‘Let’s end the Culture Wars and save all that matters to us in the North’

The Joe Must Go On, a column by Joe Hakim

A look at Arts & Culture, and not always through his rose-tinted monocle

Conservative MP Jake Berry suggested football means more to Northerners than opera and ballet while warning of the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on our culture. Columnist Joe Hakim tells him it’s not about sport versus art - we can have both

In the first entry of my latest feature, Joe’s Understatements of the 21st Century, it’s been a funny couple of weeks. Of course, when I say ‘funny’, what I actually mean is ‘horrible’ and ‘terrifying’.

It’s easy to lose perspective, so I’ve thrown myself into writing and looking for work, only really popping my head above the parapet when absolutely necessary.

This has entailed taking breaks from social media to avoid ‘doom scrolling’, a very heavy-metal sounding name for what essentially boils down to morbidly scanning news feeds for the latest updates on what is turning out to be A Season in Hell.

Oh Rimbaud, I’m managing to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounce on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it. Hey Arthur, it’s called Twitter mate. You missed out.

And so, a couple of weeks ago I made the mistake of peering through the virtual curtain just in time to catch Jake Berry, Conservative MP for Rossendale and Darwen, drop this clanger in Westminster Hall: “For many people who live in London and the south of England, things like the opera house and ballet will be at the heart of their culture.

“But for many of us in the North it is our local football club – our Glyndebourne or Royal Ballet or Royal Opera House or Royal Shakespeare Company will be Blackburn Rovers, Accrington Stanley, Barrow, Carlisle or Sunderland.”

The former Norther Powerhouse Minister then went on to release another statement, in which he ‘clarified’ his previous statement: “No one is saying football doesn’t exist in the South or that ballet doesn’t exist in the North. And no one is saying that a thriving football league is more important than a thriving arts sector.

“What we are saying is that many of our working communities in the North are built around our football clubs, and disproportionately those clubs now find themselves on the precipice of financial collapse…”

It’s difficult to know where to begin, but here we go. This whole framing of arts v sports as some sort of battle for cultural supremacy has played out through my entire experience in education – both as a pupil at secondary school, and later in my role as an educator – so there’s something depressingly inevitable about Berry’s comments.

Statements like these help to seed cultural divisions by placing false equivalence on the ‘value’ of one form of culture other another, while simultaneously reinforcing the stereotype that us Northern folk need nowt more than football and the pub to get by.

And while there is no doubt about the challenges facing football and other local sports clubs and organisations, every part of the cultural sector in the North is facing similar challenges, and Berry’s initial statement infers that art plays a lesser role in the heart of our culture.

For the last couple of years, I’ve worked with schools and colleges around the region with charities like First Story on creative writing projects in an extra-curricular capacity.

I’m there in the capacity of a writer-in-residence as opposed to formal teaching, and the main objective is to create poems and stories for the sake of creating poems and stories, the idea being to support students that have an interest in creative writing in all its many forms by hosting what would have been referred to as an ‘after-school club’ in times gone by.

Excuse me for second while I wipe the dust from my rose-tinted monocle.

As part of the residencies, we are encouraged to work with other teachers and staff, and I recall on one occasion being invited to a formal staff meeting to talk about the upcoming work I would be doing. This particular school had been traditionally seen as a ‘sports school’, and over the years several students had gone on to find success as professional athletes.

After rattling on for a few minutes, giving it the ‘Hakim Big Sell’, I asked if anyone had any thoughts or questions.

“This all sounds very nice,” a bloke’s voice piped up. “But what’s it for?”

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but at some point we have collectively bought into the myth that if you have the misfortune to be born into a working-class community, excellence in sports provides one of the only real opportunities to ‘escape’. That athletic ability and prowess are a ladder that can enable a young person to transcend their background and class, to climb out of poverty.

Ironically, one of the reasons this myth resonates so strongly with us is because it is the archetypal tale of ‘rags to riches’ - a story we can’t get enough of, as author Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his The Shape of Stories lecture.

‘WORKING-CLASS COMMUNITIES ARE NOT BUILT AROUND A SINGLE CULTURAL PILLAR’: Joe Hakim. Picture by Neil Holmes Photography

And it’s odd that it’s acceptable to tell kids from working-class communities that they can have serious aspirations about ‘making it’ as an Olympic athlete or a Premier League footballer, for example, but the notion that they can find a career in the arts beyond a shot at stardom on a televised talent-show is somehow absurd.

But perhaps my biggest issue with Berry’s statement is the inference that all working-class communities are built around a single cultural pillar. Because while we use culture to help us escape our circumstances, we also need culture to work as a catalyst to help change our circumstances.

Look no further than the recent work Artlink has undertaken around Spring Bank with Magdalena Moses and artists like Shaz Darley, or the work Sergei Komkov has recently undertaken around Peel Street with Absolutely Cultured. It shouldn’t need saying, but art is at the heart of all communities, irrespective of geography, social or economic conditions. 

It shouldn’t be a matter of priority; when trying to figure out how we protect and support cultural development and opportunities in the North during the pandemic, it shouldn’t be a one-thing-or-the-other scenario. And I think it’s safe to say we’re sick to the back teeth of being at the back of the class again, sticking our hand up to say: “Well, we happen to like art in Hull, and we create loads of it. We like sport too. Can’t we have both please?”

Why make ridiculous comparisons between institutions like the Royal Shakespeare Company and football clubs like Accrington Stanley?

Instead, I’d like Berry to consider an institution like Hull Truck Theatre. A company which was founded in 1971 and has gone on to become part of Hull’s cultural landscape, still at the heart of its community nearly fifty years later. An institution that over the years has featured great work like John Godber’s Up ‘N Under and Dave Windass’ Sully; inspired by and produced in collaboration with the sporting community.

Not only am I tired of the idea of ‘Culture Wars,’ the brutal reality is that everything is in turmoil right now, all of our institutions and organisations in the North are facing a bleak future.

And in the upcoming battles to preserve and protect these fundamental aspects of our shared identities, it’s not going to be sport versus art; in the hearts of our communities there’s room for both, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, because it’s bigger than that.

We’re in a survival situation now.

It’s all or nothing.