Cultural Literacy and Public Art in a Global Pandemic

Introducing Pippa Hale, Artist

I was fortunate enough to encounter Pippa Hale’s work through the Special Interest Group’s case study of the project ‘Walking in Others’ Footsteps’ run by Mirador Arts, a highly active, charitable Community Arts Trust based in the North-West of the UK. The sub-project for which she was responsible was called ‘Skip, Play, Repeat

‘Skip, Play, Repeat’ involved re-enacting street play activities of previous generations of children by recrafting the artefacts which were commonly used at the time. Children of all backgrounds from schools in Preston took part in outdoor events in which they learnt how to master the special skills demanded by the newly refashioned ‘toys’.  But this was only the start. An extensive interview with Pippa for the case study and a visit to her website bore witness to the range of her creative vision and to the impact her recent work was having in the Leeds area.

Many professional artists who rely on commissions and externally funded cultural projects to further their contribution to community wellbeing find themselves constrained by the cutbacks in local government support, party political interests and the priority given to large scale economically driven projects which are dependent on the private sector. Other drawbacks are the limited timeframes of funded initiatives whose sustainability UK Research and Innovation and The Arts Councils have only recently begun seriously to address.  And then there is the small matter of COVID 19.

How would leading artists such as Pippa survive the present crisis? 

Her varied work in sculpture, installation, co-curation and infrastructural initiatives such as the establishment of prizes and new cultural venues was beginning to make real inroads into the Leeds environment. Like other self-driven, multi-talented, entrepreneurial artists with a strong sense of mission, she was clearly a core catalyst in the cultural renewal of the City. Her personal blog below gives a sense of the challenge facing her and others like her.  It is an aspect of cultural literacy which will be explored in greater detail in subsequent entries on this site and elsewhere.


Pippa’s Blog
Cultural Literacy and Public Art in a Global Pandemic

Being an artist is a struggle at the best of times, but the Covid-19 global pandemic is having a devastating effect on the cultural sector, the ramifications of which will be felt for generations.

I’m a contemporary artist who works with heritage venues, galleries and in the public realm,  making works that respond to the history, people and geography of places. Since having kids of my own, I’ve also become interested in play and its correlation to creativity. Projects are commissioned by local authorities, museums, private companies, educational institutions and arts agencies and have included works in sound, film, events, iron, found objects and foam. Sometimes the works are permanent, sometimes they are temporary, but the overall narrative is about rooting artworks to their location, connecting people to their history and place and each other.

Issues confronting artists working on public projects / What are main challenges professionals in my position have to face?

Being an artist, no matter what your practice, is a challenging career choice. Whilst it can be enormously rewarding, it necessitates incredible amounts of self-discipline, chutzpah, humility, persistence, resilience – not to mention creativity. At no time is this more true than when working in the public realm. Whereas galleries have experienced staff who support the presentation and dissemination of contemporary art, public art can be commissioned by multiple partners who perhaps haven’t worked with artists before.

The impetus to commission works of art for the public realm are varied, but are often political. Artists are often brought in at a time when places are undergoing change and artworks are commissioned to smooth the planning process or to sweeten local communities.

What kind of contribution does my work make to the ‘cultural literacy’ of communities?

One of the first things I do when working on a new commission is to connect with people in the local area. I never assume they have an interest in contemporary art, but I know they are passionate about the places in which they live and work. Talking to them is crucial when trying to get to know a new place as it builds up a personal picture of somewhere that is based on memory and local networks rather than the official stories recorded in regional archives. I can get a deeper understanding of how that community and its culture interact and it’s those conversations that ultimately inform the artwork.

At the end of the day, I’m making a new thing for that place, be it an object or an event, something that will simultaneously connect contemporary communities to the past and to current debate.

I believe good public art is essential because it reflects who we are as a society, our values and beliefs, our pasts and presents and adds depth and meaning to our cities, towns and villages. In recent weeks, public art has been at the forefront of contemporary debate with the toppling of memorial statues in Britain and the USA. Now, more than ever before, public art has an important role to play in defining who we are a people, a society, a nation. Now is the time to be commissioning new works of art to reflect these times and to provide a legacy for the future.

Unfortunately, this moment is happening during a global pandemic where arts funding for new projects has been shelved as public and private bodies redirect their funding to meet the immediate financial needs of arts organisations. And of course, we hardly dare imagine what that new landscape may look like, let alone ignore that niggling worry that these funding streams may never come back on line.

Dealing with these issues as the future unfolds is a topic I hope to be able to discuss publicly: through the medium of this website, as well as through workshops, presentations and other fora which build on what has already been achieved, not only in Leeds but elsewhere in the UK and abroad.

Pippa Hale, Leeds
June 2020

Cultural Literacy in lockdown

By Robert Crawshaw, April 2020

Tuesday 17th March 2020 found us desperately trying to leave France.  We had been about to embark on a seven-day, guideless, ski-mountaineering tour in the area of Mont Thabor in the South Vanoise, near the Italian border. Instead, after a fifteen-hour journey, we had found on arrival in Valfréjus that all the Alpine huts were closed. The small, purpose-built resort would be evacuated the following day. Our families were texting us to get out quick while the going was good or we might be there for the duration.  But how? Ingenuity was called for. Friends in Lyon were telephoned. Paris should be avoided at all costs. Macron had spoken the previous evening. Flights had been cancelled and France was in shut down. Patience and alacrity were called for. Just as well we had the language.

The train was packed – ‘bondé’. Passengers were seated or standing, cheek by jowl. Social distance it was not. Most were masked, wiping ethanol on their hands, peeling gloves on and off. Surreal. A scene from a wartime documentary. A race by ghosts in human clothing to beat border closures before the tanks rolled in. Lyon Part-Dieu station was like an evacuation centre. Movement all but impossible. Only a phone call to Brittany Ferries in Portsmouth secured us a place the following evening on the last boat to leave Saint-Malo. Literally the last. But we still had to get there. On-line reservations cut. Dawn found us in front of the automatic ticket dispenser at Lyon-Perrache.  Office closed. Travel authorisation forms compulsory. Security guards everywhere. Imagine our astonishment when, alongside a ticket, a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire popped out of a neighbouring machine.

Five years earlier, I had encountered poetry on the Paris Metro. ‘Vive la France!’ Why couldn’t the Brits do likewise?  It was only when I began researching the topic for a paper on cultural literacy, subsequently published in Liminalities, that I discovered that the London Underground had got there first and that the idea had been imitated all over the world.  Poems in routine public spaces were clearly a marker of a modern society’s attempts to inject humanity into everyday life. Was it now in its death throes?

The poem by Apollinaire was long.  Although grouped in a category called ‘Littérature classique’, it was not one of his best known. It described fairground performers – saltimbanques, even then only rarely to be seen on the streets of Paris, having for most part retreated to the provinces. Alternatively, members of the public could contribute poems of their own. The whole programme had been systemised and technically incorporated into popular experience. Trans-generic cultural embedding à la Fahrenheit 451, in a dysfunctional, mobile world devoid of people and infrastructure, policed by guards and stalked by plague.

Apollinaire died young of Spanish flu in 1918 as modernism hit the buffers. How might cultural literacy be possible now in a space-time compression where traditional educational practices had been virtualised and the very nature of physical human contact called into question. The tectonic plates of western culture were shifting irreversibly under our feet. Yet it was only days after our landfall in the United Kingdom that the implications of separation and their ominous consequences made themselves truly felt:

Un fantôme de nuées

Chaque spectateur cherchait en soi l’enfant miraculeux

Siècle ô siècle des nuages

The aims and objectives of CLE

The CLE initiative has two main aims: to achieve a broad shared understanding of the notion of Cultural Literacy and its importance; and to increase the visibility of the challenge presented by Cultural Literacy and of the contributions which LCS scholars and their fellow researchers continue to make in this area.

To achieve these aims, CLE is bringing together academics, educators, artists, policy-makers and members of the cultural industries, as well as a growing number of partner institutions, in a Forum for discussion and development across Europe and beyond.

The CLE Forum has undertaken the following actions:

  1. created an international Core Group to oversee all activities;
  2. organised a Workshop on ‘Migration’ in May 2016;
  3. organised the second biennial Conference in May 2017, at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw;
  4. organised the second Interim Symposium at the Monash Prato Centre in Tuscany in July 2018.
  5. set up Special Interest Groups devoted to key areas and initiatives.

It also continues to assure an enhanced web presence, support the distribution of information, share good practice, research outcomes and communication among interested parties.of information, share good practice, research outcomes and communication among interested parties.

CLE Conferences 2015 & 2017

The first Cultural Literacy in Europe [CLE] Conference took place in London, at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, on 16-18 April 2015. A major outcome of the conference is a shared understanding of Cultural Literacy as a key societal challenge for the future of Europe and its relationship with the rest of the world. This recognition must lead to common objectives among academics, professionals, and representatives of cultural associations and funding bodies.

Cultural Literacy in Europe 16-18 April 2015

The Conference demonstrated that excellent research and initiatives are already taking place in this area across Europe and beyond its borders. Whether working with methods and tools of Literary and Cultural Studies [LCS] or spanning other interdisciplinary areas, researchers and teachers in the Humanities and Social Sciences can make a key contribution to both understanding and answering the challenge of Cultural Literacy.

The second Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference took place in Warsaw, at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, on 10-12 May 2017.

Meeting the challenge of Cultural Literacy

What is Cultural Literacy?

Cultural literacy is an ability to view the social and cultural phenomena that shape our lives – bodies of knowledge, fields of social action, individuals or groups, and of course cultural artefacts – as being essentially readable. Cultural literacy engages with interdisciplinarity, multilingualism and collaboration. It is a way of looking at social and cultural issues through the lens of literary thinking, employing communication, comparison and critique on a scale beyond that of one language or one nation-state, and avoiding abstraction. Furthermore, it is as much about innovation and creative practice – whether scholarly, artistic or social – as it is about analysis, and it very often brings these two methods together.

Developing knowledge and shared practices in the area of Cultural Literacy must be understood and promoted as a key strategic goal for a meaningful impact on European society and beyond it, by supporting individuals and groups in the continuous effort to achieve greater social justice and active forms of citizenship.

CLE Biennial Conference 2019

CLE Biennial Conference 2019

Cultural Literacy & Cosmopolitan Conviviality

Thu 9 – Sat 11 May 2019, Lisbon

#CLEurope2019

VIEW PROGRAMME, ABSTRACTS & BIOS

We are grateful to the following for supporting this conference: De Gruyter Open Access journals and the British Comparative Literature Association

ACCOMMODATION

During your stay in Lisbon we suggest the following accommodation facilities:
Hotels
Turim Saldanha ****
Hotel Açores Lisboa ****
Hotel Marriot ****
Sana Malhoa Hotel ****
Star Inn Lisbon Airport ***
Radisson Blu Hotel ****
Lisboa Central Park ***
Evidência Light Santa Catarina **
Hostels and GuestHouse
Casa do Zé Guesthouse
Lost Inn Lisbon
Lisbon Chillout Hostel
Lisboa Central Hostel

Most of the Best Medium Hostels in the World according to the Hoscars Awards are situated in Lisbon: http://www.hostelworld.com

Transnationalizing Modern Languages – Policy Report 2018

The Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML) project, initiated 2014, has brought together an international team of researchers and practitioners to address key issues in language and culture education. Starting from the forms of mobility that have defined the development of modern Italian cultures across the globe, the project has engaged with cultural associations, schools, policy makers and individuals in an exploration of heritage, cultural memory, and educational practices, carrying out work in the UK, Italy, South America, Australia, Ethiopia, the USA, and Namibia.

TML published Policy Report which calls for the reframing of the study of MLs in Higher Education in the UK and, more broadly, of approaches to the study of languages and cultures.

The report, which refers to CLE’s London Statement, is available here: https://cpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristol.ac.uk/dist/3/247/files/2018/09/D0879_Policy_Bristol_Transnationalizing_Modern_Languages-wroux8.pdf 

Translating Cultures and Modern Languages, 9 November, 2018

British Academy 9 November 2018, 10-30 am to 4.30 pm

The AHRC theme ‘Translating Cultures’ has been highly significant in furthering research across a wide range of disciplines. The event at the British Academy provides the opportunity to discuss the contribution that the theme has made to the development of Modern Languages by bringing together speakers from across the disciplinary field. The event also provides the opportunity to discuss the Policy Report ‘Reframing language education for a global future’, prepared by the large grant ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages’ (TML). See:

http://www.bris.ac.uk/policybristol/policy-briefings/transnationalizing-modern-languages/

The event is free and open to all, though places are limited. To book please visit:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/translating-cultures-and-modern-languages-tickets-50351702297

Programme (full details will be placed online shortly):

10.30 -11.00: Tea and coffee

11.00-12.00: The Translating Cultures theme and Modern Languages
Chair: Neil Kenny (Oxford, BA Lead Fellow for Languages)

Charles Forsdick (Liverpool, Translating Cultures theme leader)
Alison Phipps (Glasgow, PI Researching Multilingually)
Rebecca Braun (Lancaster, PI Authors and the World)
Charles Burdett (Bristol/Durham, TML) and Jenny Burns (Warwick, TML)

12.00-13.00: The TML Policy Report and Language Education
Chair: Derek Duncan (St Andrews, TML)

Lucy Jenkins (Cardiff, Modern Languages Student Mentoring Project)
Nick Mair (former Chair, Independent Modern Languages Association & Dulwich College)
Helen Myers (Chair ALL London and The Ashcombe School)

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.00-15.00: The TML Policy Report: Broader Implications
Chair: Loredana Polezzi (Cardiff, TML)

Karen Salt (Nottingham, Centre for Research in Race and Rights)
Bernadette Holmes (Principal Researcher, Born Global)
Hilary Footitt (Reading, PI The Listening Zones of NGOs)

15.00-15.30: Tea and coffee

15.30-16.30: Concluding Session
Chair: Janice Carruthers (Queen’s, Belfast, AHRC Leadership Fellow in MLs)

Claire Gorrara (Cardiff, Chair of UCML)
Charles Forsdick (Liverpool, Translating Cultures theme leader)