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Kids and the ArtsDateline: 30th June, 2002 In an article entitled Breaking Down Social and Economic Barriers, "Times" theatre critic Richard Morrison damns the Prince of Wales with very faint praise for his newly launched Arts & Kids Foundation (see our news story).The article, redolent as it is of the condescension of the cultured for those who are less endowed and full of arch criticisms and barbed comments, could hardly be said to be dealing with its ostensible subject matter. In fact, it would seem that Mr Morrison wouldn't recognise a "social or economic barrier" if it hit him in the face with a wet fish.
Am I alone in finding this grossly offensive? I teach in one of the most deprived areas of the United Kingdom. Of the three wards which we serve, two are in the top 5% for deprivation and the other in the top 10%, according to government figures. And that means high unemployment (way, way above the national average), poor health (we are a Health Action Zone), low educational standards (we are an Educational Action Zone), high crime, a massive drugs problem (one student once told me that he could leave the school grounds and return in less than fifteen minutes with any drug I wanted, from pot to crack), and every other of the myriad social and economic problems which he doesn't so much as glance at. There are many people, both within and around this community, who work their fingers to the bone to break down these social and economic barriers, many trying to use the arts, if not to break, at least to momentarily interrupt, the cycle of deprivation. They are doing it on a shoestring - and one strand of that shoestring is their salaries: I suspect that three together earn less in a year than Mr Morrison. The major problem of living in a deprived area is that the struggles of everyday life limit horizons. If you're living on the dole, your health is poor and the outlook is bleak, you don't have the energy to look beyond the here and now, to imagine a life which is different to your own. Your imagination, indeed, is stultified, under- even malnourished. You live on a diet of junk food and junk entertainment. Let kids, as I have done, use a video camera, and they'll produce the Jerry Springer Show. The greatest casualty of deprivation is the death of imagination, for without imagination there is no appreciation of what could be, and without that appreciation, there can be no hope. And that is what I and my colleagues in many areas across the country - and, of course, in other countries - see every day in the faces of the kids they teach: a lack of hope which manifests itself as an unfocused but overwhelming anger. Hence the vandalism and violence which is as much part of their daily lives as breathing and sleeping. Hence the alcoholism and drug taking. If we can't allow them to develop their imaginations, no amount of well-intentioned economic help is going to have much effect. The arts can help their imaginations develop, which is why the £15m that Prince Charles hopes to raise, although a drop in the ocean, is sorely needed, and why the snide, smug comments of Richard Morrison are so totally offensive. Articles Indices: |
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