Uncivil Rest and Education

Good afternoon! I’m back, and like many school boys ‘towards school with heavy looks’ I have realised; the Summer holidays are over and term has begun (that said, I’m still in my PJ’s and midday was a while ago!). In recognition of these facts, and to neatly complete my discussions on the recent civil unrest, I present: Uncivil Rest and Education.

Uncivil Rest
On 27th August I had the great pleasure of working alongside the Buffalo Tank Crew in bringing a small part of comic South America to Colchester’s Castle Park. The Buffalo Tank are an independent arts collective who produced 16 installations in the park; taking a light hearted look at recycling and the carbon footprint for the Colchester Free festival.

My job was to man the ‘Uncivil Rest area’ which featured crockery smashing (of political figures faces) and a water gun area complete with riot shields, helmets and protestor signs (all whilst wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and a fake moustache!). The area was conceptualised several months ago and way before the riots in London took place; but in the current political climate it produced some interesting results.

The children were straight into the fray; perhaps unaware of the connotations of wearing a riot helmet, or recognising that the world is chaotic. The adults on the other hand were more reluctant to throw sponges at one another. Not only because that would risk infringing rules of decent behaviour in a park; but maybe also because it would involve confronting bigger issues like equality of access to resources. One particularly interesting case was that of the security guards who were patrolling the site. Like any man presented with the opportunity to soak his best mate the men were keen to play with us; but their role, as security guards and  figures of authority they could not join in whilst in uniform. They promised they’d return later and join in, I don’t know if they ever did!

Recycle? Image: Buffalo Tank 

Whilst running the 'Uncivil Rest Area' I happened to notice an unassuming little monument right next to me, within the compound. The monument read, ‘This stone marks the spot where on August 28th 1648, after the surrender of the town, the two royalist captains Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, were shot by order of Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentarian General’. The Buffalo Tank were getting people to think about politics (and soaking one another to the skin) in a politically significant place; surely the location and topic weren't coincidental.

The number of people who had completely missed this little monument reminded me of all the research into how futile memorialising in concrete or stone can be. The memorial itself was a Victorian construction; I wondered what context made that pro-Royalist-recognition suitable for that time and am fascinated that the people of Colchester deem it still suitable for exhibition. Given its location, in the shadow of a large Norman castle, maybe it has simply been forgotten? In 1648 two men were killed by the authority of the time in shame and haste, but later their lives were celebrated; I wonder how the conflicts of today will be reinterpreted at the same distance (200 years); whether the monuments will be to the royalists or parliamentarians?

Uncivil Rest Area. Images: Buffalo Tank 

Education, Education, Education
During the riots there was plenty of rhetoric about the role of education in the creation of a peaceful society. I recently had two German couch surfers to stay who had attended a Waldorf School. For those of you who don’t know what one of those is, (I’ll be honest I didn’t until Wikipedia provided the answers) Waldorf schools are based on the humanist educational approach of Steiner (that famous Austrian philosopher). The schools favour variety and holistic learning to the more traditional basic key skills, they lean towards the encouragement of creativity and uniqueness in each child. My German guests and I had great fun comparing the systems; when Dad perceptively asked if the girls would send their children to a Waldorf the answer was ‘yes, but not our one’. ‘Yes’ because the Waldorf mark has a good reputation for CVs and Uni places, but ‘no’ because they weren’t great fans of their teachers.

 In C.S. Lewis’ autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’ he describes at least 4 different schooling systems which influenced him as he grew up. They had varying degrees of interest in the right answers, discipline, cultivating his mind, ability to argue, the importance of religion or sports, and whether eating or ‘fagging’ were sins or virtues. These opinions created different school ‘cultures’ or societies in which he was more or less successful depending on his ability to fit the model. It is not the systems, societies and cultures, however, that loom largest on C.S. Lewis’ narrative; it is the teachers themselves, the lilting of their voices, their individual characters and the authors who they introduced to Lewis.

In both cases, for the Waldorf girls and for Lewis, it was not the ‘system’ which made a difference but the individual teachers. Perhaps there is something to be learned from this when educational reform is under consideration; of the importance not of systems but of encouraging teachers to be at their best, creating positive relationships with pupils and cultivating their unique interests. These contexts might in turn produce school cultures which produce happy, rounded young adults. I am not suggesting that education on its own produces happy, peaceful young adults but transformed school environments would be a good start.

If you teach, or are still at school, have a great start to the term! Don’t forget to pack your smiles in your satchels! I’ll be back next week to chat about a book I read recently, it was good :)

'Time Passes. Listen. Time passes' - part I

This week I’ve been thinking about the passage of time, a small subject for discussion(!). And a little ironic given how late this post is this week.

Baby Love: House Clearance as Heritage
I have been clearing my great uncle’s house with some relatives. He was born in 1920 and lived in a world where sealing wax, the Britannica Encyclopaedia and a record player were everyday items in life. This 1950s kitchen cabinet with inbuilt pastry board represented a thoroughly efficient and necessary part of the kitchen.  Even just a few photographs show how life has moved on since he was my age!

Text from a really old first aid handbook!

The house-clearers represented three generations of family with three different perspectives on what we were doing.  For the oldest generation the objects we were sorting did not represent anything exotic or unfamiliar; they were quite everyday and not worth keeping. For the middle generation also, objects were not valuable due to their aesthetic or tangible worth. The objects the middle generation chose to keep were based on intangible, emotional connections bundled up in the physical object - the record he used to play as they danced around the front room (Baby Love), the tea towels from exotic holidays, the hat he always wore. For this generation salvage was communing with (the memories of) their uncle; as was the upkeep of his garden, one of his favourite pastimes.

For the younger generation, at one more remove from 1920, many of the objects seemed exotic by way of their unfamiliarity. The stamp album with the old fashioned spellings and all sorts of kitchen implements which looked almost alien they were so unfamiliar. The distance from the emotional connection for this generation also made room for experimentation. I took the china collection for a friend’s wedding where the cups became one off candle-holders; several other kitchen items went to form the staple objects in my cousin’s new home. The writing desk joined my collection of wooden furniture in my room and now happily holds, amongst other things, a laptop. For this younger generation objects from the house were not viewed as objects for veneration but candidates for reinvention, of use in the future world.

One of the objects that had us all intrigued was my uncle’s wartime diaries. The subject of what he did in the war was always kept hidden; deemed too painful to be on public display and discussed in public. But it transpired that throughout his very busy period of active service he kept diaries; detailing every film he saw, the towns he visited and the situations he found himself in. Some of the entries were funny; ‘Italian dies from drinking antifreeze’, ‘won a cow, milked it’ and others were profound in their simplicity, ‘Our Wedding Day’. The detail provided enough information to trace his steps across Europe and beyond. Something felt a little bit transgressive in reading that which was always deliberately kept hidden; it is morally ambiguous to read the diary of a dead man; akin to clearing out his underwear draw! I still wonder whether it would it have been more honouring to burn them on sight?

I’m not sure, but they made some jolly good yarns and explained why he’d kept a copy of ‘Algiers to Austria’ on his bookshelf.

Wedding Day, 1945

All of this reminded me of some of the things we’ve been thinking about on the course for my MA. Lowenthal’s attitudes towards the obligations and behaviours of family and legacies; Pearce’s On Collecting; the many philosophical musings on the necessity of treasuring the past for our present mental health. Does collecting/ curating /saving things from the past inhibit our moving on in the future? And how do we keep our memories of our own pasts without the objects? What happens when we run out of space in the (family) archive? What filters can we put on that collecting process? I don’t have that many answers...yet!

In part II I will discuss the impact of time on what is impressive digitally, our own aging and some more insights into my current work. For now, have lovely weekends everybody!