藝術為健康 - Extra, Extra, read all about it...

The week kicked off with a campaign to raise awareness of this growing movement we call arts and health, and with my colleagues on the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing we’ve been celebrating what’s happening nationally, regionally and locally. What - you didn’t read the press coverage, or see us on the TV? You must be blind! Of course, the media have been wrapped up in all things BBC and Savile, and with their natural preoccupation with the sordid and scandalous, its been something of a bun-fight for the most appalling headlines, only with the main player long dead. Hideous, the whole thing. Anyway, I thought that in the absence of any hard-hitting arts health stories to hit the nationals, I would do two things: one, link you to some of the case studies from around England, (but believe me, there are rich stories beyond the confines of England; of the UK, and that s t r e t c h much further afield, beyond this little island, and that I will share very soon) that you can find by clicking on the Chicken & Ham Pie; the other is to have had a look through two of our good old Rags for signs of life and with an eye for a relevant cultural story or two.

So here are some of the cultural highlights from The SUN 

and The Guardian on Thursday 25th October 2012. 

What are these papers styles?
Guardian = Left leaning ex-broadsheet, with smug feature writers in G2 section, who enjoy nothing better than seeing large photographs of themselves wasting valuable column inches.

The SUN = Right leaning tabloid gibberish. In-print shock-jock sensationalism. Impossible to buy in Liverpool. 

Cover Headlines
Guardian = Cameron ready to claim worst of the recession is over for UK. Trailer for feature on music in Mali.

The SUN = Why I dumped ‘crazy’ Katie. Trailer for Free Holland’s Pie   

Random Stories 1

Guardian page 3 feature - Very interesting full page story on the place of music in Malian culture, and the threat of extremism to musicians. “Culture is our petrol...music is our mineral wealth,” Click on the photo above to read this powerful and important report.

The SUN page 3 feature - Lacey, 19 and Wayne (Rooney) glued to U.S. TV election debates 

Random Stories 2

Guardian page 7 feature on Suffragettes responding to the Secretary of State for Health’s recent comments on abortion.

The SUN page 7 feature, double page spread entitled, “Savile Paedo Lair Is Raided”. Enough said.

Random Stories 3

Guardian page 19 article, That same Secretary of State for Health to announce an extra £50million to create calming environments for people with dementia. The article even quotes the Kings Fund! (who were the organisation behind this weeks awareness raising campaign) 

The SUN page 19 article headlines, Throbbie Williams and, Spy Who Loved Me With His Pants On.

OK, I give up. Enough’s enough. I’ll just end this news review, with “The World’s Most Repulsive Cake Shop” in the Guardian - great stuff, just click on the body part above. They have one more article on Barbara Hepworth’s delicate and beautiful studies of orthopaedic surgeons at work in NHS hospitals. A neat article to coincide with an exhibition at the Hepworth in Wakefield, and one in which the journalist Jonathan Jones conjoins her socialist ideals with the birth of the NHS. he comments; 

“In 2012, the NHS is threatened, its future uncertain. In Wakefield, like everywhere else, there are signs that austerity has returned. Where are the values that protected British people back then, creating the NHS just as Hepworth was glorifying such common labour? Near the station, a once-grand trade union hall stands empty. Hepworth was a Labour voter – of course she was. In these drawings, she reveals her egalitarian values. Work is goodness: she sees her own work as a sculptor reflected in the steady eye and hand of the surgeon. In one drawing, he even seems to wield a hammer and chisel. But this is not mere artistic self-consciousness. The work being done in these pictures saves lives; Hepworth believes her art, too, can heal souls.” 

Some of you eager eyed readers, might remember that great publicity stunt of the SUN, way back when, when they ‘exposed’ the scandal of arts spending, in their notorious, Taking The Picasso headline! Even then, they had some great offers for their readers in mind. Now it’s PIES - then it was chips: chips eh? You’ve got to love their commitment to Good Old British Wellbeing. I don’t know about you, but it makes me warm to the core. Bang it in the microwave. 

limbic from Institut Fuer Musik Und Medien on Vimeo.

STOP PRESS: even though the Guardian's replant vodafone advertising this week was appalling, (considering their own reporting of its zero payment of corporation tax in the UK) Deborah Orr wrote a superb short article on the potency of culture. Just click on this banner to read it. Great stuff...almost as good as a cold meat pie.

Thank you as ever for your emails and for reading the blog...please share, far and wide...C.P.