Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 051014 Question 8

Question 9
How can we make the different amounts people are paid more fair? Are there countries who do it better?

SL Project 051014 Q9 How can we make the different amunts people are paid more fair? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 051014 Question 8

Question 8
How can I improve my English?

SL Project 051014 Q8 How Can I improve my English? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 051014 Question 7

Question 7
I am learning to trust the universe that I am looked after. How do you feel about that?

SLP 051014 Q7 I am learning to trust the universe that I am looked after How do you feel about that? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 051014 Question 6

Question 6
How do I move countries without a language or much money in the next 6 months?

SL Project 051014 Q6 How do I move countries without a language or much money in the next 6 months? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 05/10/14 Question 5

In contrast to the last post, this question comes from our oldest-ever guest at a Sunday Lunch Project, a member of Ovalhouse's vibrant pensioners social group, the Stockwell Good Neighbours.

Question 5
How can I get the council to cut the trees on my street in Winter instead of Summer?

SLP 051014 Q5: How can I get the council to cut the trees on my street in winter instead of Summer? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 05/10/14 Question 4

This question comes from our youngest ever (13 years old) guest at a Sunday Lunch Project event. 

Question 4

Why are celebrities rich?

SL Project 051014 Q4: Why are celebrities rich? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 05/10/14 Question 3

Question 3
How can I meet lots of people in my new area?

SLProject 05/10/14 Q3: How can I meet lots of different people in my new area? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse 05/10/14 Question 2

Question 2
How close is local?

SL Project 05/10/14 Q2: How close is local? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

The Sunday Lunch Project at Ovalhouse Fun Palace 5 October 2014

I've been a little (ok, very) slow in publishing the recordings from the last Sunday Lunch Project event at Ovalhouse in October. Mostly because it was a bigger event than usual and there were double the normal amount of questions to wrangle, but also because I've been alternating super busyness with hyper laziness and let it slip a little. Sorry about that. But anyway, here we are.

The Ovalhouse event was a simultaneously joyous and terrifying experience. For the first time, advance sign up wasnt required and guests could just turn up on the day - so I didn't know who (if anybody) would come or what they'd ask. I couldn't muster my thoughts on the questions  in advance or even make arrangements for any special dietary requirements. So it all felt a bit like I was flying by the seat of my pants. But as it turns out, sometimes that's a good thing.

Normally when I host events away from home, I'm an outsider turning up in an arts venue of some sort, I rock up, cook, eat, chat, wash up and leave. But this time was a bit different. As some of you might know, when I'm not trying to change the world through food based means, I'm also Co-Director of Theatre at Ovalhouse. Me and my brilliant co-director Rachel Briscoe had decided to include an SL Project event as part of Ovalhouse's Fun Palace weekend- which meant that not only was I on 'home turf' in a slightly unnerving way, but also that I'd be hanging out with some of the guests for a whole weekend rather than just a couple of hours. It meant that people could come and chat to me about what the project is about before and after the lunch, but also that they could carry on their conversations long after we finished the baked banana dessert. I caught several of the guests having a cuppa and a chin wag together later in the weekend - and it made me ponder; Is there a way to help people sustain the relationships, ideas and calls-to-action that always emerge at SL Project events in a more coherent reliable way? Maybe some sort of 'Survivors' group? An online forum? An annual knees up? Answers on a postcard please.

Anyway. For now, here's the first of nine questions that we talked about that day. Enjoy.

Question 1: How can I stop getting annoyed with selfish people in London?

SL Project 05/10/14 Q1: How can I stop getting annoyed with selfish people in London? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

I'm coming to Bradford on 15 February

I'm looking forward to bringing the Sunday Lunch Project to Bradford next month. Hosted by the lovely folks at Theatre in the Mill at Mind the Gap Studios.  I've been learning to make sourdough from scratch so hopefully that will feature in the menu somehow.

I had such a great time at the SlungLow Hub in Leeds last year that I can't wait to come back. Although there may not be quite such eccentric cooking kit this time!

If you'd like to come along -(and I'd love to have you) just drop me a line via the 'Apply' page in the menu bar.

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project Derby 18/07/14 Part 2

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project Derby 18/07/14 Part 2 by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project Derby 18/07/14 Part 1

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project Derby 18/07/14 Part 1 by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Lunch 3: Derby, Friday 18 July 2014 Topics for Discussion

So. This event is a bit of a stylistic aberration. Not only does it have the temerity to take place on a Friday instead of a Sunday, it is also the only event to solicit questions under a unified theme. It's being hosted by Derby Theatre as part of DEparture Lounge's Bumper Artist Development Day, so all questions are going to be focused on how we might make the world better for emerging theatre makers.

So. The topics of conversation for this month's Sunday Friday Lunch Project are:

• What kind of message do we send out to the government and other funders when we put our ideas into practice with little or no funding?
• Commissioning funding pots of venues/organisations seem to be shrinking, but Art still needs to be made. How do emerging Artists/theatre makers continue to lever commissioning funds from venues and partners in order to match fund Grants for the Arts applications when there is a will for venues to support but ever decreasing cash to invest? Can we work differently or more collaboratively with venues to achieve this is other ways?
• How do you take the step from part-time freelance to full time free-lance and is it natural for this to fluctuate? When is the best time to do this?
• Does age affect the ability to emerge as an artist of some kind?  Is the innocence of youth the best? Or does maturity give you more material?
• What opportunities or challenges does the current trend for co-productions pose? Does it impact the individuality of organisations or does it enhance the creative process?
• Emerging artists are pressed to limit the scale of their ambition and ideas due to limited resources. Once you find some success, how do you then re-learn the habit of having Big Ideas and build the skills to make them work?
• I'm just starting out and I keep hitting a brick wall with my creative partner. She is vetoing every idea. How do I get around this?

That feels like a lot of quite meaty conversations. Watch this space for the transcripts.


In other news, I know that I haven't got the last entries from the last event up here yet. It's because I need to edit the recordings for confidentiality and its proving a bit fiddly. Bear with me - I'll get there I promise!

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14 Question 5

Question 5:
A revolution that succeeds must recognise that its most powerful tool is kindness. Discuss.

Recordings: SL Project 29/06/14 Question 5 by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14 Question 4

Question 4

Ageing: our perception, experience and expectation of old age. Given that everyone is living longer, what can we do to dispel the myths and ensure that an older age of dignity, respect and possibility is available to all?

There's an edit for confidentiality half way through this one - but it doesn't affect the sense of the conversation.

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14: Question 4 Ageing. by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14 Question 3

Question 3

As two of the guests' questions covered really similar ground, we chose to combine the two topics into a longer discussion.

The original questions were:

What is Feminism? Does the title 'Feminist' come with Assumptions or Stigma?
and
Gender Inequality: Why can't we overcome it?

It's about 24 mins long.

Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14 Q3: What is Feminism? Does the name come with assumptions or stigma? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14 Question 2

Question 2

What influence is the rise of the Right Wing having on young people? Are us old lefties the end of the line?

(this one lasts about 27 mins)

Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14: What Influence is the rise of the Right Wing having on young people? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 29/06/14 Question 1

Question 1

What's it like to live in leeds right now?
(The recording is about 16 minutes long)

Sunday Lunch Project 29 June 2014: Question 1 What is it like to live in Leeds right now? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Lunch 2: Leeds, Sunday 29th June 2014 Topics for Discussion

Tomorrow marks the very first Sunday Lunch Project event that takes place outside my home. I'm off to the rather lovely SlungLow HUB in Leeds to host the event there.

I had a bit of a worry that because I don't have as many networks outside London, that it'd be hard to persuade people I didn't know to come and join in, but it turns out I was worrying over nothing; the event is actually slightly oversubscribed. Thankfully I'll be assisted by the brilliant and lovely Emma Adams, a pretty damn wonderful playwright and theatre maker based in Leeds who I've been lucky enough to work with before.

So, the discussion topics have been submitted. In no particular order they are:

1. Gender Inequality: Why can't we overcome it?
2. Ageing: our perception, experience and expectation of old age. Given that everyone is living longer, what can we do to dispel the myths and ensure that an older age of dignity, respect and possibility is available to all?
3. What is Feminism? Does the title 'Feminist' come with Assumptions or Stigma?
4. What impact is the rise of the Right Wing having on young people? Are the 'old lefties' the end of the line? 
5. What's it like to live in Leeds right now?
6. Capital Punishment, Immigrants, Tattoos, Drugs

This is the first SL Project where the discussion topics have touched on the growing Right wing presence in the UK.  Perhaps because it's the first one located beyond the diverse, liberal bubble of London. I'm really interested to see what the discussion throws up - especially as there seems to be a real cross section of age and experience at this one!

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14 Question 5

Question 5

What effect does it have on us when our parents are gone? What counsel can I give my recently bereaved friend?

(The recording lasts about 17 minutes)

Sunday Lunch Project: 18 May 2014. Question 5 What effect does bereavement have on us? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14 Question 4

Question 4

What do you love doing?

The recording lasts about 20 minutes)

Sunday Lunch Project: 18 May 2014. Question 4 What do you love doing? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14 Question 3

Question 3

When is optimism appropriate? When inappropriate? When is it a mindless Panglossian attempt to ignore reality, and when a useful approach to


(The Recording lasts about 22 mins)

Sunday Lunch Project: 18 May 2014. Question 3 When is Optimism Appropriate? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Transcripts: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14 Question 2

How can we engage young people to make good choices when contemporary culture promote celebrity and warped sense and beauty? 

Speaker 1: In terms of what we were just talking about, you learned to ask that question.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And not be scared of yeah, difference.

Speaker 3: And not to be told “Don’t do drugs” but actually to see why not to do drugs.

Speaker 4: You really are a very good cook, Rebecca.

Speaker 1: Thank you. My dad’s family are all chefs and my parents are quite, on the scale of things, they’re old, like in their 40’s when I was born. And my mum used to do this thing where she’d say, “Come on, let me teach you to cook because we’re going to die and you need to fend for yourself.”

Speaker 2: It’s like a lioness teaching her cub.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to ask you that that isn’t something that is genetically passed on.

Speaker 1: Yeah,I remember it quite vividly, very, very clear.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, they’re still going strong.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, touch wood.

Speaker 2: Yeah, my head my head my head.

Speaker 1: Yeah. They’re still going strong. But actually, yeah, I’ve become a bit of an obsessive cook, so…

Speaker 5: Cheers!

Speaker 6: How many of these have you done now then?

Speaker 1: This is the second one.

Speaker 6: Oh, wow, really?

Speaker 1: Yeah. The next one is in Leeds because it’s going to start going on tour.

Speaker 6: Oh, exciting! How are you going to do that?

Speaker 1: Well, I’m working with arts organizations and public access organizations and if they’ve got a kitchen and a table—

Speaker 6: That’s what you’re going to need.

Speaker 1: That’ll do. And although the next one is really…because there’s an Aga which apparently is temperamental. I’ve never cooked on an Aga. And I have no, idea what I’m going to cook, but we shall see. They were like “We’ve got a tea urn” and I’m like, “That’s wonderful. But what… A Pot noodle? What can I cook with a tea urn?” So yeah, it is a challenge. It’s fun. Okay, shall we choose the next question.

Speaker 6: How can we engage young people to make good choices when contemporary culture promote celebrity and warped sense and beauty? So this is my question. Possibly kind of a few questions in one, I guess. But I think there’s something really interesting about…when I was growing up, you wouldn’t really see celebrities everywhere. You’d probably get your Top of the Pops magazine once a week and that was where you would read about New Kids on the Block—

Speaker 1: Smash Hits, yeah.

Speaker 6: Smash Hits, exactly, and what they were up to. And it seems like kind of influenced, I don’t think, particularly for a girl in terms of how you look by a lot of this stuff. And I think there’s so many trends at the moment in terms of these thigh-gap selfies where people are taking pictures of how big the gap is between their thighs. And young girls aren’t eating properly, as they try and emulate that. And I just don’t know, I don’t know what the question really is. It’s kind of like is there any positivity that comes out of that? How can it be used in a better way? How can we teach young people that that’s not necessarily the kind of—

Speaker 4: Where the value lies.

Speaker 6: Exactly. And I think that’s some of the biggest things and I think particularly with the generation coming through now where jobs are scarce and it feels a bit harder, I guess, to have self-worth in other areas. People are doing all sorts of things to stop having to stack shelves at Tescos and calling the X-factor seems to be the way out. And I just think it’s such a different thing to when I was young and growing up. It’s something that we probably need to be much more aware of and mindful of and we’re kind of thinking about young people and the stuff they’re going through. So it’s not much of a question, I guess, but it’s a topic.

Speaker 1: It kind of is, though, isn’t it? Because how can it be because—

Speaker 2: Can we turn back?

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that input, it’s so massive, just the millions of images that you see every day.

Speaker 6: We have access to it.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: But it’s an interesting statement. There’s really just sometimes things seem inevitable. It’s inevitable that eventually everything will be marketised, it’s inevitable that eventually all photographs will be porn. But I don’t think it is that way. You know what I mean? And sometimes it can feel like its an unstoppable tide but it’s not because even a year ago, people didn’t know about, you know, Everyday Sexism wasn’t a thing and people follow on twitter. Then No More Page Three was Clare Short and a couple of angry people and now it’s a much more main stream thing.

Speaker 4: It’s a cultural shift, isn’t it?

Speaker 5: And I think probably—oh Rebecca, you’ll know that Briony Kimmings show, Credible, Likeable, Superstar Role Model. I think it’s a brilliant project that kind of—do you know about that? So that directly addresses, I guess, the issue. So Briony is this performance artist and Briony and her niece Taylor, who’s nine. Briony went to her niece Taylor and said, “I want you to create a role model that you will look up to,” because Taylor was just confused because she’s nine, she’s watching pop stars and the level of sexuality was just really bewildering when you’re nine because you don’t understand why the girls that you are watching on the telly kind of take their clothes off and twerking and stuff—

Speaker 1: While men in suits stand and watch them.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And Blurred Lines is a perfect example of that, which was a mainstream thing that nine year olds would sing. And Taylor was finding it bewildering. So Briony said to Taylor, “Right. We’re going to make a woman who is a role model for you.” And they invented a character called Catherine Bennett and Catherine is a paleontologist pop star who liked pizza and bicycles and wears big glasses and has curly hair. So there’s two shows, one of which is the show about the project, which is called Credible, Likeable, Superstar, Role Model and thats about the project and it’s about Briony’s investigation of culture and that sexualisation and commercialization of everything, the pornification of everything, I guess, and then the other is the Catherine Bennett show where Briony performs as Catherine Bennett and tours schools and theatres, and now stadiums and is on the Top of the Pops. Well, not Top of the Pops because that doesn’t exist anymore. But she’d been on Going Live or whatever the equivalent is now…

Speaker 2: You’re a man of your generation.

Speaker 5: [Inaudible][06:52]

Speaker 2: Yeah, she got into interviewed by Ed the Duck, in the Broom cupboard! Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about, yeah.

Speaker 5: Wherever you go, if you’re a pop star now, she’s done. But I think that it feels like that was a really positive, genuine, someone saying ‘Let’s do something about this’ and Catherine Bennett is now a kind of a genuine star in her own right to that generation. Now what’s interesting, I think, Briony’s very aware that she’s fighting celebrity by creating a celebrity and it’s a weird kind of ironic feedback loop that you create after that. But I think what’s exciting is it is saying this is not inevitable. It isn’t tied to this. You can stop or at least stand up against.

Speaker 1: And I mean actually, because all of those come from the commodfication of those people and it’s mostly women, but it is men as well. And as consumers, I guess we do have the power if enough of us say no, to stop that being how things are marketed, just like they don’t market vacuum cleaners now to men saying your wife will be so pleased with you if you take this home because all women are like ‘fuck off!’.

And so yeah, I think there is such potential to make it better, but I think for me, one of the key issues is that…I mean, we’re all based in or within shooting distance of London. We’re all of similar age. I think we probably all exist in certain social-political boundaries, right? And I can look at, for example, I look at my sisters who are really clever, bright people in their own fields, who don’t live in London, who aren’t academic, who aren’t artistic, who aren’t necessarily particularly culturally engaged beyond on what’s on ITV on a Saturday night, and this isn’t in their cultural dialogue. So they’re not equipped to tell their kids that.

Speaker 6: And I think this is the problem, that no one going to get rid of the, well, apart from the commissioners, no one’s going to get rid of the X-factor because even if that happens, they’ll come up with the next thing again where it’s, you know, celebrities naked jumping from planes or whatever they come up with next.

Speaker 5: That’s genius pitch. Celebrity Naked Air Jump, you know, 7 PM after they jump.

Speaker 6: The example which is given, I was just thinking of her best example, you know, as you were speaking, Miley Cyrus. You know, even today, there are young children who are being shown Hannah Montana and they think that she’s the most wonderful thing and stuff that she says, stuff that her father says is stuff that young children are growing up with and thinking that is the way to approach life. And then you see her today and she is literally rebelling against her own, against the persona she’s built for herself. Like this is something I just hate and I want to break out of it and you just wonder how confusing is that?

Speaker 1: But it’s because at that age she was commodified as this uber vanilla, wholesome American girl. Her dad’s Billy Ray Cyrus, she’s never been the all American kid.

Speaker 2: But is it because she was actually something you could never be. As an ordinary person, you could never be like that perfect and also as an ordinary person, you could never be what Miley Cyrus is today.

Speaker 4: That’s true. She’s gone from one extreme to the other. She was playing a role. It wasn’t like it was her name. Hannah Montana was Disney who then she got the job and she did it. It was a job. See it as a job not the whole person.

Speaker 1: It’s like getting pissed off at Jennifer Aniston for not being a ditz, right?

Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. But it’s like that thing of individuality, it’s just hyper now, it’s just really harmful. Everything’s about how many likes you had, how many followers have you got. So whatever, even if you say “I want to be a female scientist,” you think brilliant, but probably then your next thing as a young person is to be the most famous female scientist. And that’s where I get my value. Not from the skill involved and not from being part of the team or being part of society—

Speaker 1: Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s nothing to do with skill or quality or excellence …

Speaker 4: But then that skill is going on the competitive side. Do you need to be excellent or do you need to see a need and say I could be useful in that and actually you don’t need your name on it. You just need to know you’re actually…on your deathbed, you think yeah, I’ve actually done something positive.

Speaker 5: I think that’s the problem. I think we’ve created this culture where unless your name is out there and that people like you on Facebook, unless you’ve got 17,000 followers, you’re not worth anything. It’s that worth.

Speaker 2: I don’t know how I came across this, but for some reason I wound up watching a high school graduation speech by a guy named David McCullough Jr. who was just at some school, some random school at some random town—

Speaker 5: Is this on YouTube?

Speaker 2: It was on YouTube, yes. Have you seen this?

Speaker 5: No. When you can just watch YouTube for hours on end—

Speaker 2: Yes. I don’t know how—

Speaker 5: You end up watching a fair amount. Going “How did I get here?”

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So I don’t know how it happened, but I was watching an 18-minute high school graduation speech and the next one I watched was J.K. Rowling—

Speaker 5: Of course at Harvard?

Speaker 2: At Harvard. That’s the one that led me to it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5: Steve Jobs was next.

Speaker 2: Okay. So David McCullough Jr., whose dad, I think, David McCullough Sr.—I don’t know if they are really, but I think they probably are. David McCullough Sr. is this fabulous biographer who did this biography on Harry Truman and he did a huge biography on the Brooklyn Bridge. Biography of the Brooklyn Bridge! It was comfortably a thousand pages long and I bought it for my mother going like, “You have a crack at that one here.” His son, I think, is a teacher but his speech was called You Are Not Amazing and You Are Not Special. That’s what it was called. You Are Not Special. And he said you are one of the graduating class today of 65 very talented people. If you were the valedictorian, if you were the one person who came out top on this, let me just say that there are 37,000 high schools in the United States and today they’re all graduating, so you’re one of 37,000 valedictorians this year and there was a valedictorian last year and the year before, the year before, and the year before that, and that you have been told that you have grown up in a culture where—his relationship to it, he said it’s because we, as parents, were told to tell you that you’re amazing, you’re special, you’re wonderful. Look at the way you crapped on that, you know, like from potty training upwards you’re so special. So I don’t know. It was a fascinating thing to watch.

Speaker 5: I think the French—I remember reading an article and it was a French mum, an English mum, and the French mum was saying, “We do not say well done, you’re special, congratulations, you’re the best or you’ll be the next something, you’re going to be a superstar, because it’s not helpful for anyone, be you a parent, a child, or whatever. Yeah, we need to get away from that, like, standing on people’s heads to feel value.

Speaker 2: This is a cultural thing, like my mum went to see—I went to see Testament of Mary on Friday. Fiona Shaw acting as the mother of Jesus, telling the story of how the crucifixion sounded, when it was your son being crucified, right?

Speaker 5: Well, he was quite special. I mean that was probably okay!

Speaker 2: But what was interesting about it was that she was saying rather like…I mean, it was sort of like that moment in Monty Python: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!”. “He’s my son”. And so it was by Colm Toibin. It’s based on this very short book. Her point was he’s just my son and there is…an organization was created and been created around him and he’s been forced up as this sacrificial lamb in order for whatever. There was a whole political thing.

But the point of it was—and Fiona Shaw is Irish, from Cork and my mother is Irish and went to see it with some Irish friends of ours and I came out, I called my mother, who’d been to see it the night before, and she said that at the end there as a conversation, there was a Q&A with the director. By the way, the director was her former, like Fiona Shaw and the director—you know Deborah Warner? Yeah, they used to go out and now she directs her? Can you imagine that? Stand over there. Fuck off! Ex-girlfriend over here. Standoff. That’s amazing!

Speaker 6: Fiona Shaw? Isn’t this the person who was in Harry Potter?

Speaker 1: Yeah. She plays Dudley’s mum.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. So anyway, there was a Q&A afterwards and they were talking about—“I played it,” she said. My mother sort of reported this was that she said, you know, it’s a very Irish thing to say you’re nothing, young one. And that’s a very—I would have heard that a lot now, you’r nothing but [Inaudible][16:32] and don’t you forget it. It’s a very helpful way of keeping you grounded and don’t forget where you came from, boy, and these kinds of things. It certainly makes it sound very harsh.

Speaker 4: They have a saying in Liverpool like that

Speaker 2: Yeah! And so this Jewish woman, this old Jewish lady was sitting beside my mother and they began to have a conversation about it. My mother was talking about this is a very Irish thing—her mother would have been like this and Fiona Shaw’s mother would have been like this, and the Jewish lady said, ‘This isn’t how we are at all. In our house, my son can do no wrong.” And that was the cultural, like that’s a cultural difference, like the manner in which we teach our children.

Speaker 6: Will it be the same with their daughters or will it be just the son?

Speaker 2: I don’t know. But is it just that there has been…because America has done enough?

Speaker 5: Well even if your parents say it, because I’m in London. I’ve just got to say I definitely have a little Scouse person on my shoulder going “Don’t get to big for your boots” and you say anything that’s about you and you then self-deprecate and be like ‘oh it was nothing’. Because otherwise the little Scouser will be like “who do you think you are, living in London? Knowing all this?” And you go back to Liverpool, it’s a similar thing. Oh, you’re back home. Who do you think you are? But I think it’s a helpful thing but it can be…it’s a balance, isn’t it? But it is that thing now, even if your family or your culture said it, the fact that the rest of the world that we perceive says who you- if you wanted that, how many people have you got, like what makes you unique rather than…yeah. How do you fit into this cog?

Speaker 1: Do you think it’s because we’re kind of the, well, we’ve had a really, really long period of kind of post-Thatcherite, post-Regan politics where  working people, people who like made things and dug things out of the earth and made their living in ways that are totally commendable and you probably, a hundred years ago, you could be quite proud of making a decent honest wage and being a decent honest person, has been belittled and denigrated and squashed and replaced with robots, to the point where endeavor, and graft, mean nothing. Like I mean, now even if you’re brilliant at something, you don’t say, “Oh god, it took me six years to get that right.” You go, oh yeah it came

Speaker 4: Naturally?

Speaker 2: The thing that crystallizes this, this image, this whole notion for me are the two minute sections on X-factor, whichever one it is, where there was that girl. And this is the first time I’ve ever watched one. I’ve been overseas a lot. This is the first—which one is the one with Abby Alton—

Speaker 4: [Inaudible][19:17]

Speaker 2: So she was a- made me in a kind of whatever.

Speaker 4: But he loved it!

Speaker 2: Right, absolutely! [Inaudible][19:23] but everytime she was on, she would say, “I can’t believe it. I can’t go back to my…” and the notion was—she was on the…

Speaker 4: Staking shelves

Speaker 2: Stacking shelves… She worked behind, she worked on the counter, and the notion that she would have to go back to that was so repellant to the…”Oh, we musn’t get her back to there”. The notion that she was going to get plucked from that rather than earn her wage, get a flat, get a nicer flat, sort yourself out, like that’s completely unacceptable and what we need to do is rescue her from this dowdy existence by plucking her up and turning her into a coke head in three years.

Speaker 4: That Cinderella thing. That’s what’s very, very dangerous. It’s interesting, how do you stand up against it? Part of it probably is that, you know, I mean, I do think there’s a level to it where celebrity doesn’t reward excellence because you can’t be on there and learn excellence.  Long-lived celebrities are excellent and there are some well known people, like, you don’t become a famous Novellist without being a good novelist or a famous theatre director. There is a reward for exellence. There’s a responsibility from those people to talk about how hard it was.

Speaker 3: They’re not the celebrities that are posting pictures of themselves on Facebook, if that’s the case.

Speaker 4: No.

Speaker 3: [Inaudible][20:45]

Speaker 5: More are younger and younger, so they haven’t had it.

Speaker 3: Like poor Miley Cyrus being asked “What does world peace look like?” But people that are that young don’t know world peace looks like. No. The poor girls, you know the teens, don’t be asking them those questions, just because you’re at the top of Google doesn’t mean you know how to fix world peace.

Speaker 1: But that’s what’s really interesting because actually, like Elizabeth I, at 19, was one of the great statespeople. So it isn’t the youth isn’t capable. It’s that we’re not educating it.

Speaker 5: She was born and trained in that, lived with lots of people around her. I think that the young celebrities might be picked at 13 or 14, but it’s still very—

Speaker 6: But they do get a lot of exposure and frankly public office is something that comes with responsibility. Sorry to quote Spiderman, but with great power does comes great responsibility. And at that position, it isn’t good enough to say, you know, “I don’t know” because you are a role model. It is a responsibility you have taken on and it becomes something that you need to do in order to stay where you are or you can gracefully step off and say this is a responsibility that I cannot take on. But if you are a role model for a certain section of society, there is a certain way you have to live, period.

Speaker 4: And I quite admire it when every now and then a politician says, you know what, this is too hard. I need some time to think about it. I mean, I actually think it’s courageous—

Obama has tried, I mean, for all his failings and he has done quite well, is he’s consistently made speeches like look, this is really complicated. Like his first big race speech was brilliant because he said, “Right, look everybody, this isn’t a kind of polarized…” it’s not. It’s a big wiggly, wobbly mess—

Speaker 5: And this is the kind of people you would be asking about this stuff or whatever and all of this stuff, you’d come back and say, “Look, this is not a big issue for the whole of America, so I’m not even going to tell you the answer because you need to know that we should be focused on this paparazzi thing.” And he was really good and I do think a lot of it and I always think this thing about people, is about its creeping up to that selfie and aren’t we lovely and let’s nod to everything, even when we’re secretly talking here, don’t agree with that. There isn’t a culture where it’s encouraged to challenge each other or critiquing each other and be critical friends and say actually Miley, maybe think about the thing before you do it. How many people has she got around her—

Speaker 2: Like Sinead O’Connor did make genuine effort to whether or not she should publish it on the internet or not, I don’t know. But I think that was a genuine effort to engage her and talk about responsibility and savageness comes back and-

Speaker 4: Yeah and if she would’ve had, but it’s that in general, when you’re with your friends, which is sometimes you want to say “Stop with the selfies. Love I’m bored with pictures of your cat. So you love it but do we really need to see it?” The reason and it’s not welcomed or encouraged by us as a society and as individuals. I mean we should, you know…

Speaker 3: To regulate it.

Speaker 4: To regulate it. We don’t regulate each other and we need to.

Speaker 1: So what would that look like?

Speaker 4: Well, wouldn’t it just be like a little, “You talked a lot about yourself there mate, now let’s…” Or you know.

Speaker 2: Just going to quiet down in the next section.

Speaker 4: That thing if you’d like if you love and you respect each other, I think you can say, like, you know, why are you wearing that bikini in December, you know? Surely he’ll like you for your personality…You know, that thing that we could, like parents and siblings do.

Speaker 1: Because cultural values are set by…like my values are set by the collective values of pretty much everyone around me plus my own desire to crusade, you know?

Speaker 4: We’ve all had times where we wanted to say to someone, you know, oh come on, I know you can do better than that or I did you think about that, but we don’t.

Speaker 5: So that’s really interesting because that is a thing that you could teach, isn’t it? I mean, we work in a theatre, I mean in theatre world, there is a very clear, like, this is kind of safe circle, within this space we can say anything to each other.

Speaker 1: And you have to tell people if—

Speaker 5: And we have to do that. If there’s something that can be taught in school, it is about critical thinking and setting up the space that says look, I can critique your work or your behavior. It doesn’t mean I’m critiquing you.

Speaker 4: And we’re doing it. We can all be better.

Speaker 5: And I think the Arts world is quite good at that because it’s inherent, but it didn’t happen in the finance world, for example. It didn’t go. But “look steady on old chap.”

Speaker 1: But you know what? I sort of think about this. I think there’s a lot of narrative about it being about self-aggrandizement and arrogance and not giving someone critical feedback. And actually, I have this sneaking suspicion that the root cause of it is because everyone feels so shit about themselves. Because we’ve got much smaller nuclear families, because we don’t have the large social support system than there were kind of 50 years ago, like there isn’t anything reflecting back at you, telling you what your value is. So—

Speaker 2: Except this broad narrative that gets fed to our media.

Speaker 1: Exactly. The media. So if you look like that, then you have value. So all of that, “Hey, look at my selfie…”

Speaker 4: And I think that’s like when you see it, you know, a guy in a little tiny but very large sports car, I’m thinking, “Oh, bless him. He’s highly insecure.” Someone needs to give him a hug, but other people go “Ohh Amazing!”. I used to always think greed was the thing that caused all the problems in the world, but now I just think it’s insecurity. Ralph Feinnes was talking about Coriolanus and he said he did it because his main motivation was for us to look at Coriolanus’ mum and the relationship he has with his mum and how we need to change those types of relationships, otherwise you end up having a dictator as a son. So okay then. But it was a good critique saying, you know, this guy wasn’t born the devil. How did he end up in this place? Let’s figure it out.

Speaker 1: I’m going to stop there because I let that go on a little bit too long. Now it’s not your fault at all.

Speaker 2: Wrapped it up with Coriolanus.