The Culture Trip Debate

I had an interesting evening last night taking part in a panel of people talking about the Government's new commitment to providing 5 hours of culture in the school week.
I was the weakling on the high-powered panel, which consisted of Margaret Hodge and her Tory counterpart as well as the wonderful Estelle Morris (who said the most sensible thing of the evening when she remarked that some head teachers needed to be told that creativity was important for children, as they would prefer to ignore this fact and just aim for literacy and numeracy scores). There was the Tate Modern's Education officer, and a very nice chap, Peter, from Creative Partnerships. How I wish I'd told the awful Tory (who told us all twice that he'd attended an independent school, thus telling us that he had no relevant experience at all) that during the Thatcher/Major administration I started at least three music jobs for a few sessions which then lost their funding because of Tory cuts. The Tories don't give a stuff about culture for poor people, and never have. At that time, I felt as though they had abolished me, let alone the small but effective projects I was working on.
Unfortunately I was the only person on the panel without an agenda. I sat and listened to what was happening, and it reminded me of a time when, after organising our neighbourhood to lobby our local councillor to get rid of our rat invasion (they were coming into our flats through the toilet bowls), I'd toyed with entering politics. I went and worked at the Labour Party HQ in Walworth Road; I met a lot of interesting people, some surprisingly nice (Jack Straw) and some disappointingly ambitious (Margaret Hodge). I realised that politicians become automatons (but I do believe they do a necessary job- who wants to live in ZImbabwe?) and it was a world I could not possibly survive in. I got to take visiting politicians from Croatia and Slovakia to the leadership election that Tony Blair won- I got to see the press photographers trying to get him to do a 'Black Power' salute, the same one that Neil Kinnock had given at Live Aid and that appeared on the front pages to show us how scary Labour would be if they got into power.
So there they all were, in a line, with me in the middle, feeling like a cartoon version of an arts worker. There is nothing grand at all about any of the songwriting projects that I work on, but they are all brilliant in their little worlds and they make children (and me) happy.
I'd been invited, I think, to say something controversial, but there wasn't anything to say- we were talking about a hypothetical idea that had not been a success or a failure yet. The debate is something different, to do with the line to be drawn between cultural industries and art for art's sake. That's what academics get hot under the collar about, to the point of duels at dawn. Politicians talking about whether or not creativity is necessary in schools are generating hot air that will only become effective policy when tenacious lobbyists grab hold of it like terriers and worry it into reality.
Phew!
Rant over.
Today, I met my Champagne Friend and we walked through Green Park in the rain with our umbrellas, down to Buck House where everyone else was standing with their umbrellas trying to catch a glimpse of the tootling marching band in their silly Busbies. We walked down the Mall in the drizzle, and up into Covent Garden for a cup of tea. It was nice. Our problems unrolled under our feet, leaving an invisible trail on the wet pavement; we stopped for a while at Trafalgar Square, where there were some bizarre food-based performing arts groups, one feeding vegetable marrows with a baby's bottle, one with a tray of plastic seafood with a squirting scallop that was seriously p*ssing people off; another troupe had a large shaking table and was performing a sketch about dinner, but being out-performed and upstaged by another performing artist in a bowler hat in the audience. There were food stalls and milling tourists. We talked about living in London, and imagined our futures, with less responsibilities.
The rain washed our cares away, and we went home.