Author: drnicko

Awarded an MBE for services to arts-based businesses, I am passionate about generating inspiring, socially engaging, creative practice within educational contexts both nationally and internationally.

Eurovision Song Contests: hey, musicians, your EU needs You!

Controversy about Englebert Humperdinck representing the U’nul-point’K and a gang of Russian grandmothers representing Roman Abramovich at the 2012 Eurovision summit in Baku has led to the resurrection of a song which narrowly failed to qualify for selection as the EU official’s entry to the competition back in 1995 when the Euro was unleashed on the world of Irish farmers, British shop-keepers and Bulgarian flea market owners.

Instead of asking nation states to generate nation-state-of-the-art-pop songs, the EU has decided its about time it waved its own flag and get some one in who can do some aural flag waving on their behalves.

The song – Ich bin ein Berliner and du bist ein dummkopf – was written by Brussels burocrats on a night out in Sunderland, picked by Georgio Morodor, given an electronic make over and played to the turbo-folk hoardes across the Balkans through the late ’90s and early ’00s.

The concept that the EU itself should be represented at Eurovision is being hotly contested by the UK government and UKIP as it’s being seen as a surreptitious attempt to ingratiate the British public into the benefits of the Euro: and their resistence ensured that the song was never released on the Great European Public.

But nevertheless, you can’t keep a good man down (as Hotlegs once mumbled on the B side of Neanderthal Man) and the song is attracting a lot of interest on social media.

Well, the lyric maybe: the Brussels burocrats have been politely snubbed by Morodor and they are now looking for a suitable composer and musical arranger to bring their collective efforts to an eager, new young Eurovision audience.

For those aspiring composers and arrangers amongst you, keen to gather fame, fortune and eventual ignominy through the joy that is Eurovision, here are the lyrics in all their unedited glory:

In a restaurant, the elderly memories
one German, one Brit, one Rumanian, 
two Turks, two Hungarians and a Dutchman, 
swapped over cheese, wurst and red wine.
Our gestures give us away; 
the sweep of the hand from the plate to the waitress, 
the cough, the handshake, the awkwardness.
Signifying troubling difference.

but the younger ones laugh
as if nothing were amiss.
This is about them, here and now, 
putting our history behind them.
They ignore the coughs and embarrassments of their elders
adopting the easy going nature of a young Hungarian lad
laughing with a Romanian girl 
with no more to it than that.

And what binds us? The young to the old?
A spirit of peace, democracy and don’t forget the economy.
Its all about the economy, stupide.
You are the next generation of refuge workers
who will do shite jobs for the lousiest of pay
and then not unreasonably
apply for a national, legal identity.
Wir Sind  Berliner aber Sie Sind dummkoepfe.

Nudeln, rosti, pommels frites, pasta,
The European carbohydrates
Differ only in their shape and texture.
Deep down, the Bucharest lady
Secretly harbours the Irish waffle;
The ancient Bulgarian
Longs for tender mung beans,
Yet the Brits all gather around chicken tandoori.

Come in, Graham Norton: your time is up!

The TESCO model of cultural development: partnering up on an unlevel cultural playing fields

Many public sector organisations working in the cultural sector like to present themselves not only as funders but also as partners. The notion of quite what they mean by partnership varies wildly. Clearly, they have every right to be concerned and interested in how public funding is used – but this has always been the case with any public sector funder in the past. The difference with these funder-partners is not only that they are concerned that the funding is used appropriately, but they also see themselves as having a hand in the messy business of production and delivery.

Not content with planning regional strategy and building cultural infrastructure (whatever that is – no amount of centralised planning is going to make the cultural sector resemble the national highways or sewage system), they have been busy redesigning themselves as quasi-production companies; and given the resources they have access to, are quite capable of blowing any other production company out of the water at the mere nod of a local apparatchik.

Whether or not those funder-partners have any skill in production or delivery of those projects is not the point. Their muscling into the day to day activities of specialised organisations whose life blood depends on cultural production distorts the sector so much that any longer term sustainability of those organisations becomes even more of a guessing game than it usually is.

This would be less problematic if those quasi production companies managed to reinvest their skills and resources into the wider ecology and if their protestations of partnership were driven by the five principles of partnership working.

But the frequent fact is that they’re not: they’re driven by the energies of ego, personal glorification and political arrogance. All the qualities that made Tesco the force it has become; and as they say, Every Little Helps (their own bank balance, survivability and cultural domination).

The feeble child: why being feeble is a neat strategy to survive school.

Feeble children don’t fit and don’t come up to the mark of what is being demanded of them by their teachers or politicians. The feeble child isn’t – and doesn’t aspire to be – independent – or develop skills as an independent learner. They are highly dependent on others, whether consciously or not. The call to be prepared for an independent life fills them with horror.

The feeble child may not actually have many aspirations at all, is content to muddle through the day and has no view to the future. The feeble child is neither gifted nor talented – or is even in special measures and has no serious weaknesses. The feeble child is just that – feeble, weak, and dependent – and as such sits outside of the gaze which is directed at their peers who may variously be described as gifted and talented, ‘hard to reach’; dysfunctional or socially excluded.

The feeble child is not hard to reach at all, indeed their feebleness and utter dependency means that they are hard to shake off. We might harbour desires to exclude the feeble child as their dependency is so exhausting for us – but their strength (for they have many) is their instinct to be included, to include themselves in others co-dependent lives.

Looking out of the window is more than just looking out of the window

In the railway carriage, you see everything pass you by through the windows -trees skylines funny little matchstick wind farm figures – perhaps even the faces of your wife kids and family traversing the windscreen in slow motion but passing you by nevertheless.

The windows are like oversize 35mm film frames which shape the action, provide depth and layers and tell flowing endless stories. The clouds remain a constant but everything else enters screen right and leaves screen left – those things closest to you enter and leave the screen the quickest.

You can hold your gaze on the things in the mid distance just long enough to recognise and name them but they too eventually pass by in good speed. Here come the synchronous smoke stacks all inverted smoky beard smearing into the lower atmosphere.

The stuff next to the window is just that – stuff, Indiscernible, unrecognisable, immaterial stuff.  The very near stuff – other people that are on your side of the glass pane are fixed in the screen along with yourself.

This isn’t just looking out the window – this is looking through the window frame out the window – with the consequent cinematic urgency propelling the narratives along at a relentless pace. Until at least we stop or until it gets dark and all you can see are the static stories of your and others reflections. Film has turned back to photography – and back again when light outside sheds some light on proceedings. The light outside generates film again and we metamorphose to silhouettes in the windscreen again.

Pitch a Film on a Friday: Silly Games – there’s always some-one who breaks the rules and ruins it for everyone.

In these days of austerity, going out to the cinema is beginning to cost more than a good night out. You’ll need to be thinking about parking, candyfloss, 3D glasses, meal after and before, a few drinks in the intermission never mind the price of the seat. And then there are all those interminaable adverts to sit through!

So why not settle back, buy in a few six packs and create the film in your own head?

Pitch a Film on a Friday allows you to do exactly that. By giving you – absolutely free – a pitch for a film that hasn’t yet been made, this blog enables you to become your very own film maker, casting agent, distributor, audience and critic all rolled into one. You can even imagine your own awards ceremony!

Pitch a Film on a Friday is released every Friday (surprisingly) just in time for the weekend. Settle down, settle back, put away your credit card and throw away your parking ways: the film is in your head and its just about to begin!

PITCHING THIS FRIDAY: SILLY GAMES: It’s like all kids games: there’s always some-one who breaks the rules and ruins it for everyone.

It’s 5am, dark, a prison cell. WILLIAMS, MAYER, JONES, SMITH and BLACK gather together illicitly to embark on a game of An Eye for An Eye.

An Eye for An Eye is a routine prison game and is based on the children’s game of ‘Stuck in the Mud Tag’. Its goal is for a ‘judge’ to judge a ‘suspect’ (by knifing them) and for the ‘suspect’ to avoid being knifed by either running away or by receiving help from a ‘policeman’. The ‘judge’ can similarly call on help from a ‘witness’ if he feels his ‘judgement’ is not being particularly effective.

As in many games, the action of An Eye for An Eye is circular and roles of ‘judge’, suspect’, ‘witness’ and ‘policeman’ become interchangeable and when someone decides to break the rules as well, the consequences are shocking.

WILLIAMS, playing the role of judge, interrogates and terrorises JONES, who plays the role of suspect. WILLIAMS calls on MAYER as witness to JONES’ crime, which is unspeakable and unnameable.

The game gathers pace and excitement when SMITH and BLACK, playing the ‘policemen’, enter the game. WILLIAMS eventually wins the game; but he gets carried away and knifes JONES, MEYER and BLACK. He’s broken the rules and so has to play the part of ‘suspect’ next time round.

The game restarts after some disagreement as to who is playing what role. The game finishes prematurely when the prison’s first bell of the day sounds and the men have to return to their ‘normal’ lives…

Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning: how schools are ahead of the political game

After two years in the making, here it is. Finally.

Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning shows teachers of key stages 2 and 3 how to introduce creativity into what is often seen as a prescriptive and stifling curriculum, and addresses the tensions that can exist between the requirement to follow the curriculum and the desire to employ innovative pedagogies. It offers readers a range of practical and realistic ways that curriculum changing ideas can be applied to individual projects, classrooms and even entire schools.

This book tracks the imaginative initiatives undertaken by six schools as they have worked to change their curriculum and teaching in order to put student experiences at the core of the learning process. Stating its observations and suggestions in a refreshingly straightforward and practicable manner, this book explores:

  • Why a new creative curriculum is needed for the 21st century
  • How to encourage teachers and pupils to ‘own’ the curriculum
  • The role that pupil voice plays in a creative curriculum
  • The environment needed to creatively manipulate the curriculum
  • How to introduce innovation to teaching practice
  • What actually works – considering the limits and possibilities of creative pedagogy

Providing case studies and examples of the ways in which teachers have delivered the curriculum in a creative way, Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning is an invaluably beneficial guide for all those involved in engaging and teaching young people in key stages 2 and 3.

Fascinating stories of challenge, change and inspiration are found throughout the book.

In Chapter Two, Fulbridge Primary School in Peterborough has developed a local, vernacular curriculum which takes as its starting point local histories, geographies and resources as the means to galvanise children’s learning. This work is based heavily upon Kolb’s model of learning from experience and particularly demonstrates how different mediums, such as sculpture, film, animation and drama can be used to explore curriculum links with writing.

In Chapter Three, Dale Primary School in Derby have looked to early years practice of the town of Pistoia, Italy, as a means of providing immersive learning experiences which are engendered through their approach to ‘slow pedagogy’. Theirs is a stance on personalised learning which allows for engagement in a curriculum which is driven by constant formative reflection, a profound knowledge of children’s progression in skills and learning which is fired by children’s curiosity and questions.

In Chapter Four ‘real world’ learning is demonstrated by Old Park Primary School in Telford which particularly focuses on Learning to Learn (L2L) strategies and connects its work with that of Guy Claxton’s Building Learning Power programme as part of its bigger commitment to the Personalised Learning Agenda.

In Chapter Five, Belfairs Media Arts College, a secondary school in Southend demonstrates how focusing on children as independent thinkers and learners identifies a number of strategies which encourage young people to think about, and learn from, their own learning styles. In addition to the L2L programme, the school also focus on and embed a particular cluster of thinking skills across the school curriculum.

In Chapter Six, Kingstone School in Barnsley adopts a thematic approach to teaching to collaborate in order to develop cross curriculum projects that are taught to Year 7 students in a way that bridges the pedagogical gap that exists between the high schools and their feeder primary schools.

Available now from http://www.amazon.co.uk/Placing-Students-Creative-Learning-Teaching/dp/0415570018

Does your school need an international cultural attache? Here’s how…

Could your school benefit from international links with teachers, pupils and families? Are you interested in exploring some unique professional development opportunities with teachers and other educators on the other side of the world?

Over the last two years, the Aspire Trust has organised international conferences for Principals and Head teachers from India, Nigeria and the UAE to visit UK schools. We ran the All Our Futures conference in Liverpool and Wallasey this summer for Indian, Nigerian and other international head teachers and educators. The success of that and similar events has led me to being invited by the University of Tasmania with a view to establishing a similar event there in either 2012 or 2013. The first step in that process will be between 25 November and 13 December this year when I will travel there to make initial contacts with the University and schools across Tasmania.

If you would like me to represent your school with a view to establishing some active, realistic links then I am able to offer you a number of services:

1. Taking promotional material to schools in Tasmania, complete with contact details, so that schools could contact you directly. I will be doing this for 12 English schools so your information would be viewed in this context. I would take 10 copies of your promotional pack which should be no more than 2 sides of A4 paper and one CD / DVD. Materials should be clearly labeled and packaged.

2. or, I could take a more active role in promoting your school by coming to see you, developing an action plan with you, and taking a more proactive role in promoting your school to the schools I visit. In this option, you could supply me with additional promotional material and I would aim to identify a specific named partner school for you as a result of the trip. As this option would require a heavier investment from me in my time promoting your school, I would be looking for a sponsorship from you of £300 towards the costs of my time in this promotional activity. On my return to the UK, I would then revisit your school with an activity report which would specify who I had met, details of your potential partner school(s) and other information as specified in the action plan.

If this is of interest to you, please feel free to get in touch with me at nowen.aspire@btconnect.com

Reading the Riots: who’s bringing the media to account?

I’m watching a group of young people perform a play they devised about the summer riots (or disturbances, if the R word causes you some difficulty). Some of the group were ‘involved’ directly; some were not. What does bind them though is they have all been ‘involved’ with the media’s responses to the events: they have all read the headlines, all seen the TV coverage and, to a lesser or greater extent, been witness to the twitter feed which became a twitter storm in those early days of August.

In their play, the cast act out the early hours of the riots against powerpoint slides of press images, underscored by tracks by Marvin Gaye, The Jam and The Who. There are monolithic pictures of riot police and burning cars, under which the unhooded actors slouch, their social anxiety clothing their angular visages. The images show choreographic moves which would be impossible for trained contemporary dancers: high kicks through shattering glass sheets.

There’s no doubting the power of those iconic images the press managed to conjure up during those heady hours – but quite what damage those images then managed to generate is still up for discussion.

The camera can fire up so much mischief. It inflames petroleum feelings and catalyses social itches into anaphylactic shocks. Its iconicity highlights, exaggerates and essentialises in ways that were never intended. And these days, then there’s photoshop which wreaks further havoc.

I’m reminded that you have to use the arts to play back to people other stories, other interpretations which may be messier, more inconvenient and yet which give us importent alternative insights. We need artists views to counteract the juggernaut express power of the million camera gaze. You have to show something back to audiences, somehow, because someone somewhere has to bring the media themselves to account.

Thanks to George Mckane and the young people of Yellowhouse for sharing their insights with me!

For more on Reading the Riots see https://drnicko.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/reading-the-riots-its-time-to-hear-the-real-evidence/

Self esteem is part of your body!

Workshops and Activities at the Healing Space have been offering workshops and a self help service which aims to:

* Take Care of your Skin
* Take Care of your Immune system
* Take Care of your Nervous System and Stress Response
* Take Care of your Digestion
* Take Care of your Self Esteem

Answers on a postcard please as to where your ‘Self Esteem’ is located in your body.