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.

Poetry on the Hoof: Terraced? Semi? Detached? Year 7 plan their future homes.

You gotta decide the lighting,
It’s November, remember.
You gotta agree,
Sort it out reasonably.
You gotta think it out,
You’ve gotta act quick.
Silence hush descends.

You’ll need pools of light
You’ll need water, air, space.
Somewhere to park the car
When the days close in.
Can I get a red phone box?
Can I get an allotment?
Silence hush descends.

You’re gonna see nothing
With windows like that.
You’re gonna be a resident, remember.
You’re gonna freeze to death
With walls like that.
Are we gonna pretend?
That we have to pay mortgages an’ ‘owt?
Silence hush descends.

You gotta make a choice,
Or you’re gonna get stuck.
Best to say little,
If you’re not sure.
If you don’t wanna pay for ‘owt can we live in a toilet?
We could use our imagination.
Silence hush descends.

Everyone’s gotta live somewhere
Everyone’s gotta have a place
They can call their own.
But if you’re gonna want a family.
But if you’re gonna get you a mortgage,
You gotta be quick,
You gotta be sharp,
You gotta get rid of those ghosts that moved onto your land.
Silence hush descends.

Some responses by then young people of Kingstone School, Barnsley to recent exhortations to a ‘Housing Revolution’. Readers may be interested to know about similar revolutions being plotted in education.

The rhetoric of crisis is also echoed in housing and education too here.

Reading the Riots – hearing the real evidence

I’m working as a researcher for the Guardian LSE Reading the Riots project in which they’re trying to find the background and reasons for the summer disturbances from the point of view of the perpetrators, those who have been charged and locked up, or those who found themselves involved for one reason or another.

The research is completely anonymous and confidential. If you would be interested in being interviewed for the research – or know someone who would be, please get in touch.

It will give you or them a great chance to put their side of the story, but in a way that is not connected at all to the police or government.

Please email me on Nowen.aspire@btconnect.com.

The full research team can be seen here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/reading-the-riots-blog/2011/oct/10/reading-the-riots?newsfeed=true

What’s different about the development of International Community Artists? Flowing towards international community arts practice in Norway

To re-write Peter Brook in his 1987 book, The Shifting Point:

What do we need from performance? What do we bring to the event? What in the artisti process needs to be prepared, what needs to be left free? What is narrative? What is character? Does the event tell something or does it work through a sort of intoxication? What belongs to physical energy, what belongs to emotion, what belongs to thought? What can be taken from an audience, what must be given? What responsibilities must we take for what we leave behind? What change can a performance bring about? What can be transformed?

Big questions from a big man and exactly the questions emergent community artists should always be asking of themselves.

What are we looking for from those young artists? And how does their training differ from an actor’s, or dancer’s or visual artist’s training? What are the differences between an ‘actor’ and a ‘performer’ in a community based context? Whilst arts skills are clearly essential for fledgling artists, are they the be-all and end-all?

Artists working a community contexts may well find themselves working in a number of different contexts which require them to play very different roles:
* actors in a Theatre in Education (TiE) shows
* Master of Ceremonies (MC) in a club or community centre,
* teachers in class,
* preachers in funding meetings
* actors in a ‘straightforward’ show in a theatre,
* facilitators with a group of young people,
* interactive performers in a museum or gallery,
* as a TV, video or radio presenter.

The relationship of the performer to ‘text’ is an interesting issue to start exploring. A lot of performance work may be in devised / improvised productions in which ‘text’ will not necessarily be language based, and is often unlikely to be the first impulse to a production. ‘Text’ as we know it may not even appear until after the production has ‘finished’.

Our relationship with ‘The Author of the Text’ who is somehow above or separate to our process will be radically different from a context which is designed to honour and respect the word of the author above everything else. One consequence of this could be, for example, that we have to reconsider whether and when the notion of us developing in-depth character psychological profiles, performed in naturalistic, ‘4th Wall’ settings which require little in the way of audience participation are of relevance to us.

Flowing towards contemporary community arts practice continues to exercise the youngest and oldest of practitioners and the advent of social networking in recent years means that old assumptions about the identity of individuals and groups has to be completely re-thought.

Further work on Flow: the Norwegian International Autumn School in Community Arts in Sigdal, Norway, here:

The awesome inflight navigator.

There is something awesome about the inflight navigator’s map which spells out the destinations you’re flying to, around, close by, towards, away from.

They appear pop up with a determination and sense that no argument is to be had here. Bucharest will follow Berlin which will follow Amsterdam. No questions to be asked and no debate to be entered or entertained.

They make you go I wanna go there, i wanna go there, what’s happening in Vladivostok this minute? Why is it so dark on the ground outside Addis Ababa? Where are those city lights of Singapore?

The inflight navigator is a tool of genius allowing us to put places in order, faces to places, histories to events and coherence where there was none before. Even if we’re 44,000 ft above sea level.

It speaks of places emerging out of the radar, beacons flashing in bizarre unnamed and unheard of places all for the benefit of the distanced traveller who kilometres above those ground installations  imagines mysteries, delights and conflicts both real and imagined. The beacon outside Yalta may be an insignificant piece of technical installation on the ground but in the sky it speaks of wars, hot and cold, of leaders,afraid and psychotic, of saunas both welcoming and poisoned.

Thank you, inflight navigator.

You speak of the sun moving across the earth. A huge U shape marks the spots the terrain where the sun is out and people dance sing wave their hands in the air and protest; and the terrain which is in the dark and where the people hide sleep and wander around in moments of anxiety fear and terror.

Some are in the light, others are in the dark. Many are on the cusp, either entering the dark times or anticipating the impending moments of light. Many others have no idea which direction they’re moving towards and fret accordingly.

You speak too of temperatures outside our cosy cabin. 20 degrees plus on the ground but soon dropping. 10. 5. Minus 5. Minus 20. Minus 50? Is that possible? Minus 79? Theres no such temperature where we come from but there is up here. Its a place for temperatures unbeknownst to many of us. It may as well be like living in Ethiopia for all the lack of familiarity it suggests. The Ethiopia down there has its counterpart up here. There’s no escaping the hostility of the planet.

Thank you, inflight navigator.

Pitch a Film on a Friday! A Beggarly Account of Empty Boxes: a 5 minute Romeo and Juliet with a cast of 1 and 2 dummies

It’s Brighton Pier, late Autumn. There’s an end of the pier show about to take place in the theatre, late on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s cold, desolate. Signs are banging in the wind, advertising…

“Father Larry presents…. Shakespeare as you’ve never seen before! Come wonder at the marvels of modern science!”

A lacklustre audience of end of the pier visitors drift out of the theatre and idly kick their heels around, waiting for the start of the main attraction – Father Larry.

A shifty looking Vicar – Father Larry – rushes up the pier, straightening up his dog collar, adjusting his trousers, wiping the lipstick off his collar and generally trying to tidy himself up and make himself respectable. He avoids the audience gathering by the front door of the theatre and squeezes himself through the stage door whilst no-one is looking.

He’s had a quick couple of scotches in the interval as a desparate attempt to continue the audience suspension of disbelief for the final 30 minutes of his show. He heads back stage to his dressing room, avoiding the stage hands and curses of the theatre manager.

Back stage, Father Larry’s dressing room. 2 large cane crates are placed in the centre of the room, with two large ventriloquist dummies left carelessly on top of them, limbs askew, clothing untidy. One’s a dummy of a young girl – Juliet – the other of a young boy – Romeo.

They both are trying to hold a conversation with other dummies which are stored away in the crates. It becomes clear they’re from two warring families – both are exhorted to return back to where they came from – their crates – by their families inside the crates and both agree that’s what they’ll do as soon as they’re physically able to do so.

They can’t stand the sight of each other as it happens anyway – they trade insults relentlessly and try to move their wooden bodies into a position where they could be taken back to the bosom of their families.

Father Larry crashes into the dressing room, swearing and sweating profusely. He’s been told that unless he sharpens his act up, he’s out of a job from the end of the afternoon. It’s been a disaster out there on stage and he’s got minutes to redeem himself and his act. His livelihood is nearly over.

He gets hold of the dummies angrily and tries manipulating them to talk to each other, to care for each other. They do as he says – although we sense their own individual dummy reluctance.

He acts out their family quarrels, disputes and expectations and urges them to love each other, much against their will. They comply but find subtle ways of resisting – falling of their crates, asking for a gottle of geer, that sort of thing.

He gets angry and bullies them into doing as he decides. He forces them into uncompromising sexual positions. They resist, he breaks them up, one by one, piece by piece. His act and livelihood are falling apart before his eyes.

When the pieces of the dummies have been flung across all corners of the dressing room, he realises what he has done. He’s distraught and tries putting them back together again, in vain. He tries to exert his religious influence on them, but to no avail. “A plague on both your houses!” he hisses at them. They both end up badly and violently damaged, strewn across the floor of the dressing room.

There’s a knock on the door. The second half of the show is about to begin. His time’s up. He has no option but to go on stage, empty handed. He tries playing out the role of the dummies himself but the audience see through him and drive him off stage.

He staggers woodenly down to the end of Brighton Pier, unable to shake off the dummy mannerisms that he’s adopted. His complexion has turned grey, his eyes – a mad staring look, his mouth – fixed in a permanent grin. “Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,” he mutters to himself. He stares out at the sea, tears rolling down his cheeks whilst still continuing to smile.

MenschMachine: Kraftwerk takes on the Medics and the NMR Industry

I’m led into a modest clinic, disinfected, spartan, imposing. A large nuclear magnetic resonance imaging device takes centre stage. I am told to lie down on a table , hold my arms in a fixed position, place my chin on a poystyrene pad and not to move. Apparently all my hydrogen ions are about to cajoled to spin in one direction – altogether now. The ones in my water molecules will spin at a different rate than the ones in my lipid molecules and they – the nurses, not the molecules – will be able to determine how healthy I am and whether I’ve spent to much time in the bar in recent years.

Slowly, the slab I’m on enters the machine and the chorus of clicks whirrs thuds hums and clanks kicks off. It’s like living in a Kraftwerk album, but in one of the lesser, in progress tracks. But its not unpleasurable. Intriguing with a laser green light just a few inches above your head and reminiscent of the Expo 2000 track they produced.

The clicks whirrs and thumps continue at regular intervals until the slab rolls back out of the machine. I’m told to turn over, tuck that in, loosen that and don’t forget to breathe. The process starts again for a further 10 minutes. This time you’re given head phones as the sound can reach upto 120 decibels apparently. Something you might be familiar with smirks the nurse.

On the way out of the clinic you realise that you have just been examined by a Magnetom Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine which goes under the delightful name of the Symphony Maestro.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. The whole event has been a sub-orchestral event with some very low bass notes played in counterpoint to some ultra ultra high frequencies which only the local sewer rats can hear. It has been Kraftwerk at their most uninspiring. But fundamentally, this has been a musical event, not a medical one.

I realise I am used to Kraftwerk making all kinds of molecules vibrate in all kinds of ways in recent years and reckon that the health information you could gather from listening to Tour de France for an hour would yield much better health benefits than the diagnostics the Symphony Maestro will be able to generate.

The event emphasises that the connections between arts and health – and in particular music – are closer than many nurses and doctors might like to admit to. Music is my first love warbled John Miles many years ago; this may be true but it might be more accurate to say that it is also our first way of connecting with the world through how its frequencies make our molecular structures resonate: although that would hardly be the title of a top ten hit, now, would it?

Continuing Education, Economic Growth and Changes of Mind and Culture

Life is what happens to you
while you’re busy
making other plans.

John Lennon, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

This paper is about metamorphosis, and in particular the changes that occur during the process of transforming a publically sector driven education policy initiative into a third sector arts based education social enterprise. It will consider those changes that are forced upon the protagonists in that process; the changes the protagonists initiate for themselves and the effect of these changes on organisational structure, culture, identity, programme and the raison d’etre of the enterprise itself. It is particularly timely given the recent upheavals in the public sector and the Coalition government’s intention to broaden the supplier base of public services like to health and education to the private, charitable and social enterprise sectors.

It will do this by focusing on the Aspire Trust, a social enterprise based in Merseyside and will focus particularly on its current business activities in the field of continuous education and lifelong learning. Whilst it will demonstrate that its continuous education programmes have had a beneficial impact on its economic performance, the more significant findings and implications for practitioners who are considering the leap from public sector to social enterprise will be in relation to the structural, cultural and attitudinal changes took place during the company’s set up and establishment phases.

The changes that this company went through involved challenges on many practical and theoretical fronts: personal, social, political, artistic, and educational. Orthodoxies such as ‘The Business Plan’; ‘The Bottom Line’; ‘The Job’ all came under scrutiny in the company’s early years and the results of this scrutinisation are tangible in the company’s existence and will be drawn out through this blog.

The paper concludes with four specific transformations the company has undergone since its inception which have contributed to strengthening the linkage between its education programmes and its economic performance. These transformations are not however offered as a potential ‘toolkit’ for future social enterprise development but as the provisional and partial results of an retrospective analysis of the company’s birth and growth.

The paper will continue to develop here until its presentation at ISBE, Sheffield in November.

Poetry on the Hoof: Triangulated Data (v1.0)

Did he? Did she?
Does She?

Will he? Will she?
Would (will) She?

Did they? Would they? (if they did…)
Would She? (have…)

Maybe they did? Maybe they didn’t? (perhaps they couldn’t?)
Maybe She would maybe She wouldn’t (perhaps She couldn’t?)
But perhaps they did, perhaps they could have,
Perhaps She might, perhaps She would have,
Perhaps She dared where they feared
To tread
And perhaps they couldn’t.
When She would and could have
And perhaps they all just might have
Conspired, together, in cahoots
A perfect triangle
A seamless bubble
A little bit of surreptitiousness in the undergrowth.
Perhaps (they did) perhaps…

Pitch a film for Friday: TYTHING MAN!

TYTHING-MAN is a hardhitting, action packed political thriller set in Anglo Saxon Britain in 1098 AD.

We’re in a world we wouldn’t recognise as contemporary Britain or Europe: English society was organised around the Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, Kent, the Five Boroughs and East Anglia. Each Kingdom had its own King who had his own companions – The Earls and Landowners – who formed the basis of the nobility. Below them were the Ceorls – Farmers – and at the bottom of the pile were the serfs and peasants.

We’re in a time when the most significant technological advances were the horse collar, the tandem harness and the nailed horse shoe which did for the 11th century what steam did for the 19th and computerisation did for the 20th. This is a time when most people would hardly ever have seen a horse, and indeed, would have been terrifed of what a creature might represent.

This was a time of immense power and cultural shifts, with power shifting from being run on a Tribal to Feudal basis as the Norman Conquest of 1066 eventually took control of ‘England’.

But this was not a time of easy transition: tribal communities were breaking down, loyalties were changing from tribe to the state. Whilst paganism was reluctantly being replaced by Christianity it still had an active influence: Gods representing the days of the week: Tiw (a War God), Wodan (a Wizard), Thunor (God of Thunder) and Frig (Fertility Goddess) were all actively worshipped for the favours they could bestow upon their worshippers. Witches, giants, elves, dragons, sea monsters and nicors were all real forces and influences in people lives and had to be respected. Battling against these pagan forces was the Christian Church which, as well as offering moral and spiritual guidance, played an important part in the legal process: overseeing the plunging of an accused’s arm into a pan of boiling water, assessing the injuries later and then deciding on guilt or innocence on the basis of those injuries for instance.

Anglo Saxon Britain was not a place for the faint hearted.

This was a time when justice was rough, ready and directed by the community who had suffered at criminals hands. Communities would elect their own representatives – the Tything-Men – to secure peace and order for their communities. But like so much else of the era, judicial processes were also in a state of flux: ‘bottom up’ justice was giving way to ‘top down’ justice and the right to police the community was shifting away from the People to the State.

This is the time when the Tything Men secured order for the ordinary man and woman and jealously guarded their power and the film, TYTHING MAN, is their story of the struggle of progress and tradition, of community and state, of logic and superstition, of Religion and paganism, of the heart and mind.