal procession, marching band, uniforms and regimental banners, campaign medals and mayoral chains, unravelled in the street beside the church. As soldiers, families, ex-servicemen and local dignitaries passed through the lychgate on their way to the service, most of them averted their eyes, a few muttered ‘disgraceful’ or ‘shame on you.’ Several others said ‘quite right’, ‘I agree’ or even ‘Congratulations!’ A weeping woman, with her husband and young son, said ‘Please take it away.’ I tried to say that I was sorry, but that saving lives might be as important as mourning them. She said ‘If you were sorry, you would go.’
We didn’t, but that was why my wife had not wanted to join us. We had contacted the British Legion, the vicar of St Mary’s and the police beforehand to let them know what we planned, and to reassure them that the aim was not to oppose or disrupt. No answer from the Legion, the vicar said he was all for freedom of conscience but not on his turf, and the police said ‘thank you for letting us know, we have no problem with that.’ The local newspaper had already taken pictures of the banner which they published with a few paragraphs of explanation: this war is unwinnable, prolongs the agony of the Afghan people and is more likely to provoke terror attacks than prevent them.’
We plan a similar silent presence, with a few more people, at the Swansea Cenotaph, at the 11th hour of the 11th day… I’m thinking of adding a placard reading: ‘Spare them from their leaders’ lies!’
(Piece asked for by Quaker journal 'The Friend')
The banner said ‘Stop the war in Afghanistan. Remember the dead . Respect the living. Troops out!’ Holding the banner, standing in silence at the gate of St Mary’s Church, Swansea, were three people, two of them from Swansea Quaker Meeting.
Beside the main text of the banner were the words ‘welcome home’ and ‘peace’ (salaam) in Arabic. Round the border were scattered four black coffins and 40 white bundles – each standing for 50 dead. 200+ British servicemen and women, and about ten times as many Afghans. Another coffin was pinned to the fabric, representing the 30 soldiers killed since the banner was made.
The formal procession, marching band, uniforms and regimental banners, campaign medals and mayoral chains, unravelled in the street beside the church. As soldiers, families, ex-servicemen and local dignitaries passed through the lychgate on their way to the service, most of them averted their eyes, a few muttered ‘disgraceful’ or ‘shame on you.’ Several others said ‘quite right’, ‘I agree’ or even ‘Congratulations!’ A weeping woman, with her husband and young son, said ‘Please take it away.’ I tried to say that I was sorry, but that saving lives might be as important as mourning them. She said ‘If you were sorry, you would go.’
We didn’t, but that was why my wife had not wanted to join us. We had contacted the British Legion, the vicar of St Mary’s and the police beforehand to let them know what we planned, and to reassure them that the aim was not to oppose or disrupt. No answer from the Legion, the vicar said he was all for freedom of conscience but not on his turf, and the police said ‘thank you for letting us know, we have no problem with that.’ The local newspaper had already taken pictures of the banner which they published with a few paragraphs of explanation: this war is unwinnable, prolongs the agony of the Afghan people and is more likely to provoke terror attacks than prevent them.’
We plan a similar silent presence, with a few more people, at the Swansea Cenotaph, at the 11th hour of the 11th day… I’m thinking of adding a placard reading: ‘Spare them from their leaders’ lies!’
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