Yesterday a bunch of us met up at the RFH on the South Bank. When my siblings and their partners' children and our children were small, we all used to meet there regularly. It's a cavernous space with long sightlines. The six children we had between us could potter about without us breathing down their necks, and we could sit and sip coffee and be adults together. Often there would be a band playing; the sound would float around and disappear into the roof. People would walk past, often with black violin-cases to join an orchestra that would be setting up for the night. Nobody ever moved us on, and it was a boon to have the space to congregate especially in hot weather with the cool of the River Thames nearby, rushing past and ignoring us all.
It's still like that, a big communal area that you don't need a lot of money to enjoy. we took a picnic, and realised we'd inadvertently arranged to meet on the day of the hip hop dance competition. We threatened to sign each other up. Seventy two (at least) competitors took part, one after the other.. 'Three, two, one...'. My favourite was a South Asian woman who danced a hybrid of Bollywood (hands) and hip hop (body), but there were also some phenomenal child dancers. Some fo the dancers were very audience-conscious, and they were the better ones. Around the edges, young men practices their moves, and downstairs we could see couples dancing Salsa to the music- I'm not sure whether that was just an anarchic pop-up thing happening.
I felt a flood of emotions, not just because of James but also because of the South London estate music projects that I used to work on all the time, writing songs for and with community groups. Some of those estates have been demolished and replaced by private housing; the Elephant and Castle is so close to Central London that the developers must be able to make a lot of money. Back in the day, the children I worked with were experienced in doing TV work, for instance: they were so close to where the shows were made (London Weekend Television had studios along by the river). It was a natural way of being inclusive: everything was just on the doorstep. Even the people with learning disabilities that I worked with have been on lots of TV shows, and mentioned it casually sometimes.
The dance competition on Saturday had that same focus on fun and community. Who cares what the toxic racists are up to? Their posturing means nothing when there is so much creativity and energy being created by groups of people who naturally integrate with each other. The competitors weren't even stars for a Warhol-15-minutes-of-fame, it was more like 45 seconds per person. But everyone was watching raptly, and cheering the really exceptional dancers. It made my heart happy to see it. I live in a different musical world, but sitting with my family and friends- choir singers, a successful covers-band sax player, an indie guitarist, a brand video production person, a fashion shop manager, an embroiderer and knitter, a photographer- we were immersed in a world of positivity and creativity. As the lid of negativity and hopelessness is nailed down, we pop the nails out and bust our way out of it, all the time: we can't help it.
And upstairs, downstairs, round the corner in different bits of the Royal Festival Hall, other people were doing the same: more formally (the classical music programming), and more informally (the skateboarders in the Undercroft). None of it was online, it was all Real.
