Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project in Bradford 150215 Question 5

Question 5

Is there really a North-South Divide? What differences are there?

Sunday Lunch Project in Bradford 150215 Q4: Is there really a North South divide? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project in Bradford 150215 Question 4

Question 4

How much is enough?

The Sunday Lunch Project in Bradford 150215 Q3: How much is enough? by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord on Mixcloud

Recordings: The Sunday Lunch Project in Bradford 150215 Question 3

Question 3

Why is Britain Broken? And can we fix it or is it a case of make do and mend?

Sunday Lunch Project 150215 Q3:Why is Britain Broken? And can we fix it or must we make do and mend? 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

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.

                   

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

Question 2

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

The recording lasts about 27 minutes. There's a bit of chit chat at the beginning before we get into the nitty gritty of the question.

Because this is a fabby new audio widget, it may take a minute to load the play icon below.

Transcripts: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14: Question 1

The world as we know it is going to change in our lifetime, and while we can see it coming, are we prepared for what it means for us and for our children?

Speaker 1: First topic then we can go help yourself to whatever you want. Just yell if you want more to drink or something different, I’ll do my best. So this is salad leaves and figs and soft cheese--it’s not goat’s cheese—and pomegranate. It’s quite light because it’s baked chicken and ratatouille for main, which will be nice but quite hot. And then Eton mess for pudding, because it’s summer. Okay, who wants to pick the first one.

Speaker 2: The world as we know it is going to change in our lifetime, and while we can see it coming, are we prepared for what it means for us and for our children?

Speaker 3: All right. Does whoever’s question that is have anything to say about it or should we just jump in?

Speaker 4: That’s my question and when I sent it, I’m not sure what frame of mind I was in. But I was thinking about it this morning and I guess, as my son asked me to remember, I need to start with the definition of what I mean by change. And I think when I was asked that question, what I was talking about was changing values, changing dynamics, and about people’s willingness to embrace that change. So countries, when I was growing up, a country ethnicity was quite, you know, was not a big issue.

You generally saw people who are the same as you. Now every country you have people from different countries who come to anywhere without meeting people who have just been around any old city for maybe five years, 10 years, as against you who may have been born and brought up over there. Because if the family is changing, it no longer is the kind of joint family system that I grew up knowing. It’s leading to a nuclear family and now the concept of what comprises a family is changing and this is what our children are used to. And sometimes, when you talk to them, it’s okay to accept but you need to understand where they’re coming from in order to be able to accept and support, so that’s what I meant when I proposed that question.

Speaker 3: So I guess it’s kind of about changes with reference to globalization rather than—

Speaker 4: Well, I mean that’s what I mean when I say, well, to define that, you know, if you’re going to talk about being environmental impact, then that’s a different kind of change. So we’d first have to probably agree what change we’re going to talk about. If you’re going to talk about the petrol war, then that’s a different change because by the time they grow up, it’s going to be a different fuel system and everything. So what I proposed it, probably I was talking about more of the cultural thing, but it’s an open question, you know. You can approach it from any angle.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Speaker 5: Within 20 minutes.

Speaker 2: With a nice bow around it.

Speaker 3: I di think it’s amazing what you can sort out..

Speaker 5: The world in 20 minutes, right.

Speaker 3: I think, I don’t know, like I think it’s one of those things that you can only be prepared for that kind of cultural change by almost growing up within it because  I notice really big generational differences between, for example, me and my parents. And they live in a foreign country, they really travel loads. They grew up in a relatively multi-cultural society themselves and—

Speaker 2: Where was that?

Speaker 3: And well, and—no, it’s all right. That was the pomegranate. [laughter] Yeah, in Wolverhampton. My mum’s from the Midlands and my dad’s from Manchester. So as very small children, they were relatively—well, they weren’t multi-cultural, but then kind of from the time they were 10 onwards, so they’re post war. Things became really, really different. So I guess I mean in terms of how they lived, they’re used to it. They’re used to just meeting different people. But not nearly on the scale that we are because we’re in London and it’s a big city and everybody’s from somewhere else.

So I guess we kind of take that more in our stride and I think that generation that first dealt with a big influx of people from other places, does that whole thing of like what you’re allowed to ask and what are the hot topics and what is the common ground. But then when that’s a bit more normal, you’re like well, the common ground is the same thing with everybody else when we normally talk about your jobs and your kids and the weather. The weather.

And then I see my sister’s kids, they’ve grown up even more diverse society and they’re the coolest kids ever because they know so much more stuff that I didn’t know because they have friends from all around the world, so they eat paella and they eat curries and they eat Mexican food. I didn’t even know what paella was when I was 15. Does that make sense?

Man 2: They don’t have the sort of cultural cringe. They are able to talk, to different ethnicities and go what are you eating? Rather tan going “Ohh No” (awkward noise) I should know what you’re eating  and doing that awful British awkward thing of “I’m unable to ask anyone from a different culture what’s actually going on” without fear. I think that’s an important thing to try and work against and that’s probably what’s enviable about a younger generation, their isn’t that thing about fear. But it’s interesting watching Nigel Farage being eviscerated on radio today (its always a joy) but how…because if you’re setting policy, you have to set policy on the assumption of change, not the abolition of change because it feels like then the argument is how do we stop it. It’s not going to stop, that’s just not an option. The option is how do you adapt well? Not how can you prevent?

Speaker 3: The definition of British has changed, it is changing because I think that’s the thing with a lot of that UKIP narrative. I mean, whatever it is that they thing British is, I don’t recognize that in my lifetime and I’m pretty sure that people older than me don’t either.

Speaker 6: They made a terrible assumption of everybody over 50 is basically just going, “Damn these brown people!” It’s not true. But that’s what this sort of thing, Nigel Farage assumes older people are just like that. I’m not sure that’s inherently true of being an older person.

Speaker 3:          And actually that, like in terms of how the cultural influx is. Like for example here, up the road in Stockwell, we’ve got massive South American, Hispanic, Portuguese speaking communities. In Brixton there’s a really, really big West Indian community. Then if you go down to Tooting, there are Indian and Pakistani communities and then there’s Chinatown. Like the different, really massive groups of people. They’re not all that, like, that “we don’t like brown people” thing. They’re Europeans, they’re Poles, they’re Romanians, they’re French, isn’t there a massive French contingent in London?

Speaker 4: But I guess one of the interesting words, there was something that I wanted to pick up in what you’ve said but also you used the word fear and I think that’s interesting and that comes back to the heart of my question because we’d like to believe that we’re living in a world where there are no rules.

It’s like everybody’s talking about freedom but think about all the rules that we give our younger generation. Don’t talk about politics, don’t talk about religion, don’t ask another question about this, don’t ask them, you know? We tell them everything that they cannot do and that makes accepting change even more difficult because we notice groups of communities as this that and the other, but they’re what? They’re studying together, they’re growing up together, and they don’t really recognize.

My son came here when he was five. He doesn’t see himself as Indian. As far as he’s concerned, he’s British. So when people talk about India in class and they look at him, he’s just like, “Why are you looking at me? I really don’t know anything about India”.

So it’s about that, you know? It’s about people being hesitant to ask questions about how other people live. They’re curious, but they don’t know what to ask because who knows what’s going to offend whom?

Speaker 5: Also it makes them look ignorant as well and no one likes to put themselves out there like I don’t know the answer because we’re all told that you should know everything and you’re vulnerable if you suggest that you might be able to learn something from someone, whatever age you are. So then how much of it’s about backgrounds and race and how much is about fear in terms of our own, I don’t know, insecurities, really?

Speaker 6: But that’s a very interesting thing to try and teach, isn’t it? It’s the confidence to be vulnerable and their courage to ask the dumb question.

Speaker 5: And to always learn. That’s the thing I loved about reading your website was, you know, let’s be open, honest with each other, and come to learn things and to challenge our views because that’s the only way we learn really, and grow and mature, and to carry on figuring out things rather than thinking we know everything. And we know that this is our island and this is the way it has been and this is the way it should be.

Speaker 3: Which is a bit silly because an island that’s like made up—I mean, we’re mongrels, like we’re made up of so many different peoples—I’m sure that’s totally a wrong word to use—

Speaker 5: You can edit that on transcript.

Speaker 3: No, no. I’m not. Because I grew up partly in another country but all my blood is British and I talk about myself as a cultural mongrel. I’m all sorts of things, I don’t quite belong anywhere.

Speaker 5: You’ve got an identity crisis…

Speaker 3: I’ve got a bit of an identity crisis! I have! And for me, the growing up is so much more important —where I grew up and what that is because it’s so much important than whatever this blood is.

Speaker 6: Which country? Where was it?

Speaker 3: Crete in Greece, which is, there’s a lot of similarities but a lot of massive differences that you really don’t expect. And I think, because that’s one of the things that bothers me, I think maybe the way we talk about cultural difference is really outdated because we live in this world of identity politics and we talk about the black community or the Pakistani community or the Muslim community or the women’s vote or…fuck off! I don’t agree with most women I meet. So just kind of how… I think there’s still this narrative of compartmentalization and that just isn’t how it works. And it isn’t how its ever worked really.

Speaker 2: But the trouble is it is how it works in terms of being incredibly effective in politics, in terms of getting votes. I mean, the reason that it’s such a pervasive way of discussing is because, you know, massive data and the way, particularly in American politics, the way that they were able to disaggregate people to figure out if you get out that vote in that district and not this district, the Democrats will win or the Republicans will win. So I agree with you completely that it’s an incredibly unhelpful and dominant narrative but the problem is it’s too difficult to dismiss as useless…

Speaker 5:          But there’s no alternative of doing that at the moment. But also human nature is that we want to feel part of the tribe, whatever that is, whether that’s a subculture, whether that’s a background or income issue, we still, as much as we like to say we treat everyone the same, as soon as we meet people, we have a view of them and we try and connect in set ways to make ourselves feel comfortable.

So I think that’s human nature which is why it’s so scary when UKIP and people and any market in general talks in certain ways, like, you know, you’ll be more liked if you look as pretty as this woman and you’ll be viewed differently if you’re this way. Everything is…

Speaker 3: But don’t you think that the simplicity of that, of that reflex, that reductive, it’s a tool for control? Like I feel like one of my things for doing this is like I feel like somewhere out there, there are people that actively profit from making us all kind of fight.

Speaker 5: Absolutely! Yeah.

Speaker 3: And it’s not like I can identify, like I can broadly identify them in a kind of imaginative, fussy way, but I can’t point to one guy and say you own the plot, you know?

Speaker 4: I’ve been looking at the drop, the election manifestos, which are being dropped in my post box as elections draw near, and some of the stuff is just absolutely atrocious that I just think, you know, let alone offending me because I don’t subscribe to some of the views of these parties, but this is just downright unacceptable! How can you say things like this? Some of the stuff that they write and it literally is designed to make people look at each other with suspicion—

Speaker 2: Wedge politics.

Speaker 4: You know? Yeah, that’s politics. So I just think that…I would like that most people question but there are a percentage of people who don’t question who are easy to influence. You have a moral duty towards your nation. You can’t go about saying stuff that’s going to just get people angry and divisive and—

Speaker 3: Stuff that’s going to sow social division and aggression and fear.

Speaker 4: Absolutely! We don’t really need any more of that.

Speaker 5: I think it’s much more pronounced that outside of London as well because it’s where you do have more kind of tight-knit communities of people who are predominantly the minority, then it becomes a lot more difficult to kind of make that less vitriolic and less kind of scare mongering and less difficult to manage, I think.

And particularly, I’m from the North East and for years and years and years and years there was one girl in my school who was from Iran and she was a refugee from Iran and she was like this amazingly glamorous person because no one had ever seen anybody like her. Nobody kind of knew what to do with her and she was just like everyone else and wore DMs and went to the pub. There wasn’t just enough of that mixture.

Now there’s a lot of Polish people and there’s a lot of anger about the people who used to work down the mines, you know, don’t have jobs, and the Polish people had come and they got all the jobs in the factories and it’s like, “okay, but you don’t want that that job”.

Speaker 3: Exactly. And to be honest, if someone who barely speaks English who doesn’t have any connections in this country can come and steal your job, it’s because you’re shit at it.

Speaker 5: Or because you don’t want to do it.

Speaker 3: Or you don’t want to do it.

Speaker 4: Or you don’t want to live on less than minimum wage. Beacause that’s what a lot of these jobs are.

Speaker 7: And there are nice benefits because a lot of them have got nice sick pay from white finger treading down the line. Why give up a cushy life to work in a chicken factory?

Speaker 2: So yeah, I want to just pivot because I can see the clock. Let’s get back to the question because I agree with this completely, this notion. Because what we’re talking about, I think, are a set of issues that have been the most disgust for us in generation in terms of difference. And I think ethnicity and race had been big issues in terms of our cohort post-war, let’s say probably two generations. I don’t know how you define a generation.

But while it would sound incredibly strange, I want to talk about the Eurovision winner and when we talk about—because that’s about, like, that’s one of the last things that I feel I don’t know how to ask questions about transgender issues. [LGBT] I get now. I have gay friends, I have lesbian friends, but I don’t get it. And I don’t get what I don’t get about it and I find it weird. I’ve just spent a few months in San Francisco and I really—I lived with a drag queen and it was just really interesting, like I was like I don’t know what I’m not supposed to say, what words I’m not supposed to say, what—

Speaker 5: Are you a he, are you a she, are you…?

Speaker 2: Yeah! He or she. And we were totally gullible as we were walking here because the Gogglebox program, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, where they watch TV and you watch their reactions. It’s sort of kind of cross-section of the world and their reactions to. But watching people around the country react to this, I mean, I did the same.

Is that a man or a woman? Is it offensive if I say he? I don’t know. Is it she? The reason I bring it up is because I think that, for a generation coming up behind me is an issue that they probably…I think they’ve probably scaled the walls of race and ethnicity and I taught in Streatham for six months in a class that couldn’t have represented more diversity in terms of the looks and the way that everybody was, but that’s one of the things I wonder whether if I’m looking for issues that haven’t yet been digested—

Speaker 7: Yeah, I don’t really believe in marriage and same sex marriage and yeah, it’s really interesting. But I think that’s what’s so exciting in way it’s that you are asking questions. I’ve got some friends who are gay, lesbian, bi, and then trans, so going through the change in different places. And I think the best thing to do is just go, “Right, so what’s your name?” and then they tell you whatever name they want and you talk normally and then if it comes up you go, “Oh, I don’t really know what to say about that.”

I got asked to go to a binding session with my friend Gregory, who is going from female to male, and I textsed back going, ‘Book binding! I’ve always loved to do that again” And she went, “No, it’s binding my breasts.” I was like, “Oh, okay!” I’m freaked out a bit. And I think we were just so open with each other that she was just like, “You don’t have to but I need someone to help me.”

Speaker 2: I don’t understand what that is.

Speaker 7: So you’re flat-chested. It’s like a bandage around…

Speaker 2: But it’s like a permanent procedure?

Speaker 7: No, you just do it daily if you want to, you know.

Speaker 2: I understand that. But why would that be a one of session?

Speaker 7: It was a training for people who wanted to learn how to do it daily and do it well, so you didn’t hurt yourself or do it too tight or…and I thought it was book binding and I didn’t think. She knew. You know, she was figuring out what she was doing and now she’s completely a man but it was really…I think it was really good. We were both just very open on how do we talk about this elephant in the room when we need to and how do we not fixate on it when it’s more than who you are.

Speaker 4: That’s very trusting because we have this phrase called coming out of the closet. And I just think that that’s something that people do one fine day. But it’s not. They’ve got to go through their own nightmares. It’s something that they are learning to do, somebody’s teaching them how to live that way, so yeah. That’s really interesting.

Speaker 3: And every time you meet someone new, you’ve kind to have to go through a version of that process again. And I think that’s the thing, like, there’s this cultural setup where it’s like, “Hey everybody!” and then everyone knows and that’s easy, but I don’t think it really works that way.

Speaker 7: Why should you have to go through it every time? Like I didn’t watch Eurovision but I saw the image of the person who won and why, you know, it’s not their entire being, so it’s not like I’m straight away, when you’re going to ask everyone where are you from, what’s your background, it’s interesting you’ve got skin in this color or that you’ve decided to grow a beard or have a shaved head. It’s not everything, is it? So I think that’s what’s quite nice about kids as well, it’s because everything’s so new and they just feel—

Speaker 5: They honestly don’t understand what we’re making a big deal of. They just take it in their stride.

Speaker 3: I think that’s the thing. Because I do a lot of work in the queer community and with trans-people and you name it, on the spectrum, I’ve probably met somebody. So there’s something about just approaching those conversations in a really honest way. Just like you would be like, “I don’t know what kind of fish is this.” Like if you were buying it in a shop, right? Just be really honest, “I don’t understand. Could you tell me?”

Speaker 7: And within the context of, you know, if you were talking about what wine do you want, you shouldn’t go, “Let me just interrupt to ask you what your identity is.”

Speaker 2: What’s underneath your slacks or I can’t choose the wine until I know what’s happening downstairs, you know what I mean now? Just do I want red wine? I don’t know. You know? But doesn’t it completely depend whether we’re talking about the children in the school. Whether we’re talking about kind of hicks in Alabama, like it only happens if a child or an adult comes across somebody and goes, “So what’s that story then?” and in innocence and respectful terms.

And it’s only the extent to which we have blended kind of races and ethnicities in the country, we’re all going to get to grips with the lingo over what kind of—like how do I approach this conversation and then the normalization of it. And it just strikes me that that might be something that the generation coming up behind us might be more exposed to as a result, much more kind of comfortable.

Speaker 7: Woo-hoo! Cheers to that! On to the next one.

Speaker 3: Okay, so we’re going to take a brief break and going to clear these plates and I’m going to get the next course.