From Yale to Babylon, via Pompey

My trip to America and Brazil: June/July 2015:

A long two week haul took me to New Haven (Connecticut) for a short residency at the excellent International Festival of Arts & Ideas, thence all the way to Brazil, ending up at magical Paraty for the extraordinary literature festival, with which we have an ongoing partnership.

New Haven invited me back after three years to do another stint!  This year it was a set piece speech on Arts and Politics leading onto a response from two excellent cultural commentators (one from American PEN).  Next day was a conversation on Arts and Citizenship, including Matt Wilson, an expert on arts advocacy - how can we as a sector be more effective and assertive.  Finally a great panel on Arts & Cities, with excellent contributors from Chile, Boston and Derry.  Shona McCarthy told her story with passion and inspiration, Javiera Parada (now Chile's cultural attache to the US) told how Santiago a Mil Festival helped move Santiago's cultural life forward after the dictatorship, whilst Cedric Douglas astonished us all with his strategic community based arts work on the streets of Boston.  So many ways to reassert the power of cities in the arts and creative sectors.

Although New Haven is home to prestigious Yale, it's also home to the greatest social inequality in the US, with all the concomitant problems in its streets and spaces.  A point I made in several meetings in Brazil, where they are so accustomed to the closeness of rich and poor in the big cities, such as the Morro da Babilonia favela in Rio, just metres from opulent beach side apartments and hotels.  It's now also the home for the FLUPP literary festival, of which the British Council were a founder partner.

t was set up as a counterpart to FLIP in Paraty, some 300 kilometres away from Rio, along the coast in a magical wooded and mountainous natural park, by the sea: it's an old "gold" port, for many years abandoned, and now restored to life as a festival and tourist resort, FLIP being the brainchild of the amazing Liz Caulder, who oversees the festival (and FlipSide, its UK counterpart) with understated and friendly authority.  This year David Hare was one of the stars in a compelling tour de force interview ranging over his long and controversial career.  Did we know he had turned George Lucas down as writer for Star Wars 4, on the grounds he didn't really want to watch parts 1 - 3.  Apparently Lucas didn't find that amusing...

Other highlights from the trip included reacquaintance with the great architecture of Lina Bo Bardi at SESC Pompeia in Sao Paolo, a visit to an emerging new kind of cultural centre Vila Itororó, rebuilt with the local community out of about a dozen dilapidated, idiosyncratic houses.

I contributed to a lively seminar at Spectaculu, a training centre for cultural skills vocational work for young people from the favelas....tremendously inspiring environment, and a social and artistic force from which we could learn much.  

The centre of Rio is rapidly being transformed for next year's Olympics - from the removal of a hideous overhead roadway (which used to cut the city off from the sea), to the opening of the wonderful Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) and the nearly ready Museum of Tomorrow (more like the day AFTER tomorrow) with whom we have worked to help shape a partnership with the UK's Science Museum.

I have two serious issues arising from the trip: why do Brazilian washbasins not have plugs - it makes shaving very challenging - and why do Brazilians love queueing even more than the British?  Both are strange conundrums...pour me another caipirinha!

From raining pizzas to Sophoclean tragedy: The light and dark of Lebanon

Some snapshots from my recent visit to Lebanon:

SNAPSHOT: SHATILA CAMP

We visit Shatila Refugee Camp, a name with a horrible resonance for those with long memories. Everyone here has one. We arrive through checkpoints into an area controlled by Hizbollah. A built community, but one with terrible overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions. Electrical wiring like spaghetti festoons the streets. Palestinian residents now joined by double-displaced Syrian Palestinians: the 10,000 population has swelled to 40,000... 

We visit Basmeh and Zeitooneh, a cultural centre tucked away in the backstreets, storey piled on storey to cope with the massive demand for a haven from the troubles. We are shown round by the enthusiastic Hannah. We meet a class of forty or so children (out of 400 they help) and eat a baguette lunch on the top floor…no walls or barriers. Toddlers do a drawing class, painting their dreams. One young boy's dream is of raining pizzas... 

The centre also houses a library, a health unit, as well as help for those with mental traumas. They have an embroidery workshop for women: they started with nine, now they have 129. Wonderful traditional workmanship. We do some shopping! Reminder to send book for the library. I buy cherries from a vendor in the street. 

We visit food distribution units. 

We travel to a smart downtown Beiruti restaurant: meeting local cultural entrepreneurs and operators. They include Abdullah Absi, a 21 year old serial entrepreneur, owner of six companies, including one, Zoomal, devoted to supporting Arab creative projects through crowd-funding. 

SNAPSHOT: ZOUKAK - A VISCERAL POLITICAL THEATRE

A ten minute walk from the hotel to a quiet apartment, home for eight years to Zoukak, a trenchant political theatre group cooperative, led by the impressive Maya Zbib, now on the Rolex Mentorship scheme. We discuss their work: experimental, challenging work on difficult issues like domestic violence and displacement. This is free political space for people. Arts are doing the "hard work" here. They do education work to support their next productions: no government funding here. The British Council's modest support for them is over six years: they say is has helped to empower them as individuals. In public space they activate everyone round them: their work is the smallest part of the action. 

SNAPSHOT: QUEENS OF SYRIA - OUR TRAGEDY

Our regional arts meeting begins on Sunday afternoon. Pleasantries complete we move to a conference room: a group of twenty or so traditionally dressed Syrian women join us... Some are dressed in "traditional" traditional, some in "traditional" urban chic. 

We view a documentary film and watch excerpts from Euripides Women of Troy and Sophocles Antigone, productions they have developed in Jordan and brought to Beirut, with professional Syrian director Mohammad Al Attar. The interplay on film between the original and the personal testimony of these women is intense and moving. 

After the screening the women face us in a line and we have an extensive dialogue, strangely surreal in the mix of personal tragedy and black humour. One of my colleagues asks "What is the relevance of these Greek tragedies today?" The reply is devastating "I do not know where my son is – missing, injured, captive or dead. I cannot bury him. Antigone's tragedy is my tragedy…" 

Director Al Attar tells us that the work has enabled the women to regain their self-esteem, to become role models in society, in the face of marginalisation, poverty and violence... 

SNAPSHOT: CONCLUSION

If ever a case study is needed today for the inextricable and tangled web of art, learning and politics, then Lebanon provides it in spades. Hard, if not impossible, to do anything without a political facet, even if it is unintended!