“You’re joking?” was the most printable response.
September 2, 2022 6:17 AM Subscribe
Remember 2018 in the UK? A more innocent time. Russian tourists skulked around Salisbury, Pinkfong (??) made it to the official Top 40 (!!) with something unforgettable, and Boris Johnson was just offering his charming opinions on religious attire instead of being prime minister. Late in the year, desperate for something cool and hip to say, then-PM Theresa May announced a festival. It was mocked, for some reason. And then nobody heard anything about it... until it was already almost over. Stuart McGurk investigates how the UK Government's £120m "Festival Of Brexit" went rogue!
Here's the Guardian's gloss on the event's relative obscurity. FT has a take too. Scarfolk's Richard Littler is smug, and sad. Welcome to Britain 2022.
Here's the Guardian's gloss on the event's relative obscurity. FT has a take too. Scarfolk's Richard Littler is smug, and sad. Welcome to Britain 2022.
OK, controversial opinion, but I think the Festival did a couple of good things:
- Redistributed Government money to artists
- Who then used it to make free art where people could see and interact with it
- and didn't use it to promote or celebrate Brexit
Sure, maybe some of it is crap. You get a certain amount of crap when you commission art. Speaking as someone who works in a few art forms (Shakespeare/Early Modern theatre, folk music, living history) that are often co-opted by the right wing to parrot their goals, it could have been so so so much worse.
Thank god we had the Jubilee to siphon off all the Vera Lynn/Edward Elgar nonsense that this could otherwise have turned into.
I've only seen one Festival thing: Our Place In Space, a trail of planetary sculptures in public parks in Cambridge. Over the weeks I spent working in the city, I saw families and children going up to look at them, running groups using them as a running course, and people admiring how they looked lit up at night. It wasn't crowded, but people saw it and they liked it. As public art goes, I think that's a success, not a failure.
If the Festival hasn't met its visitor target, it still has a couple of months left to run. (The target figures may well have been optimistic anyway, and reckoned without the July COVID spike.) In the meanwhile, it will generate paid work for artists, which is badly needed right now.
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:18 AM on September 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
- Redistributed Government money to artists
- Who then used it to make free art where people could see and interact with it
- and didn't use it to promote or celebrate Brexit
Sure, maybe some of it is crap. You get a certain amount of crap when you commission art. Speaking as someone who works in a few art forms (Shakespeare/Early Modern theatre, folk music, living history) that are often co-opted by the right wing to parrot their goals, it could have been so so so much worse.
Thank god we had the Jubilee to siphon off all the Vera Lynn/Edward Elgar nonsense that this could otherwise have turned into.
I've only seen one Festival thing: Our Place In Space, a trail of planetary sculptures in public parks in Cambridge. Over the weeks I spent working in the city, I saw families and children going up to look at them, running groups using them as a running course, and people admiring how they looked lit up at night. It wasn't crowded, but people saw it and they liked it. As public art goes, I think that's a success, not a failure.
If the Festival hasn't met its visitor target, it still has a couple of months left to run. (The target figures may well have been optimistic anyway, and reckoned without the July COVID spike.) In the meanwhile, it will generate paid work for artists, which is badly needed right now.
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:18 AM on September 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
Ach, just missed including National Treasure Marina Hyde's piece on the festival, out today. She's funnier than all the links above, if that makes your choice of reading materials any easier.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:09 AM on September 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:09 AM on September 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
Tour de Moon, taking place in Southampton, Newcastle and Leicester, was an avant-garde theatre project that would see 18 to 25-year-olds interact with Day-Glo objects in abandoned nightspots to communicate with the moon and “create alternative futures”.
Nothing that's named Tour de Moon that's European (well, in this context, maybe formerly-Europe-adjacent) should involve anything but racing bicycles on the moon. Doesn't have to be the real Moon, but should involve something simulating moon gravity; I could take those hills like a champion.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:10 AM on September 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Nothing that's named Tour de Moon that's European (well, in this context, maybe formerly-Europe-adjacent) should involve anything but racing bicycles on the moon. Doesn't have to be the real Moon, but should involve something simulating moon gravity; I could take those hills like a champion.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:10 AM on September 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
She's funnier than all the links above
Although that line that jedicus pulled out of the main link slayed me, and would have been the pull quote for the post if it hadn't violated the character limit.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:10 AM on September 2, 2022
Although that line that jedicus pulled out of the main link slayed me, and would have been the pull quote for the post if it hadn't violated the character limit.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:10 AM on September 2, 2022
Yet, whatever form it takes, I can’t help feel, in the current environment, it won’t be as fitting as the finale of Tour de Moon, which took place on 16 June in East London, on Lower Clapton Road, a street known as “Britain’s Murder Mile”.
On her laptop, Nelly Ben Hayoun shows me footage of one of the finale’s musical acts, as perfect, in my mind, an artistic response to our current times as one could imagine. It is four people, in front of four microphones, simply screaming at the top of their lungs.
“ARGGGGHHGHHHHHHHHHH!” comes the sound from her MacBook Air as it begins to vibrate. “ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” it continues.
“Isn’t that great?” she says.
If Christopher Guest isn't planning a mockumentary of this, he should.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:33 AM on September 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
On her laptop, Nelly Ben Hayoun shows me footage of one of the finale’s musical acts, as perfect, in my mind, an artistic response to our current times as one could imagine. It is four people, in front of four microphones, simply screaming at the top of their lungs.
“ARGGGGHHGHHHHHHHHHH!” comes the sound from her MacBook Air as it begins to vibrate. “ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” it continues.
“Isn’t that great?” she says.
If Christopher Guest isn't planning a mockumentary of this, he should.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:33 AM on September 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
If the Festival hasn't met its visitor target, it still has a couple of months left to run.
Brace yourself for the 65,750,000 last-minute visitors!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:17 AM on September 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
Brace yourself for the 65,750,000 last-minute visitors!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:17 AM on September 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
I've only seen one Festival thing: Our Place In Space, a trail of planetary sculptures in public parks in Cambridge.
Me too. I walked the trail from the Sun in Midsummer Common out to Pluto, five miles along the river Cam, and finished with a pint in The Bridge at Waterbeach. It was a nice walk in the summer Sunday sunshine. People seemed to be enjoying it.
If I had known the Unboxed was the Brexit festival I might not have gone on general principles. That would have been a shame because I hadn't walked or cycled along the river further north than the Green Dragon bridge (I live south of Cambridge) and it was lovely.
Of all the things this government has done, all the money wasted, this is not the worst one.
posted by antiwiggle at 9:40 AM on September 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Me too. I walked the trail from the Sun in Midsummer Common out to Pluto, five miles along the river Cam, and finished with a pint in The Bridge at Waterbeach. It was a nice walk in the summer Sunday sunshine. People seemed to be enjoying it.
If I had known the Unboxed was the Brexit festival I might not have gone on general principles. That would have been a shame because I hadn't walked or cycled along the river further north than the Green Dragon bridge (I live south of Cambridge) and it was lovely.
Of all the things this government has done, all the money wasted, this is not the worst one.
posted by antiwiggle at 9:40 AM on September 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Of all the things this government has done, all the money wasted, this is not the worst one
Entirely true, and at the same time bone-chilling.
posted by aramaic at 10:10 AM on September 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
Entirely true, and at the same time bone-chilling.
posted by aramaic at 10:10 AM on September 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
Wait, what even is the population of the united kingdom? 66.5 million you say? Huh
posted by Jacen at 1:00 PM on September 2, 2022
posted by Jacen at 1:00 PM on September 2, 2022
I'm so glad that Twenty-Twelve and W1A got a touring show or two.
posted by k3ninho at 4:17 PM on September 2, 2022
posted by k3ninho at 4:17 PM on September 2, 2022
Unboxed — because all of this creativity was locked up by the EU all these years?
posted by UN at 7:18 AM on September 3, 2022
posted by UN at 7:18 AM on September 3, 2022
'Our Place In Space' is hugely derivative of the Somerset Space Walk, which is 25 years old this year and 22 kilometres in diameter--not radius, as its Sun sits at the centre and two different models of Pluto lie 11 kilometres away from it. There are other similar projects in Stockholm and Zagreb.
posted by Hogshead at 5:40 PM on September 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Hogshead at 5:40 PM on September 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I hadn't realised the festival had actually started yet, having seen no publicity for it, until the commentary about how few visitors there had been hit Twitter. At that point I went and trawled through the Unboxed website to see what there was or had been in my local area. Answer: absolutely nothing! They left Kent out completely.
I'd have liked the Cambridge one. Although we do have a more two-dimensional version of the same idea here already; I walked the extent of it on Christmas Day 2020, taking advantage of the lockdown-induced quiet on the A2.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:36 AM on September 5, 2022
I'd have liked the Cambridge one. Although we do have a more two-dimensional version of the same idea here already; I walked the extent of it on Christmas Day 2020, taking advantage of the lockdown-induced quiet on the A2.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:36 AM on September 5, 2022
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posted by jedicus at 6:40 AM on September 2, 2022 [3 favorites]