When walking down a long road, progress is measured by
landmarks, way-markings on the landscape to indicate how far you have traversed. The places marked may be hospitable and
beautiful, prompting you to stay awhile to catch your breath and admire the
view. Other places may be less welcoming,
frightening even. You shut your eyes and
hurry past quickly, but you can never shake off the memory you were there.
This week I reached a good place. In December last year I entered a competition
for postgraduates in the College of Arts and Law at Birmingham University
Two weeks’ ago an email popped up in my university
inbox. I had to read it a few times to
make sure of its contents - I had won the competition and was being invited to
a reception to collect it. This is my
first university prize. I felt
enormously proud, not least because as an undergraduate I thought myself
incapable of such things. But that is a
story for another time. For now, you
shall have to trust me and believe that this is very significant. I have changed.
So, on Monday 28th January I made my way to the
university to receive my award. I had no
brief on what to expect. I entered and
found that I was overdressed (note to self: you are now a student, not an
office worker). Also, I am not very good
at ‘mingling’. I tend to cling,
limpet-like onto those who, like me, are also terrified and stand there,
rock-like, submitting themselves to my panicky grabbing-on.
After a glass of gulped wine a tall, lovely lady emerged as
out of a dream. I still have no idea who
she was, though we talked for some time.
She told me that she wanted to introduce me to Jan Watts, who was Birmingham ’s Poet Laureate for 2011-2012
(amongst many other things) and also a member of the judging panel. I shall bask in the memory-glow of meeting
Jan for some time. She took my hand and
thanked me for writing the essay. I
cannot describe how that makes me feel; it is all a writer requires and to come
from her was…well, it was good, put it that way.
The prize was given.
My name was announced, badly as always.
One day I shall publish a small book, phonetically describing all the
delightful ways in which people pronounce Krawec (it is Kre-vetch, if you were
wondering). My prize was a shiny new
iPad, which is a rather elegant and technologically brilliant way of playing
Connect 4. I told my husband that I
thought the prize was such, but as I had deleted the entry
email I stated I wasn’t sure,
lest I turned up and discovered my award to be a signed copy of Jeremy
Clarkson’s: ‘Why I Hate Staffordshire So Much and Other Pointless Tales’. How devastating that would be.
My deepest regret came when one gentleman, a lecturer I
think – asked if we were going to be given a chance to see the essay. I should have shouted out, ‘I hope so! Because that is what I really want! To be read, to be discussed and debated! That is all!’
But I didn’t. Not so much the
‘wit of the stairs’ but rather, the wit of the journey home.
I am told that it will be published but I would like to
share it here with you, my reader (s?).
It is not an academic piece and was never going to be for 750
words. Instead, take it as the
impassioned ranting of this Black Country
wench after one too many down the
RVT:
Is there still a role for the arts and humanities
in a world increasingly dominated by science and technology?
Let us imagine for a moment that
the world passes a law to ban the senses of taste and smell. It states that these senses are superfluous
and ‘not necessary for the function of a normal human being’. If such a ruling were made, what would you
think of it?
You might consider the law unenforceable. After all, taste and smell are an integral
part of being alive. It would seem that
the only possible means of ensuring co-operation with the new law would be to
physically remove our senses – a mass operation for the masses, so to speak. Or you may merely think the law ridiculous, a
bad joke. How could a person not take pleasure
from eating ice cream? Fight the urge to
sniff a rose?
Both conclusions are entirely rational. Such a law would be absurd; utterly
wrong. Being human means to taste and to
smell, as well as to hear, see and touch.
We do all these things and more.
The remit of human experience is vast and spectacular. We have yet to find our limit.
So, knowing this - how ridiculous
dismissing those things that make us human is - why then forsake half the
human experience? Because this is the
implication of our question: To reject the role of the arts and humanities is
to reject being human, just as abandoning science and technology would also refuse
who we are. They are wholly part of our
lives, created by us, for us. We may as
well seal our nostrils up and pull our tongues out rather than never again
compose poetry or dance to our favourite song.
For our ancestors the question
would seem unintelligible. The word
‘scientist’ was only coined in the nineteenth century. The people who pioneered the practice of
science were termed ‘natural philosophers’ before this and their work was
considered to be another of the Arts.
Looking further back we find the men and women of the Renaissance. Would we favour the design for the flying
machine of Leonardo da Vinci to the cost of the Mona Lisa? Leave her painted loveliness languishing in some
dusty attic? Of course not; we recognise
his genius in both the mechanical and the artistic. If we accept his duality - why not accept our
own?
But the world was in some ways simpler
then. As science and technology expanded
it required specialists, thus the figure of the fifteenth century all-rounder
seems impossible to find today. However,
this makes it all the more vital to champion the role of the arts and humanities. The inspiration that one person may lend to
another, the need to interpret advancements in technology to make them
accessible to all makes it vital to share our respective research. If being human means to practice art,
humanities, science and technology, then the way we understand the world
includes all these. We cannot and should
not seclude ourselves.
Let us briefly analyse this
so-called dominance of science and technology.
In its most immediate and popular form – the internet – we witness the
proliferation of arts and humanities across the medium. The self-published book, the You Tube video,
Google Translate – this is technology and art in tandem. It seems as though modern life is answering
the question without our help, and the answer it shouts out is a firm and
unequivocal: ‘Yes!’
It is scholarship in the arts and
humanities that we question most of all.
We believe that theatre, music and their ilk are natural talents not requiring
the nurture of a classroom; that the humanities are ‘weak’ subjects unable to withstand
the rigours of test and analysis. And
yet, in the giant economies of countries such as China , we witness huge cultural
investment in the arts and humanities. They
demand success across all faculties. If
we are to compete with the rest of the world we need to equip our children to
become world-class in anything they set their minds upon.
In conclusion, there will always be
a role for arts and humanities because they make us who we are. If we stand back and survey the picture
formed from the myriad of specialists who make up the world, we will see the
face of the most brilliant natural philosopher to have ever existed; the supreme
combination of our human whole. We need
not question where our focus should be.
Instead, our joint motto should simply state: ‘Excellence in All
Things’.
