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subtext issue
73 10
March 2011 ***************************************************** 'Truth:
lies open to all' ***************************************************** Every
fortnight during term-time. All
editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk. Please
delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription
details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. The
editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. subtext does not publish material that is submitted
anonymously, but is willing to consider without obligation requests for
publication with the name withheld. For
tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder',
see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/. ***************************************************** CONTENTS:
editorial, news in brief, redundancies, council report, senate report,
wellbeing at work, university in crisis, David Willetts
and the humanities, live at LICA, all classical music explained, letters ***************************************************** EDITORIAL Any
temptation among academics elsewhere to indulge in schadenfreude
at the spectacle of the London School of Economics' embarrassment at, among
other things, having accepted substantial funds from the government of Libya
should certainly be resisted. Few if any British universities can be wholly
sure that similar skeletons might not at some time fall out of their funding
cupboards - and for the few which need not worry on that account, the reason
is more likely to be lack of opportunity than lack of will. For most, a more
appropriate reaction would be 'There but for the grace of God ...' Because
the government (not just the present one, but see the report below on David Willetts' recent speech to the British Academy) is
increasingly unwilling to fund universities, and has therefore encouraged
them to seek funding from elsewhere, it is no wonder if some of the sources
of that funding should turn out to be morally dubious or politically
embarrassing. The US model, in which private universities are heavily dependent
on support from rich alumni, is one which British universities have been
urged to follow - and have tried to do so, with varying degrees of success.
The LSE, with 60% of its student body from overseas, has been particularly
well placed to secure such support - from Saif
Gaddafi among others. Wealthy people in Britain, as Richard Sennett remarked
in a piece in 'The Guardian', don't have the same inclination to support
their alma maters, having long assumed that this was the responsibility of
the state. In
this connection, the tenor of the discussion in the last Senate meeting,
reported below, provides modest grounds for encouragement. While the pressure
to raise external funds will certainly not diminish, senators do seem to have
served notice that the source of those funds will be subject to some critical
scrutiny, and that not all sources of income are equally acceptable. This is
an example of the kind of critical spirit that Howard Davies in his
resignation letter regrets was not more in evidence at the LSE. ***************************************************** NEWS
IN BRIEF UCU
ballots The
results of the UCU ballots on industrial action as a response to the proposed
changes in USS and the one in support of the 2010 annual pay claim were
announced on 2 March. On a low turnout (attributed by UCU to the shortness of
the time allowed for voting), there was a substantial majority in favour of
strike action on the proposed changes in USS and a small majority in favour
of strike action on pay. In both ballots there were bigger majorities in
support of 'action short of a strike'. At the time of writing it looks as if
Lancaster UCU members will be asked to come out on one-day strikes on 22 and
24 March. In the meantime, UCU officials are still trying to engage the USS
Trustees in further dialogue. ****** The
REF panels and Lancaster Congratulations
(or commiserations?) to Rachel Cooper (LICA), Kevin Glazebrook,
Mike Pidd, Emma Rose, Alison Stone, Malcolm Tight,
Sylvia Walby, Ian Walker and Linda Woodhead, all appointed
to main or sub-panels for the Research Excellence Framework. Cursory research
in the subtext warehouse suggests that the number of Lancaster
representatives compares favourably with numbers from the kind of
universities with which we like to compare ourselves. ****** LICA
is launched LICA's
Launch Festival will take place from 29 March - 2 April. Among the events and
activities listed on its website, subtext editors were especially intrigued
by the Plaza Piece, a 'short mass dance event' to be held in what used to be
the piazza, or possibly even the plaza, and is now Lancaster Square. The
invitation to participants says that 'it is essential that you are able to
move quickly, willing to use your voice in a variety of ways, and available
to rehearse continuously' for three hours on the morning of 30 March. We hope
that the subtext collective's reaction ('That rules us out, then') will not
be generally shared in the university community. ****** Beer
festival Another
festival, requiring no rehearsal, was held last weekend in the Town Hall.
This was the annual 'Beerfest' organised by
Lancaster Round Table. subtext investigators
attended in a spirit of disinterested research. Over 50 beers from the north
west were available on tap, each sponsored by a local business. On the Friday
night the event was very well attended. There was plenty of drinking,
possibly even of the binge variety, and plenty of good natured sociability.
All ages, both sexes, and a fair spread of ethnicities were represented among
the drinkers. There were only a few identifiable members of university staff,
and even identifiable fewer students - and hardly any drinkers conformed to
the real ale stereotype of beards and sandals. subtexters reflected that it is possible in the
windy isolation of Bailrigg to forget that
Lancaster is a substantial town with, on this evidence, a thriving and active
civil society. **************************************************** REDUNDANCIES At a
time when every day brings news of large scale redundancies, not only in the
public sector, and in the supposedly protected NHS as well as less
politically sensitive public services, it would be unrealistic to hope that
Lancaster University will somehow be spared.
But it is still useful to consider what redundancy means, how the term
is being interpreted, and what can be done to mitigate its effects. As
the University management likes to remind us, redundancies are not new at
Lancaster, or in any other university.
When staff on fixed-term contracts, often 'externally' funded, come to the end of the term, or when the funding has been
exhausted, they technically become redundant.
(The university management's failure to handle these redundancies
correctly was the basis for the finding last year by an employment tribunal,
confirmed on appeal, that 60 days' salary should be paid to staff made
redundant in this way between March and June 2009.) For years this kind of routine redundancy
happened to research and other staff, often on part-time as well as
fixed-term contracts, without much of a fuss being made about it by anyone:
these redundancies were foreseen, and the insecurity of employment which led
to them was seen as an inherent feature of 'non-tenured' employment in higher
education. Now virtually nobody is
'tenured', and the insecurity long endured and often stoically accepted by
fixed-term staff law has spread to groups of staff for whom it is a new
experience. Many
- most? - subtext readers will know someone on what used to be called a
permanent contract and is now an 'indefinite' one who has been made
redundant, or threatened with redundancy,
in the past year. It is therefore in everyone's interest to know how
redundancy is defined. In the HR
section of the university's website there is a draft version of a redundancy
policy, whose details are still being negotiated between the management and
the three campus unions. It includes a
paraphrase of the legal definition of redundancy in the Employment Rights Act
of 1996. This says that an employee is dismissed on grounds of redundancy
when the employer has ceased, or intends to cease, to carry on the business
for which the employee was employed (or to carry it on, but somewhere else),
or when the requirements of the business for employees to carry out work of a
particular kind have ceased or diminished, or are expected to do so, in the
place where they are employed. (As we
are repeatedly told, universities are now businesses, so the language of the
Act applies perfectly.) The test for
redundancy under the Act is whether the employer requires fewer (or no)
workers to carry out the work, not just whether the work itself has ceased or
diminished. If
this sounds quite broadly worded, that is because it is. As a result, it is very
difficult to bring a successful challenge to an employer's decision on
redundancy 'because a tribunal will not generally interfere in what it
considers are "business decisions"' (wording from the Labour
Research Department's booklet 'Law at Work 2010', to which this account is
indebted). Successful challenges are more likely when the issue is one of
procedural fairness, or relates to the adequacy of consultation. That is why
everyone employed by the university should be grateful for the careful, detailed
work of the union negotiators on the new procedure. So,
realistically, the prospects of successful action on a grand scale - such as
the 'greylisting' of universities which had some
success in the past - are not bright.
Too many universities are making too many people redundant; redundancy
has become part of academic life in a way that would have been almost
unthinkable even ten years ago. (At
Lancaster, even in times of serious economic stress and management enthusiasm
for cuts, compulsory redundancies of academic staff on indefinite contracts
were always - just about - avoided.)
Until now. But it is still
worth questioning whether specific individual redundancies are legally
justified. There have been one or two
recent instances of successful appeals against redundancy decisions, when it
has been possible to show that the work in question is actually going to
continue to be done - but by somebody else.
If, for example, the management plan is that work that would have been
done by staff who are made redundant should be done
instead by staff employed lower down the salary scale and on fixed-term term
contracts, there is, on the face of it, an argument that such redundancies
are at least premature. ***************************************************** COUNCIL
REPORT The
latest meeting of University Council started with a presentation given by
Gavin Brown (Director of Undergraduate Studies) on the current and future
level of Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching at Lancaster University.
Council was informed that the average student on arrival at Lancaster owns
nine digital devices. These students,
who have grown up with this technology, are known as 'Digital Natives'. The bulk of Council are 'Digital
Immigrants' who have been introduced to technology later in life (there may
also be a few 'Digital Luddites'). The
key developments are to be in information delivery - 'Mobile Integration' -
'any content, any device anywhere.'
The Digital Library - eBooks and 'Google-type' search technology. Cloud Computing - remotely stored servers
accessible from any location. Most
frighteningly for academics, Automated Video Capture - one-touch capture and
web publishing of lectures! The
Vice-Chancellor reported on a number of meetings he had attended, including a
meeting in 10 Downing Street with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister
for Higher Education. The key item on
the agenda was the increase in student fees.
Nick Clegg is very keen to give some of the increased income back to
students. The National Scholarship
Programme would be one way of doing this.
This would be a one-off payment of £3000 to some students, the money
coming equally from central funds and individual universities. It is not certain yet what criteria would
be used to allocate these Studentships.
Other topics included fee waivers and discounts to various classes of
students. The
President of LUSU confirmed that it would be discussing, at its General
Meeting, the possibility of submitting a vote of no confidence in the
President of NUS, Aaron Porter (who announced in late February that he would
not be standing for a second term in April, the first NUS president since
1969 not to seek re-election). The
Director of Planning presented a set of data summarising Lancaster's position
relative to the rest of the university sector on a wide variety of
measures. These included Staff/Student
Ratios (ours is about 14:1, which is lower than the majority of
universities). Other data showed we
have a very young student population, with only three universities in the
country having a lower proportion of mature (over 21) students. Lancaster's financial position was very
good compared to the bulk of universities but our percentage of total income
from research grants and contracts was towards the lower end of the sector. The
Deputy Vice-Chancellor reported on the opportunity to develop a joint campus
in China in partnership with Guangdong Foreign Studies University. An unidentified investor is providing the
capital funding and Lancaster would share in the tuition income. Initially Lancaster degrees would be
awarded. The
Director of Finance confirmed that a 1% increase in employer pensions contributions (from 14.1% to 15.1%) effective
from April 2011 is to be phased in over a three year period. The
Chief Operating Officer reported that the Sports Centre is now expected to be
completed by the end of April 2011.
The University has now submitted a new planning application for a
single wind turbine. As reported in
subtext, Katrina Payne has been appointed as the new Director of Marketing
and External Linkages; and Christine Parry has been appointed as the
University's first Brand Manager. A
(long overdue) programme to update our web presence is now fully established
with four work streams; content management, user experience, search and
governance. ***************************************************** SENATE
REPORT: 23 February 2011 The
agenda for this Senate seemed rather thin, which probably explained the low
turnout. In fact, the occasion turned out to be more interesting, and engage
more contributors, than previous meetings with meatier agendas, and may turn
out to be more influential. We
opened as usual with items of information from the VC and others. First came formal confirmation of yet another international
partnership, this time with Siegen University in Germany, received without
comment. Next was information on the recently-received HEFCE grant letter.
Senators knew what was coming but it was still disheartening to hear the
figures: an immediate cut of £1m this academic year because of the overlap of
academic and government financial years, an overall cut of 9.5% in 2011/12
(masking much deeper cuts in teaching funding and capital grants). No clarity
as yet on future postgraduate teaching funding, which was still the subject
of consultation. By 2012/13 research funding for 2* departments will be nil.
The grant letter becomes public on 17 March (happy St. Patrick's Day) after
which the VC will address a meeting of all staff on what it will mean for Lancaster. After
an update on pay and pensions (proposed changes to the latter yet to be
confirmed), the Deputy VC give a summary of the UG applications for next
year. These were so far above the national average that there was concern
that we may be in danger of over-recruitment. This should be an opportunity,
he said, to look at our entry requirements so that all future programmes have
a requirement of at least one 'A' grade. However, the picture for PG
recruitment was not quite so rosy, and for 2012/13 was likely to be a cause
for concern. The
Academic Registrar then provided an overview of work in progress in the area
of learning, teaching, assessment, and the student academic experience. Her
paper listed a host of committees and project groups, all beavering
away to come up with sure-fire ideas to make us even better than we are at
teaching and assessing students. The results of all this effort, she said,
would be far-reaching, and affect every student and member of staff. When
asked to come up with an example of this she was momentarily at a loss but
quickly came back with the confident prediction that it really would be groundbreaking
(whatever 'it' might be). Those who have been concerned by the dismantling of
central quality assurance mechanisms and the dismemberment of CELT will no
doubt be reassured by all this activity. Professor
McMillan then took us through the upcoming REF Internal Exercise (a sort of
mock A Level for our research submission) which will involve all departments
and will be taking place over the next two terms. Some senators queried
whether the effort and time involved in this exercise would be worthwhile
when departments needed to be concentrating on producing the goods for the
real REF. And what would be done with the results? What about those
departments who turned out to be 'disappointing' in the exercise? Would they
be given any additional resources? Professor McMillan thought that the impact
on staff time would be 'minimal', and the outcomes of the exercise
'advisory'. The
Deputy VC concluded this part of the agenda with an illuminating update on
student financial arrangements and access arrangements - i.e. the new fees
regime. The decision on the fees to be charged by Lancaster will be taken by
a full meeting of Council in March, rather than by the Finance Committee on
its own. This will follow consultation with key stakeholders in the University, including the LUSU President (is this the
first fruit of the new UMAG/LUSU coalition, so evident at the recent Court
meeting?) (See subtext 71). Professor McKinlay went
on to say that the timetable for an access agreement to go with the new fees
(required of all HEIs which are increasing their fees) is especially tight. A
letter of guidance from OFFA - the Office for Fair Access - is expected in
March to which we have to respond by April, and we will know by June if our
proposed access arrangements are acceptable. Then we have to ensure that all
this information goes into our brochures and promotional literature in time
for the prospective 2012/13 cohort to make their decisions. No pressure,
then. Following
this unusually informative 'Information' section, we had a proposal from
Professor Bradley, the new PVC for international matters, for Senate to
approve in principle the establishment of a campus in China in collaboration
with Guangdong Foreign Studies University. Land would be provided by the city
of Foshan, finance by an as yet unidentified
Chinese investor, and the first students would enter in September 2013. The
student population was expected to grow to 10,000 within the first ten years.
The new university would be managed jointly by Lancaster and Guangdong and
fee income would be shared with the investor. The curriculum, teaching styles
and assessment would be largely as at Lancaster. It was this last point that
raised doubts among a number of senators. It was pointed out that under
Chinese law it was the Chinese government that decided on departments, degree
programmes and staffing, not the individual university. How could academic
freedom and the right of free speech be protected? And what about quality of
delivery and assessment - weren't we experiencing difficulties in these areas
in some of our other international partnerships? Was it right, queried one
senator, for Lancaster to 'get into bed with this nasty government'? Professor Bradley's stock reply to all
these points - that Nottingham has been involved in a similar venture and has
not met any of these problems - somehow failed to reassure. Sensing that all
was not going well, the VC intervened with a pledge that Senate would be
given a further opportunity to discuss this proposal before a final decision
was made. Senate voted to support the proposal in principle, though somewhat
unenthusiastically. What
was significant about this discussion was that this was the first time that
an international partnership proposal was directly challenged on principled
academic grounds, rather than on financial or practical grounds. There was
real concern about what Lancaster might be getting involved in and what it
might do for our reputation. As recent events at the LSE have shown, cosying up to unsavoury regimes can have dire
consequences for the reputation of the institution involved. The
business of this Senate concluded with a proposal from the University
Secretary to make amendments to Charter and Ordinances to reflect changes in
governance that had already been agreed by previous Senates. To Ms Aiken's
evident astonishment, these amendments went through without opposition from any
of the usual suspects. There
was, however, one more issue that had to be decided. The Senate, minus its
student members, sat as the Committee of Senate to deal with one item of
business. A proposal was made by the University Secretary, on behalf of an
Associated Institution, that an academic qualification awarded to an
individual and validated by Lancaster University, be revoked. This was the
first time in the history of the University that such a request had been
made. The issues involved in this case were many and complex, and the
Academic Registrar from the Associated Institution, who was present for the
discussion, was subjected to close questioning by a number of senators. When
the vote was finally taken, members voted by a majority of one to reject the
request for revocation. This
debate, and the earlier discussion on the collaboration with Guangdong,
showed Senate at its best - inquiring, challenging, sceptical and, at times,
passionate. There's hope yet. ***************************************************** WELLBEING
AT WORK SURVEY The
results of the Wellbeing at Work survey have been available for some time,
but along with a sizeable proportion of staff, this subtexter
has been suffering from 'overload' and hasn't previously got round to looking
at them. We are told that the response
rate of 58% 'is higher than is typical in other organisations' and 'enables
generalisation across the University'.
However, in some departments response rates were much lower (PPR -
39%, Accounting and Finance - 32%, English and Creative Writing - 37%), and
so this claim to generalisability might be
questioned. Overall, the wellbeing of most respondents seems fairly good.
Respondents in the Management School and the School of Health and Medicine
were particularly happy, those in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, and
the Faculty of Science and Technology and Central Services less so. The broad presentation of the results by
faculty and job type prevents any more fine-grained analysis (for example,
reports are circulating that the survey found that staff in Corporate
Information Services, part of ISS, were particularly unhappy, but this does
not show up in the report). Bullying
is rare. Unsurprisingly, in the present climate, many respondents were
concerned about job security. Work-life balance and overload are also of
broad concern. In one of the more intriguing parts of the survey, respondents
were asked to tick a list of positive emotions that they had experienced at work
in the last three months. It turns out that employees at Lancaster lack
excitement in their jobs, and Robertson Cooper suggest that this positive
emotion might be increased by 'team-building and informal exercises'. Unsurprisingly the report ends by suggesting
that the university should commission more follow-up studies. Given that the
report notes that 'it is important to do this using consistent items and
factors' one guesses that the proposed future reports would be commissioned
from Robertson Cooper (as in the company founded by Cary Cooper, Professor of
Organisational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University). ***************************************************** UNIVERSITY
IN CRISIS This
Monday (7 March) saw the sixth and final talk in the student-organised
lecture series, The University in Crisis.
Michael Dillon, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Politics,
Philosophy and Religion, gave a talk called 'To Tell the Truth ...',
explaining that the title was a reference to 'Le courage de la verité', the final lecture series delivered by Michel
Foucault at the Collège de France in 1984. Professor
Dillon talked about truth as a contested 'remainder' within the university -
a truth that cannot be reduced to instrumental utility. The university has never been ideal, he
acknowledged, and has never been the only institution in which truth-telling
takes place - literature, film, art and poetry are other such sites. But it
has nevertheless occupied a unique and interesting place in western history:
as well as producing doctors, lawyers, administrators and so on, it has also
been a space where the addressing of the truth has been permitted and been
fought over. He
went on to discuss how truth-telling practices in the university were being
homogenised as it is increasingly submitted to the demands of capital
accumulation and administration. This development, Dillon suggested, is part
of the wider loss of public spaces in the societies of the North Atlantic
Rim, which instead are becoming spaces for spectacle, spin and the regulation
of populations. David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Party spring
conference, in which he said that the government were 'taking on the enemies
of enterprise', was a declaration of war against all truth-telling practices
other than those of wealth creation.
This is not simply a cost-saving exercise but a transformatory
policy without mandate. Global
capitalism appears now to be self-sufficient; it no longer even seems to need
the legitimatory power that once it found in the
humanities and social sciences. In such circumstances, telling the truth is
needed more than ever. He
called into question the idea that truth-telling can ever be wholly
autonomous; while truth is a remainder that cannot be collapsed into power,
neither is it ever wholly separate from power, since every politics invokes
truth, and every form of truth is a form of politics. The battles fought over the truth are
bloody because so much is at stake, because interrogating truth is
'priceless'. Professor
Dillon used his 35 years of experience in teaching and researching at
Lancaster to reflect on the responsibility to be aware of the 'truth effects'
of one's own truth-telling practices.
He ended by emphasising three points.
Firstly, concern for the truth can be driven by the recognition of
untruths. Here he cited the examples
of Iraq, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib. You didn't need to be a Kantian to see a
crisis of truth there; but to call these untruths into question is also to
call into question the regime in which they arise. Secondly, he reiterated that truth-telling
is always fugitive, interstitial, even within the university (he followed
Foucault in holding up Diogenes the Cynic as an exemplary truth-teller).
There has never been a golden age in which truth-telling in the university
has not been in crisis, and has not needed to be fought for. Thirdly, whereas Foucault called Diogenes
an example of 'fearless speech', Dillon insisted that what should drive the courage
to speak the truth is not fear but passion, joy, fun, affection and
comradeship. The
'University in Crisis' has been a highly stimulating series of talks and
discussions, one that has responded in real time to the current crisis of the
university as an institution, and which reminds us, if such a reminder were
needed, of the 'priceless' contribution that a critical, engaged student body
can make to the truth practices of a university. The real test will be to what extent the
university community can turn this cumulative diagnosis of our predicament
into practical action. ***************************************************** DAVID
WILLETTS AND THE HUMANITIES David
Willetts' speech (http://bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-arts-humanities-social-sciences)
at the British Academy on 1st March represented one of the first times that
the government has actually stated its views on the arts, humanities and
social sciences (hereinafter 'the humanities'). Willetts
set the scene by stating that '[t]his is clearly the right place and the right
occasion to tackle a worry in the academic community - and beyond - that the
Coalition's policies on universities and on research are a threat to the
arts, humanities and social sciences'. Quoting Simon Schama's
and Stefan Collini's critiques of the government's
proposals, Willetts claimed that what troubled him
was that '...such distinguished thinkers could entertain' these views that
were simply not true. He went on to try to counter 'genuine
misunderstanding[s] of our policies on funding, teaching and research'
through an explanation of how the withdrawal of the HEFCE teaching grant from
the humanities did not put them at any serious disadvantage compared with
other subjects in terms of the percentage cut. That is, since they were
receiving less money in the first place the cuts were not at all that
drastic, and the shortfall could easily be made up through increased tuition
fees - to £6,000, according to Willetts, an
increase of a mere £2,700 or so on present levels. So, nothing to worry
about. Willetts said he saw no reason why student demand for
humanities courses should decline: while 'employability' was an important
consideration for students in choosing what degrees to apply for, the
humanities need not worry, provided they were 'well taught in universities
which attach high value to the quality of the student experience'. On
research, Willetts said that the government had
ring-fenced a budget of £4.6 billion for 'science and research', which he
claimed showed a continuing 'commitment to research, even in tough times' -
and the ring-fence did not apply solely to the 'hard' sciences. On the REF, Willetts said that he had changed his mind about the
value of assessing 'impact', as a result of the success of the pilot
exercises; the inclusion of impact (at 20% of the overall assessment) would
reward academics who 'spend part of their career outside universities - in
say, a cultural institution' (with the possible implication that academics
who don't can by definition have no or minimal impact). In
the penultimate part of his speech Willetts turned
to 'some deeper questions about [the humanities'] place in our universities'.
After reassuring his audience that 'your disciplines are fundamentally
worthwhile in and of themselves', he went on to argue that the 'public value'
of the humanities 'come[s] across most clearly when we see how the natural
and medical sciences find themselves needing to draw on insights for arts,
humanities and social sciences' - that is, their status is essentially a
subordinate one. His examples were aviation security, which relies not just
on state-of-the-art sensors but on an understanding of human behaviour, and
of the need for medical scientists who have developed a drug for the
developing world to understand why local cultures fear Western drugs. Some
may see a contradiction between Willetts' words
(reassuring in intent if not in effect) and the government's decision on
teaching funding for these subjects. Sally Hunt, the UCU general secretary,
commented: 'I am absolutely amazed that the minister had the audacity to tell
the British Academy that, although the government had removed the entire arts
and humanities teaching budget, the subjects were still valued by the
government.' ***************************************************** LIVE
AT LICA: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE COLLECTION Lancaster
University is fortunate in possessing a fine art collection: at present LICA
is in the middle of a three year programme to raise the impact of its works
of art. 'Conversations with the
Collection' has this year invited staff from the University to choose an
object from the Collection and explain how their chosen artwork links in with
their lives, pairing it with items of their own which enhance the connection. Some
art is self-explanatory, some less so.
Even when the artist's inspiration and intentions seem obvious in the
finished work, there may be layers of meaning which others will not penetrate
and are, perhaps, not expected to penetrate.
Over some works of art there is no agreed interpretation. Perhaps the artist did not intend the work
to be understood by others: did not care whether it was or not. This
is not an excuse for gallery-goers to utter the despised words 'I may not
know much about art, but I know what I like.'
It is a plea for people to be able to make their own connections with
a work of art, regardless of what the artist might have meant, without
feeling self-conscious or being labelled a philistine. Art which allows us to do this is perhaps
Good Art. The
exhibition at the Peter Scott Gallery which ran until 19 February has allowed
people from all backgrounds to make connections with artworks from the
University's splendid collection. This
has brought forth some pairings with clear links, such as Peter Brook's
'Kendal' with exploring in the Lake District, Camille Bilaire's
'The Band' with the Jack Hylton Archive, and Albert
Irvin's 'Thames' with artwork in a Spanish gallery. Other choices are likely to make the viewer
look at least twice at the original and the connecting piece -
John Bailey's 'Apotheosis' with the shapes, colours and richness of
wooden musical instruments, prompting memories of intimate experiences of
music; Sheouak's 'Sea Birds on Rocks' prompting the
creation of yet another bird image, this time as a newspaper cutout, linking the selector's preference for simple
images and bold colours with his liking for newspaper as a material which can
be used and reused; William Dafter's 'Play Centre',
with its naive depictions of young people's pastimes in a street of bricked-up
houses emphasising the role of a key, whether actual or symbolic in opening
up and securing doorways. Some of the
choices were linked directly to the selector's job or role in life, others captured a moment or a memory. For all the people making the connections
in this exhibition this is Good Art. ***************************************************** 'ALL
CLASSICAL MUSIC EXPLAINED' Last
week's concert in the Lancaster International Concert Series, entitled 'All
Classical Music Explained', sounded as if it would be right in line with the
rest of the series; but in fact it broke new ground by presenting a stand-up
comedian on the Great Hall stage. The
performer, Rainer Hersch, is an accomplished
pianist as he demonstrated; and his CV records that he has conducted or
appeared with the Philharmonia and St Petersburg
Philharmonic orchestras, amongst others.
Much more important for a stand-up performer, his act was original and
highly entertaining. Two
facts make him particularly interesting as a performer at the Lancaster
concerts: he is a graduate in economics, not music, and his economics degree
was from Lancaster University.
Contrary to the reputation of economists, or at any rate of economics,
Hirsch was far from dismal: he kept the audience entertained throughout both
halves of the evening. The inclusion
of his performance in the concert series was a success. ***************************************************** LETTERS Dear
subtext, Some
top-of-the-head triptych slogans, just to pass an idle ten minutes: Lead. Haver.
Follow. (Finance Committee) Select. Wait. Expire. (The Venue) Neglect. Renovate. Neglect. (Estates) Plunge. Struggle. Sink. (Swimming pool ...
no, on second thoughts, Institute of Advanced Studies) Keep
up all the good work! John
Foster, PPR **************************************************** The
editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order)
of: Rachel Cooper (PPR), George Green, Gavin Hyman, David Smith, Bronislaw
Szerszynski and Martin Widden. |