Andrew Motion delivered an impressive speech at Oxford this week damning the government's badly thought out and dangerous arts cuts. I wish I had been there to see it, but the Guardian seem to have transcribed a large amount of it. He agrees with most of us that the Tories have massively overlooked the importance of the arts within a society, and have ignorantly cut the funding to some incredibly worthy causes:
"The arts, and the humanities associated with them, provide us with the paradoxes that we depend on for the realisation and fulfilment of ourselves as human beings. Nothing less. They are the means by which we learn to live more deeply as ourselves, but they are also the echo-chambers in which we begin to understand what it means to live in history. They pay attention to events, but they make their own narrative of those events. They teach us about ourselves while they allow us to forget ourselves and – just as fulfillingly – to identify with others. They affirm the value of oblique truths as well as the usefulness of direct utterance. They honour familiar life while transfiguring it, and they give the clearest possible view of what lies beyond our seeing and saying. They help us to continue living because they keep death in view. Are these self-evident truths? I would say so. But this doesn't mean we are excused from affirming, defending, cherishing and broadcasting them. And doing more clearly and passionately than ever, now we see the barbarians are inside the gates again."
Good stuff
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2011/jun/03/arts-funding-andrewmotion
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