Glasgow and the City of Culture

The news that sectarian violence is still fermenting away beneath the facade of a city which sells its self as a place which after centuries of religious battles is now at the forefront of cultural renewal.We must ask ourselves what this cultural renewal represents. Is it tied to a belief that by cleaning up ifs Docks and over loading city centres with cafes,cloths shops,shopping malls and endless coffee the image of corporate culture will somehow affect the reality of the moment? Glasgow is a City built on violence and class/religious hatred. Note I say hatred. Historically religious violence is played out in Belfast/Dublin, but this convenient historical manipulation as always shrouded the reality. Working class identifies have been subsumed under a media driven obsession concerned with niceness and middle class,suburban sensibilities. Corporate ideologies promotes the city as a place of "cutting edge" vitality. An image feed by the Cultural Industries and if fascination with youth.
The actuality is another reality.Corporate identifies have permeated into all aspects of fantasy realities. Football is now so over loaded with with celebrity values and a strange need to play up the role of family.Forget the fact that corporate power,by its very nature,under values the fabric of family and community. The news that sectarian violence is now coming to the fore in Glasgow should not have hit the media with the force it delivered.
Working class values have been neglected for years. This argument highlights the sense of alienation felt by most communities which co exist within our cities. People and their values have been forgotten. Separate identifies are what made the city the force it became in modernity. The news of the violence bubbling away under the surface of cultural/corporate identity should not have surprised any one with an interest in the development of globalisation and neo capitalist beliefs.We exist in a vacuum of forgetfulness.To speak about hate and power is to disrupt the lie.
Corporate power is about the lie. we exist within its glittering spectacle with out thinking.
Glasgow is only the start of a nightmare returning. Football is the place where factions gather. Violence is always under the surface. Violence never went away we simply forgot its awful power.

times are changing..could be interresting

Its been a while my friends but the times have been confusing and disorienting. Cut backs came and organisation developed a sort of collective angst which didn't seem to go anywhere. I had no sense of collective anger or concern. Maybe its me. Maybe I wanted to feels that romantic coming together, a sense of anger ,danger even a touch of violence. But,maybe its me.I felt a closing down of the collective and a retreat behind high walls. The cultural industries have forgotten their existence. Maybe its me.What anger there was remained entrapped behind separate boundaries. The Arts Cuts was a non event. That's the problem with this industry it wanders around in a daze of self congratulation not wanting to disrupt the hand that feeds them.It all fells so old and safe.That's the secret and the power of walls. In realty they are deceptive,walls serve a double function,they keep people out and keep people in. Like wise the cultural industries trap themselves behind a false sense of importance the Arts in England are tourist traps and safe traps. In a sense we are living through the times of suburban domination.

Pete and Joan

Always lurking in the shadows of this history is the confusing impact of the Arts Lab movement, a self confessed,radical alternative to the arts scene of the late 1960s early 70s. Just how important this short lived development really was is debatable,never the less the impact on Oval and the thinking of Pete and Joan would have been partially influenced by the arrival of this short lived explosion. But the melting pot was becoming explosive,young people where declaring war on their elders and like the elders declared war on their off springs.Much as been written about those distant years,much of it covered in the glow of nostalgic self delusion .Never the less a "something"was coming together,a fusion of ideas,talents, dramas,dreams, actions.Experimentation mixed with a healthy disregard for the tyranny of the script open the doors into a new dimension. Improvisation was played out in the arts form of demonstrations and street theatre. A glorious sense of being young at the right time began to dominate the aura of alternative thinking. New ideas emerged from the growth of underground news papers and alternative books shops. Truth be told the new ideas where revamped philosophical ideologies from the 20s/30s40s/and 50s. Change was in the air but the change was superficial. What really occurred was the discovery of individuals freedoms at the expense of collective action,The Me Generation, grow out of the alternative explorations of an elite grouping who felt the change in media manipulation and set about exploiting the welcoming maze opening up before them. Capitalism was never the issue with the alternative mind set. Indeed, what happen was a new aggressive dynamism took hold.The alternative became the new "in". But within Oval House there developed a process which embraced change as a means of challenging the ideas which would fossilise within months of taking root. Pete and Joan put young people at the centre of the "club" The young person became a creative force who could explore their frustrations, dreams, ambitions in a place of welcoming and safety. Pete and Joan understood the role of exploration in the psychic of young people.This one simple,demanding,idea allowed for that special spark to ignite the imagination of a group who wanted the chance and the space in which their ideas and ambitions could grow into the seeds of a wonderful garden.

pet and joan and play

Adventure Playgrounds appear on the scene during the gray days of the 1950s. They where the brain child of a wonderful individual Joe Benjamin.Joe observed the importance of play in the development of young people. He focused on the role of play for the inner city child. After the second world war Britain under went a major social shift with development of the Welfare State. The pre war society was fast vanishing,indeed whole communities where being reshaped under the impact of greater mobility and class fragmentation. Secure communities with their strong historical roots in neighbourhood and family ties secumed to new work practices and greater spending power of the working class who wanted to move into the middle class strata of ambition and security. The ruins of war still scared the city land scape, and out of theses ruins that a new dimension in play arose. Adventure Play. Play for young people always took place away from the household onto the streets.It was on the streets that identifies were formed ,friendship made and broken and exploration took place.But with the advent of the moter car and greater investment in public transport the streets became increasingly unsafe. Indeed whole communities became cut off from each other"kids"had to be careful of the roads otherwise they would be mowed down by cars or lorries. It was in the space left by the bombs that Joe saw the opportunity to allow kids to explore and play.Ruins have always held a fascination for humans and children.On bomb sites all around England children could transform their realities. All those vast derelict spaces created a magical landscape in which creative chaos was given free rain.In the heart of urban communities a forest of wonder sprung into life. Danger and exploration became the norm! Working class children could share in adventures which only middle class or upper class children could explore. In the ruins of war lay the untapped secrets and overwhelming creativity of children's dreams and wild adventures. Jo convinced local Governments to fund schemes where by adults,community workers and artists could work with children, on ruined sites in order to help the child to explore and develop the notion of play and responsibility. Over time the Utopian wonderland run out of steam and became sites of social control. But not before the influx of a new breed of Urban radical came into the picture. Artists and hippies arrived with even weirder ideas than the children could conjure up. Whilst at the same time the cultural scene began to blossom into ideas embracing radical,alternative politics and radical ideas with regards art and its "manufacture" The Arts Labs had arrived. Suddenly everyone could create a dream.Play had moved from children into adults.Creativity shaped a whole rang of social radical philosophy.Politics and play power intertwined into versions of anarchic meanings. Something was shifting but no one knew what or where these chaotic and exciting ideas where really about except fun, danger and exploration. A new force emerged a process which is at the core of play Improvisation had arrived.

pondering Pete and Joan

Before moving on I want to go over some thoughts re "Youth Clubs".The history of the youth club movement is,in a sense, the history of changing attitudes with the mentality of a conservative England. Youth clubs developed from an idealisation of Edwardian England and the fear of the working classes uniting to over throw an existing class structure. Like the Scout movement, the youth club ideals represented the sense of continuity within the united kingdom and Empire.Youth clubs acted as a buffer between social unrest and social order.It was important to maintain a sense of identity based upon the invented histories of the past.Social distinction existed with the very fabric of the youth club ideology.
This distinction was high lighted by the apartheid attitude towards sex. Girls and boys were to be kept separated by a system of rules club regulations. Sex was a no go field of play.
Post war England began a slow transformation from Empire towards a second tier player in world affairs.If we look at popular culture we begin to notice a shift with the social thinking of the market place.Within music, film and fashion a new market was opening up.But the youth club movement still clung onto pre war notions of class distinctions.
Other developments began to filter into the closed world of a male dominated movement which used masculinity as a by word for preserving the values of a club ethos based upon an unchanged,unblemished code of class distinction. Girls began to appear more and more in the discourse of popular culture.Even within Oval House sexual separation was maintained by insuring activities appropriate to sexual orientation where embedded into the fabric of the club.
Out side the ethos of the youth club other movements were taking hold. Community work/action began to question the ideals of democracy,community engagement, and the very ideas of what is a community. Community democracy under mined the settled notion of a conservative country at ease with it self .
But for me a bigger development took hold.One which affected the course of Oval House and helped formulate the ideals of creativity and the challenge to paternalistic authority.That movement was the Adventure Playground movement....more on this tonite.

touched by fire and the start of Oval House

The history of Oval House,its transformation from a Youth Club, in the old sense of the description into an educational/community/arts project began with the inspiration of Pete and Joan Oliver.This transformation is important in understanding just how brave these two pioneers where back in those distant days.
Indeed the whole history of the Oval is one of evolution/struggle and sometimes breathtaking luck.Oval House came into being as part of a do gooding project instigated within the privileged surroundings of Christ Church Oxford.
At the turn of the 20th century,privileged young men would descend into areas of poverty and inner city deprivation in order to grasp the meaning of helping the deserving poor.Giving the poor some sort of moral understanding of how the poor could escape their plight.Its a fascinating history which brings to mind the Conservative ideology of the "Big Society".Running along side the ideology of privilege imposing values upon the lower orders, came another imposition, the need to save fallen women,or women who might be in danger of "falling"Settlements where set up with the aim of training the poor in the ways of domestic servitude. These Settlements of privilege helping the unprivileged became a steeping stone into the Anglican tradition and Establishment values of Edwardian England. They also became useful recruiting centres for the killing fields of the first World War.And importantly they where bastions against the fear of working class solidarity and the threat of some imagined socialist uprising. Its important to understand the link between these settlements and the growth of the boys scout movements.
A genuine moral panic existed between the wars.Something akin to a fear of the other within insured a rigid adaptability to Conservative values,and, by implication the invented values of Empire where adhered to.
The settlements where developed within a society of extraordinary class conflict and hierarchical imaginings.
Like the Youth Club developments , Settlements held to the idea that social change was something which could not be contemplated. Satus and respect for ones betters meant a fossilised social order would and should be maintained. Any hint of disruption within the bureaucratic boundaries laid down by committee of elders would be dealt with by various punishments including exclusion from the club/settlement. Social,class difference was dealt with simply by not acknowledging the existence of such deviation from the rules of the establishment.Sport and a heavy reliance on competition and religion allowed for a bullying atmosphere akin to Social Darwinism to develop. Sexual apartheid was the norm and religion was the the tool in which to the teach the rights and wrongs of moral anxieties. This is just a sketch of what Pete and Joan had to confront.

Pete and Joan

Before moving on into the recent past I must go back a bit a talk about Pete and Joan Oliver, Pete and Joan started Oval House in the idea we know. Its a fascinating history involving struggle, planning, rebellion and play.
What people seem to forget is Oval House was a Youth Club. Get back latter.