Arts

A Science Professor Pens a Patriotic Song

March, 2015
I first heard the song “Call it Alba” at an African evening at my children’s primary school. The choir sang it to visitors from a school in Tanzania and I wasn’t the only one blinking back the tears as they belted out the chorus: “I belong to the land I live in, and the land is in the deepest part of me.”

The song allowed the children to express love for their country of Scotland but in a simple style, free from the hubris these things often contain. It seemed inclusive too, offering a sense of belonging to everyone who lives here. I couldn’t think of another patriotic song that would have worked in that context and which would have made me feel so proud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0LIWz3AgMk

 “Flower of Scotland” is fine for a sporting arena but the lyrics are very focused on Scotland’s sometimes conflicted relationship with England. I for one was glad when the Scottish Parliament recently rejected a petition to make it an official anthem.  (http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/wilting-blossom-flower-of-scotland-national-anthem-bid-rejected-by-msps.120916231)  

The others I could think of like Scots Wha Hae, Caledonia, or Highland Cathedral are too martial, too adult or too grandiose.

Top Gear, RIP.

 

I enjoyed Top Gear. You would think from the reaction I get to this statement from some of my friends that I was voicing support for Islamic State or something. But when my kids were younger it was one of the best family viewing experiences that we had. I will remember it fondly for that reason.

 

Is the Southbank Centre right to exclude Scotland from its flagship exhibition on British history?

The big new exhibition at the Southbank Centre in London “History is Now” is meant to address British postwar history. It does not do so. As a Scot who voted ‘No’ in the referendum I found the experience of visiting this show profoundly depressing. I left with an increased sense that a ‘British’ identity has become problematic, dislocated and fragile, and that the ties that bind the countries that make up the Union are fraying.

On #KingsmanTheSecretService and the Porno Society.

A friend of mine was kind enough to say recently that she had found the piece I wrote below about the movie Kingsman The Secret Service really helpful. Her 15-year-old daughter had been to the movie with friends and because my friend had read my blog, she was able to raise with her daughter the fact that there is a graphic image of  anal penetration in the closing minutes of the movie. Her daughter said “Oh Mum, it’s all right, the woman wanted that done to her.” My friend responded that this scene represented a male fantasy. My friend then went on to say that she felt sorry for all the young women who might be thinking: ‘What’s wrong with me, that I don’t enjoy this?”

The scene is a glimpse into the porno world which I generally manage to avoid. But taking place as it does in a mainstream movie now heavily advertised on TV as a DVD or download – it’s another example of how mainstream that current has become.

Vettriano not for the snobbish

 
 

Though ridiculed by critics, artist’s work is honest, with an authentic, working-class sensibility, writes Jackie Kemp

 From The Scotsman, October 25.

WHAT on earth is happening at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow? It is mid-morning on a weekday but the car parks are overflowing. Cars are jinking about, competing for any vacated space. The art gallery itself is hotching. There are actual traffic jams in front of certain pictures and there is a queue at the till in the exhibition shop. The postcard rack is half empty and the limited edition prints are flying off the shelves.

The public response to Jack Vettriano’s first major retrospective is a marked contrast to the funereal atmosphere of the big empty rooms at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival exhibition of the recent work of Peter Doig, a commercially successful painter whose massive and anodyne, though slapdash, landscapes would be a safe bet for decorating the foyer of any corporate headquarters in Zurich.

 

The Great Tapestry of Scotland

A slightly shortened version of this arrticle appeared in the Herald magazine on Saturday, August 24,2013. Photos are available to view on the website

http://www.alexhewitt.co.uk/gallery-list Edinburgh Festival Panel group portrait for the Great Tapestry of Scotland project. Photographed at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh to mark the connection between festival and venue. www.scotlandstapestry.com<br /> <br /> pictures by Alex Hewitt

 

Literature doesn’t need more cheerleaders

Rosemary Goring’s take on the Creative Scotland debate from the Herald Saturday arts section September 22, 2012

“There is no such thing as art. There are only artists,” said E H Gombrich in The Story of Art.  It’s a dictum that the architects of Creative Scotland should have noted. Much of the firestorm that has engulfed that beleaguered institution of late might have been averted if its apparatchiks had had the wisdom and humility to appreciate that the state’s function in funding the arts is solely to disburse money to artists in the most effective and simple manner possible.

 

Anne Fine deplores ‘gritty realism’ of modern children’s books

The Times – August 25, 2009
by Jack Malvern and Jackie Kemp

Former Children’s Laureate Anne Fine said that modern stories offered little hope for their protagonists

Once upon a time, in the spiffing 1950s, characters in children’s books enjoyed wonderful adventures after which they all lived happily ever after. By contrast, reality weighs heavily on today’s young readers, a former children’s laureate has warned.

Anne Fine said that cosy tales in which children’s characters looked forward to future adventures had been replaced by gritty stories that offered no hope for their weary protagonists.Contemporary literature is dauntingly bleak, with depressing endings that do little to inspire.

Former Childrens laureate Anne Fine reads to children from Hermitage Park School, Leith

(Colin Hattersley)

 

Scottish designer’s art for windows

As a child, Sarah Campbell spent her summer holidays on the Isle of Lismore. On walks, she and her artist mother would pick tufts of sheep’s wool from the barbed wire fences and take it home. There they would wash, card and spin it, turn it into fabric on a loom and dye it.

Now working as a designer, Sarah has woven those childhood lessons into the one-off “textile paintings” doubling as window blinds that she creates in her workshop on the tiny island which sits under the mountains of Morvern in the Firth of Lorne for her company Mogwaii Design.

A new system for reading music

Every Good Boy Deserves Failure.   And All Cows End Gorily – or is it Eat Grass? Generations of children have struggled over mnemonics designed to help them translate five black lines and a series of dots into music. Some accomplish this feat; some – like me – remember little except these disjointed sentences. But that could soon be history, according to a charity that’s introducing a music notation system to the UK from Finland that is accessible enough for the youngest children to understand. “A revolution in music education is under way,” says Brian Cope, of Drake Music Scotland.