Generation of children could lose vital cultural skills, says Nicholas Serota

An entire generation of children could lose the cultural skills both they and the UK need if the government goes ahead with its English Baccalaureate plans without the arts as a core subject, the Tate director,Nicholas Serota, said on Thursday.

Serota used the launch of his organisation's annual report to urge ministers to rethink their plans for the EBacc certificates, which will replace GCSEs.

He said the arts should be a fourth "R" alongside reading, writing and arithmetic. "The proposals do not provide for the arts as being one of the core subjects and the way in which the proposals have been formulated makes it very clear that art, design, music, drama and dance will be pushed to the margin with very little time in the curriculum for those subjects.

"We regard cultural learning as being more important than ever and we think that the arts have a primary role to play in a world that is dependent on literacy of all kinds, including visual."

Serota said it was a more important matter than even the debate about public cuts to arts spending because it affected every child in the country and "it is about the kind of society that we want to have in 20 years' time".

He added: "There is a real risk that fewer and fewer schools will provide learning opportunities in the arts. The UK's leading edge in creativity may be lost. We cannot deprive an entire generation of children of the cultural skills that they will need."

Serota is the latest of many to express concern at the proposals as they stand. Among the many voices Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, said: "It is as if the Olympics never happened. Design – gone, technology – gone, music – gone. This shortsighted, wholesale attack on secondary music education will emasculate not only our world class music education system but also our entire creative economy."

Earlier this year Darren Henley published a well received report into cultural learning after which the government said it would publish a national plan by early autumn.

That plan is still awaited. Serota said: "Everyone recognises there have been many things on the plate of the DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] over the summer of the Olympics, but we earnestly hope that the national plan will be published before Christmas."

Tate's annual report highlighted some of its 516 acquisitions to the collection over the past year. They include works gifted by artists, such as Martin Creed giving a neon work with the words "DON'T WORRY", and works purchased, such as nearly 10 cubic metres of Ai Weiwei's sunflower seeds and 58 photographs by Lewis Baltz, which make up a series called San Quentin Point 1982.

The chairman of trustees, Lord Browne, said Tate now got the majority of its funding, 61%, from private and not public sources. "Over the past five years Tate has increased its self-generated income by 15%, compared to the 5% increase in grant-in-aid."

It was also announced that it has raised three-quarters of the capital costs for its ongoing £215m extension while all the money was raised for the £45m Tate Britain redevelopment that will, among other things, allow the first floor to be opened to the public for the first time since 1928.

Guardian.co.uk

RETROMANIA: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past By Simon Reynolds

Dummy magazine's "The 10 Best Modern Music Books": #1. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction To Its Own Past "There’s no doubting technology’s ability to reproduce and discover art and artists of the past has had an impact on the retrogressive eye of contemporary culture and music. Whether you agree with his polemical tract, Simon Reynolds’s era-defining book is as essential as it gets."

"The best book I read recently is Retromania by Simon Reynolds. It's fantastic. Reading Simon Reynolds is like getting in a warm bath"--Jason Schwartzman, GQ Style

Visit Simon Reynolds Blog

http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/

Plan B's iLL Manors: 'This is the true, dark reality'

The song inspired by last year's riots has now become a film. Plan B, aka Ben Drew, explains why he was driven to make it.

"A lot of people outside this environment don't believe it exists," he continues. "So in the film, rather than glamorise it, I'm trying to say to people this is the true, dark reality. This is what happens. It's not cool. No drug dealer really has the last laugh."

Dark reality is, if anything, an understatement. The film is an unapologetic and at times unnerving and uncomfortable drama, a depiction of life in the most unloved and unforgiving streets of east London, seen through the interwoven lives of its dysfunctional characters, linked and part-narrated by six new Plan B tracks. Starring established British actors such as Riz Ahmed (aka rapper Riz MC) and Natalie Press alongside unknowns such as Keith Coggins (Drew's godfather in real life) and Ryan De La Cruz, it shows the spirals of hopelessness and violence that vulnerable individuals can easily be sucked in to.

ILL Manors is not a manifesto or a direct polemic, but, like many of the best protest artforms, concentrates on capturing a mood – of desolation and anxiety. Rather than judging or preaching, it's more concerned with encouraging debate about the root of the problems it presents and demonstrating how they can have a domino effect on people's lives. It's also a surprisingly accomplished piece of work for a directorial debut and Drew, you could argue, is becoming a much-needed spokesman for an alienated sector of our society that feels it doesn't have a voice.

"I just wanted to say, 'They're not all scum,'" says Drew of his characters. "They act the way they do because of the shit that happened to them that wasn't their fault. It's not your fault if your parents abandon you and put you in a home. It's not your fault, but there comes a time when you have to take responsibility for your actions. But for a lot of them, there's no one there saying, 'All that shit that happened to you in the past is fucked up, man, and I feel really sorry for you, but you're just repeating that bad and negative energy through what you're doing and you can't keep blaming the past for the way you're acting now.'"

Read the full interview/article: The Guardian

Guardian Readers recommend: songs about teenagers – results

Youth is wasted on the young, as jealous old George Bernard Shaw once said. But that didn't seem true of the subjects of many songs you suggested last week. Anyway, with grownups hurling so many brickbats at them, who can blame teenagers for throwing the odd strop?

"It's only teenage wasteland." So sang the Who on Baba O'Riley. Though as RR commenter treefrogdemon says, "Why is it a teenage wasteland? Dunno." But incoherence is part of the teenager's lot, and anyone who's been 15 will feel the uncontained rage in the song, happily rescued from Pete Townshend's abandoned concept album Lifehouse (abandoned because only Townshend understood the concept).

Rock'n'roll began life as music for teenagers, and progenitor Eddie Cochran knew his audience. Teenage Heaven consists of a list of demands that will strike a chord with all disaffected teens: "I want to stay up all night … Just give me some time on my hands/ I want to make my own private plans."

Punk, like rock'n'roll, was to a large extent teenagers making music for teenagers. Hence Teenage Treats by the Wasps, east London youths whose musical career was on the skids before they were old enough to vote.

You've got to hand it to Atari Teenage Riot, whose eponymous debut single gleefully imbued the thrills of rave with the snottiest punk attitude. Rave plays a role too in the Killers' When You Were Young: it's half stadium rock anthem, with a Bruce Springsteen-esque nostalgia for mythical youth, and half house euphoria. And Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet may be self-consciously "classic", but recasts the age-old tale of star-crossed teen lovers to the rock era in a way even Springsteen must have envied.

The Beach Boys' hymn to teenage solitude, In My Room, was an early attempt by Brian Wilson to create music he described as "teenage symphonies to God". The Beach Boys also recorded So Young, a cover of a 1958 hit by doowoppers the Students. The Ronettes' version is right up there, Ronnie Spector's voice full of not-quite-innocent heartbreak, Phil Spector's production all heavenly strings and choirs of angels.

The Teenagers' F*ck Nicole ("so teenage, so French" as RR regular Japanther says) is full of surprises: backwards verses, superfluous swearing and a Gallic Lou Reed detailing an adolescent career off the rails. But hang on. Japanese popstrels Scandal were nominated by Hoshino Sakura, who says Beauteen's about "being a teenager, pretty and love … the perfect antidote to all the teenage angst from the Smiths!"

No Smiths in this week's playist, but the Flamin' Groovies are in garage rock mode on Teenage Head, focusing on sexual frustration and aggression. First line: "I'm a monster!" And there's more cartoon parent-worrying from the Ramones in Teenage Lobotomy: "Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/ that I got no cerebellum." A contender, surely, for the best lyric ever. And I loved RR commenter llamalpaca's description of adolescence as portrayed in the Regents' skinny-tie classic 7-Teen: "Knocking on the door of adulthood but not getting in."

Here's the playlist:

Baba O'Riley – The Who

Teenage Heaven – Eddie Cochran

Teenage Treats – The Wasps

ATR – Atari Teenage Riot

When You Were Young (Lindbergh Palace remix) – The Killers

Romeo and Juliet – Dire Straits

In My Room – The Beach Boys

So Young – The Ronettes

F*ck Nicole – The Teenagers

Beauteen – Scandal

Teenage Head – Flamin' Groovies

Teenage Lobotomy – Ramones

7-Teen – The Regents

* Listen to these songs on a YouTube playlist

* Read all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog, from which the songs above are selected

* Here's a Spotify playlist containing readers' recommendations on this theme

• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012

The Codes of Gender

Written and directed by MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape, showing how one of American popular culture's most influential forms communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.

Off Book: Visual Culture Online

For decades now, people have joined together online to communicate and collaborate around interesting imagery. In recent years, the pace and intensity of this activity has reached a fever pitch. With countless communities engaging in a constant exchange, building on each others’ work, and producing a prodigious flow of material, we may be experiencing the early stages of a new type of artistic and cultural collaboration. In this episode of Off Book, we’ll speak with a number of Internet experts and artists who'll give us an introductory look into this intriguing new world.

Taste: Cultural Products

What Is Culture For You?

Film created by the youths of Konratpunkt (Germany), for the euro-Mediterranean forume " What place for Culture in Europe of tomorrow? " Montepllier (France), July 2-3, 2009, as part of European plan EUROMEDINCULTURE (s) Citizenship

Groups: Goths

The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from the 19th century Gothic literature along with horror films and to a lesser extent the BDSMculture.

The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. The music of the Goth subculture encompasses a number of different styles including Gothic rock, Deathrock, Ethereal, and Neoclassical. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punkand Victorian style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with dark attire, makeup and hair.

Source: Wikipedia

Charlie Brooker: I'm all for sharing, but why the online obsession with revealing every detail of your life?

Charlie Brooker

guardian.co.uk 29/1/12

Facebook and Spotify automatically want to share my every waking action, so that I'm like a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll.

Sharing. Now there's a basic social concept that has somehow got all out of whack. The idea behind sharing is simple. Let's say I'm a caveman. I hunt and slaughter a bison, but I can't eat it all myself, so I share the carcass with others, many of whom really appreciate it, such as my infirm 86-year-old neighbour who hasn't had a proper meal in weeks because he is incapable of killing anything larger than a woodlouse. Have you tried grilling a woodlouse? It's scarcely worth the effort.

But it's not all bison meat. Let's say I am still a caveman. The other thing I share is information: the thoughts inside my head or stirring tales of the things I have done. I grunt a hilarious anecdote about the time I dropped a huge rock on a duck and an egg popped out, and mime scandalous gossip about well-known tribesmen. I'm the life and soul of the cave-party.

All this sharing served a purpose. It kept the community fed, as well as entertained and informed. Now zip forward to the present day and, like I say, sharing has somehow got all out of whack. A small percentage of the population hoards more bison meat than it could eat in 2,000 lifetimes, awarding itself huge bison meat bonuses on top of its base-rate bison meat "salary". I say "bison meat". In case you hadn't noticed, I'm using it as a clever metaphor for money.

Sharing is for the rest of us. Not sharing money or bison meat, but personal information. Where we are. What we're doing. Share it! Make it public! Go on! It's fun!

Increasingly, I stumble across apps and services that expect me to automatically share my every waking action on Facebook and Twitter. The key word here is "automatically". Take Spotify, the streaming music service. I have written before about my admiration for Spotify, about what a technical marvel it is. A world of music at your fingertips! Incredible!

The love affair was doomed. Spotify recently reinvented itself as a kind of adjunct to Facebook and has subsequently adopted some truly hideous "social features". For instance: it will tell other people what you're listening to, live. Yes, you can switch this feature off. That's not the point. The point is that it does it by default. By default. IT DOES IT BY DEFAULT.

When Sony launched the Walkman back in the late 70s, its main appeal was that for the first time in history you could stroll down the high street listening to Neil Diamond belting out Sweet Caroline and no one could judge you for it. It made you the master of a private world of music. If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for sharing thoughts, no matter how banal (as every column I have ever written rather sadly proves). Humans will always babble. If someone wants to tweet that they can't decide whether to wear blue socks or brown socks, then fair enough. But when sharing becomes automated, I get the heebie-jeebies. People already create exaggerated versions of themselves for online consumption: snarkier tweets, more outraged reactions. Online, you play at being yourself. Apply that pressure of public performance to private, inconsequential actions – such as listening to songs in the comfort of your own room – and what happens, exactly?

It'll only get worse. Here's what I am listening to on Spotify. This is the page of the book I am reading. I am currently watching the 43rd minute of a Will Ferrell movie. And I'm not telling you this stuff. The software is. I am a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll.

You know how annoying it is when you're sitting on the train with a magazine and the person sitting beside you starts reading over your shoulder? Welcome to every single moment of your future. Might as well get used to it. It's an experience we'll all be sharing.

Yes, sharing. A basic social concept that's somehow got all out of whack.

Feminism and the media

Feminism and the media

View more presentations from Rob McMinn

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in Interpersonal Communication

Interpersonal Communications Model

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy/NVC

This experiment explores common situations to test to see what variables are more likely to elicit a protective response from strangers. A normal-looking woman leaves her belongings unattended at the beach and a man (part of the experiment) comes by and steals her Ipod and speakers. No one really helps, though they notice, but if the normal-looking woman makes small talk with people nearby, they are much more likely to respond to the thief.

Switch the normal-looking woman for someone much more attractive and things change. She doesn't have to even make small talk - people step in to react when the thief steals her things but the difference is they all noticed her more... because we notice beautiful people, we're more aware of them when they're near us. Take that same beautiful woman, though, and tell her to come on to another woman's husband a bit... she's suddenly not someone to just observe, she becomes a threat and is treated quite differently.

We've been talking about Attribution theory, how we categorize people and assume qualities they have based on how they fit into our schemas, or prior categories of knowledge. Beautiful people are considered differently - we assume if they are beautiful then they are also all the other positive qualities: moral, intelligent, honest, caring, good, etc.

Men and woman obviously categorize people visually by different criteria. The most attractive looking women were rated as very friendly by men but rated in the middle by women. Very attractive women seem to be read as a threat by other women, as is the example in one scenario of this video. Maybe is there an example here of an Attribution theory error - the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy... where the woman treated the beautiful woman (in the experiment) based on her initial impression of her and then looked for behaviour from the woman to confirm that initial impression.

UK Tribes

Groupthink

Definitions of Culture

What is culture? Try writing a definition for yourself.
 Now read the definitions below. Which ones do you agree with? Which ones do you disagree with and why?

"Culture used to be so simple. Culture use to mean art, literature, and ideas. And not just any old art, literature, and ideas. Culture was High Art, Great Literature, and Big Ideas. And more particularly, our High Art, Great Literature, and Big Ideas."

"Culture is a collection of beliefs, values and ways of doing things which are typical of a particular community and which are expressed and perpetuated through various codes"

"Culture - a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and literature, but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour"

"Culture. the best that has been thought and said in the world"

"Culture is the constant process of producing meanings for and from our social experience"

"It's alleged by the media - and our culture - are "dumbing down", abandoning brain for sentiment, rigour for raucousness, standards for commercial success."

"Mass culture is very, very democratic: it absolutely refuses to discriminate against, or between, anything or anybody."

"The cultural order of our day still tells us that Schoenberg is superior to Presley; many people go along with that."

Re-posted from: communicationandculture.co.uk

Is Twilight's Bella Swan a bad role model?

Feminists and academics are concerned that 'Twilight' heroine Bella Swan, a teenager who falls in love with a vampire, presents them with a poor role model. Does 'Twilight: New Moon' promote unhealthy relationships?

Bella is bad for young girls: The character of Bella sends a "dangerous" and "discouraging" message to young girls everywhere, says Krystal Clark in Screen Crave. The "constant influence of the male figures in her life," especially vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen, leaves her with "no identity of her own." The film's "nonchalant attitude" toward this is harmful, especially to "women in her age group who are starting to date for the first time."

Falling in love is not anti-feminist: These "quote-unquote feminist arguments" against 'Twilight' are getting tiresome, says Catherine Connors at Beliefnet. People say Bella sacrifices herself for Edward, but don't forget she "fights hard" to "carve a space in this world" for their love. And in the end, she "gets what she wants," despite what Edward wants for her. "Why does love necessarily mean sublimation?"

Twilight promotes conservative values:The values of the 'Twilight' world are more “1809 than 2009,” says Hank Sartin in Time Out Chicago. Bella and Edward must remain chaste in case he loses control of his “insatiable bloodlust.” If feminists must get worked up, this “abstinence-only message coded through vampirism” is worrying evidence of a “conservative response to the radical changes in sexual politics of the last decade.”

@ the week.com

Group Communication: Signifiers

Identifying Group Culture

Although group culture is complex, you can get a general idea of the culture that has developed in your group's interactions by examining some key cultural indicators.

• Vocabulary: words group members use that are unique to the group. By studying the vocabulary people use, it is sometimes possible to determine who is part of the group, who isn't, who is new to the group, and who the "old-timers" are.

• Practices: unique group processes. For example, the group may have written documents that detail meeting procedures, yet meetings may not follow those guidelines. Practices are how group members go about accomplishing their tasks.

• Stories: narratives group members tell about the group. Stories often convey the group's values, priorities, power distribution, and member relationships. Stories often have a moral, although the moral may not be explicitly stated. Stories told to newcomers often let the rookie know how group members are supposed to interact and accomplish their tasks.

• Metaphors: the way group members relate unfamiliar things to things they are all familiar with in order to describe an idea or experience. Metaphors are often implied rather than stated explicitly. For example, group members may say, "We smashed it!." This suggests that the group process is a journey. Some metaphors are more explicit, as when group members refer to the group as "home".

• Rituals: provide structure for group work. Rituals include group customs, daily activities that group members perform regularly, and ceremonies, infrequent activities that mark a particular occasion. For example, groups may have parties for members who leave the group.

• Objects: nonverbal symbols that represent key aspects of the group. Logos or emblems are good examples of objects that reflect the culture of a group.

These cultural indicators alone do not constitute group culture. However, by examining group communication in all these areas, you can get a sense of group values and beliefs.

Groups, Leadership and Groupthink

Groups we belong to and why.

Group identity and cohesion; group dynamics.

• Group cohesion: tendency to remain intact

• Groupthink: whereby an individuals performance is inhibited by the priorities of the whole group

• Intergroup communication: communication between groups

• Interpersonal communication: communication within individuals

• Intragroup communication: communication within a group

• Group dynamics: how individuals relate to each other within a group

What is a leader? What makes a good leader? Provide an example of what you consider to be a good/bad leader and support your choices by discussing the qualities you think they possess/lack. Who considers themselves a good leader? What are the advantages/disadvantages of being a leader? Think about the the importance of a leader to a group's success.

What makes an effective group? Focus on the terms cohesion and conformity. What pressures exist?