A personal blog by Nick Corston, a dad, art activist and co-founder of STEAM Co, that shows how even creativity is being weaponised against us, by left and right…
And he should know – today The Guardian misfiled, misrepresented and misquoted me when they published a letter he’d written to them in Mr Angry mode (they’ve since issued a full apology and corrected some of it)
All part of what the word smith Michael Rosen creatively and insightfully called #LongGovid
Update: since this blog was published the government have launched the #Unboxed2022 Festival, our proposal to be part of it with a UK Wide grass roots community art project was rejected, so we launched the #OurMIllion22 appeal and are doing what we can to #Ignite22🔥 our own #CreativityRevolution22 will you chip in in a quid here?
Dear Ms Viner
At a time when this country needs to be pulling together, when we have seen the power of our creativity and art to connect us, I am dismayed to see headlines like 'Festival of Brexit: 10 teams announced as part of divisive £120m project'
I appreciate that the seemingly hateful and divisive tone of this headline might appeal to some of your readership intent on weaponising this to suit their own and understandable political objectives many of which I am sympathetic to, but would say it would appear to contradict your previous editorial stances that were, albeit reluctantly supportive and saw the good in #FestivalUK2022.
It is no more the 'Festival of Brexit' than this is 'Brexit Britain' which of course it is, if we want it to be. We can wallow in negativity and fuel the fans of hatred and division or seize this moment to make sure, as your colleagues have said, it is "used wisely" to "heal".
I do hope that you will ask your sub editors to start practicing what you preach, that Change is Possible, that Hope is Power because I and many other creative carers like me hope it is a resounding success in sticking this country, our communities and our children back together, to start building all our futures.
Yours sincerely... Nick Corston
Dad, Co-Founder and CEO of STEAM Co.Published in The Guardian here 26:03:21
Please note that even after three rounds of iteration, The Guardian never included the underlined comment above in print or online. The letters editor was convinced it was about #Brexit, but as you’ll see below it wasn’t.
But who cares?
Who cares about children, creativity and all our futures?
Well I do actually.
Yes, I’m really quite bothered about this, not least as there is clear evidence that things are stepping up a gear. IMHO the nastiness is about to go into overdrive as education is weaponised and I feel now is the time to take a step back to try and piece all this together.
Hopefully you’ll find a minute to read on if you care.
Sorry but there’s no quick way of saying this.
Fanning the flames
Anyone who has been following the STEAM Co. story will be aware that we’re on a roadmap to 2022 when the government have announced a National £120m Festival of Creativity and Innovation.
Despite not getting short listed before Christmas to be one of the 30 consortiums to get £100k to develop our ideas for FestivalUK*2022 (It was a long shot and anyway our idea is already developed), we are hell bent on running our own grass roots #Festival22 to hopefully compliment it somehow. More about that later.
FestivalUK2022 was initially and understandably dubbed the ‘Festival of Brexit’ by click bait headline writers and activists alike.
Artists expressing interest in working on it have been threatened with black listing. I have been demonised and even disciplined for conversations around it.
Yes even creativity has been weaponised now by left and right.
Even the bible of every liberal artist, The Guardian derided it as such when the call went out for those 30 teams in October but by the weekend had written an opinion piece telling everyone not to “snark – this ‘Brexit festival’ may turn out to be just the tonic we need”.
Let’s be clear I understand and empathise with arguments against it and argue that that this like all money would be better spent on the NHS, but as Churchill said justifying the arts budget during the war “what’s it all for” otherwise. .
Those who say all money spent on arts culture and sport would be better spent on the NHS, might better spend their time campaigning for a fair taxation and funding system that gives our NHS and schools the funding they deserve?
And exposing the hypocrisy of shady lobby groups like Tax Payers Alliance, but more about their Orwellian ways later
I didn’t say that
I got a bit hot under the collar this week and wrote a letter in response to a Guardian headline:
‘Festival of Brexit': first events for divisive £120m project announced
I was even more annoyed when they misfiled, misquoted and frankly misrepresented me but pleased when they corrected the errors which you can read in the online version here.
They misquoted me calling #FestivalUK2022 the ‘Brexit Festival’, which I did not and would not.
They misrepresented me as Nick Corston, London when I wrote as Nick Corston of STEAM Co. and I wrote for every Creative Carer across the UK who cares about Children, Creativity and All Our Futures. Frankly it doesn’t matter where we are geographically - most of our work is out of London.
They misfiled the letter under ‘Brexit’ which I categorically resented as Brexit is a consequence, not the cause of what I feel this is about and that is a ten year project called #LongGovid.
Yes, it feels as if The Guardain were as deliberately divisive as anyone here and used my letter to fan those flames.
The masterplan
#LongGovid is a label masterfully created by children’s author and creative academic Michael Rosen. While a crafty play on words, it doesn’t just refer to the awful illness that Rosen is still feeling the effects of but the work of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings since they were at the Department of Education ten years ago.
Many feel that #LongGovid is responsible for:
#EducationCrisis - funding, wellbeing, exclusions, behaviour, exams, narrow curriculum – where to start
#CreativityCrisis – 9/10 schools cutting art subjects, fewer art teachers, skills shortages cited by cross party commentators
#DemocracyCrisis – no one can say that proroguing parliament was a good look and various dirty tricks are well documented
#HealthCrisis - both sides of the house have concerns over Dominic Cummings’ role in the Covid crisis and questionable leadership
#TechCrisis – recently added just this week, as business leaders have issued a mayday call with a looming digital literacy and tech skills shortage which all lead back to Gove’s education reform and priorities thereafter
Yes, it all started in the Department of Education ten years ago and it is clear that education is about to become a major element in the battle for hearts and minds across the nation, particularly in former strongholds of the left.
Last week Michael Rosen had a letter of his own in The Guardian, one of a number of letters to the Education Minister Gavin Williamson, about the behaviour agenda which is emerging as one of the new weapons in this war.
Choose your weapon
From Black Lives Matter to Gender Politics, now Creativity itself, the weaponisation of various and very important issues is a key aspect of the binary political landscape at the moment and wearing everybody out.
Only the other week I fell out with and was blocked by a very high profile, long standing and highly vocal supporter on social media who had latched on to the rightly binary racist or anti-racist argument in that you are one or the other and simply being not racist isn’t good enough and essentially makes you complicit.
Where we fell out was when I expressed concern over how arguments like these, however logical when taken to their extreme end up defining all Conservative voters as racists, which makes many people uncomfortable (“and so they should be” say many) but the problem is that this risks driving these subjects off the agenda altogether as people would rather not discuss them and the important subject at the heart of the debate becomes taboo and slips back underground.
What we don’t do
STEAM Co. doesn’t do party politics, but neither are we a squeaky clean, goody two shoes arts and crafts organisation that pays lip service to social justice and the right of every adult and child to be able to express their humanity and live their best life.
We aim to tell it like it is, to speak truth to power and do what we can. in the hope someone cares and will work with and/or support us.
Cross party support
Indeed we’ve been grateful for support from across the political spectrum. Sharon Hodgson, Labour MP for Sunderland East has sponsored our cross party events in parliament and Shadow Culture Minister Tracey Brabin MP for Batley Yorkshire, spoke at a #YourGlasto weekend festival we ran on a cardboard pyramid stage last summer.
Matt Hancock MP for a side of my family in Suffolk addressed our regional launch event in Ironbridge four years ago when he was Culture Minister and the current incumbent, Caroline Dinenage Conservative MP from Portsmouth spoke just the other week on a half size cathedral we’d seemingly built from cardboard and code with government funding on a school playing field in Coventry in advance of their City of Culture year.
We didn’t have to put words in their mouths and if ever they tried to put words in ours that didn’t taste right we spat them out, and have.
Shared values
No, all of them said what we wanted to hear as they too believe in the power of art (the killer combination of creativity, tools and people) to help ensure our children are inspired to learn, to create jobs/power the economy and connect communities.
We don’t see how you can really believe in, and credibly campaign for art and creativity without calling out policies and people who work against it.
So that’s what we do and have done for ten years now in various guises – we campaign for, inspire and action art and creativity in our schools, work and lives.
All talk
The world’s not short of talkers though we were inspired in no small way by the words and work of the late Sir Ken Robinson whose No. 1 TED Talk on how schools can kill creativity in children and thus ultimately in communities and countries, has had over 300m views and inspired dads and other creative carers like me, as much as teachers, business leaders and governments across the world.
By coincidence, we were offered a superb venue for our first regional launch event in Sir Ken’s home city of Liverpool and were delighted when Sir Ken characteristically generously offered to speak.
A what?
Imagine my surprise then when the Times Educational Supplement published an article (now deleted interestingly) by the Department of Education’s ‘Behaviour Tsar’ Tom Bennett that referred to Sir Ken as a “butcher given a ticker tape parade by the National Union of Pigs”, apparently a reference to the dangers to teachers and our children of listening to his preaching on creativity in education and “nurturing the diverse talents of all our children”.
The competitive education magazine Schools Week published an interesting article a few months later which showed how Bennett (ironically revealed by The Mail on Sunday to be a failed Soho Nightclub manager that Westminster Council had deemed ‘unfit’ to have a public entertainment licence!) was linked to a web of organisations all with almost Orwellian Doublespeak names like ‘Parents and Teachers for Excellence’ – sounds good eh?
Most of these organisations, like Bennett’s own ResearchEd claim to be grass roots (astro turf more like) and indeed attract many hard working, committed and good natured teachers and school leaders
A closer look reveals many of them to be mysteriously funded by anonymous people and organisations and often based on Tufton Street in Westminster, the home of the country’s finest and shadyest lobby groups and think tanks. Further research by Schools Week revealed one of the leading backers of Parents and Teachers for Excellence to be one of Brexit’s biggest backers, obviously not a crime, but who knew. Or ask why?
One of these organisations most effective strategies is the weaponising of issues and key points under the guise of free speech and common sense, indeed one of those shadily funded lobby groups and think tanks on Tufton Street probably funds the Campaign for Common Sense, run by the same chap, Mark LeHain who used to run Parents and Teachers for Excellence.
Like Bennett, LeHain probably got the job due to his impeccably chummy chap persona, great communications skills and dogged passion for pursuing a divisive agenda – he also does a fine line in sour dough bread making tweets and is everybody’s friend and go to sound byte generator for many mainstream media outlets with air time to fill.
The result, everybody follows them blindly, and ultimately off a cliff if they aren’t careful as you’ll see in a moment, which is why I have dubbed them Education’s Pied Pipers #EdPiedPipers.
#LongGovid is no joke
With his behaviour letter in the Guardian, I believe Michael Rosen put a spotlight on one of the next systematic campaigns to betray our country, our communities and our children, to literally steal their dreams
Read on carefully as you won’t read what I have to say in many newspapers, and certainly not see it on our new look and listen BBC. It took me 20 minutes to explain it to an editor at The Guardian, to get them to write what I meant and not what they thought I’d said in my letter.
And no the play on words for #LongGovid is no joke (my mother has had double pneumonia all year) and neither is Michael Rosen (his #LongGovid experience is well documented) when he coined this phrase, the insightful, inciteful creative genius he is and in himself the very proof of why some people don’t want many more creative geniuses.
Who needs more artists?
No we don’t need many more artists who might exercise their creativity beyond the confines of the pop charts, not the grime charts, the punk charts, the protest song charts
No let’s keep creativity in the top 10, where at any one time over 75% of the artists will have received their creative education in independent schools
Let’s keep creativity for the handful of graphic designers needed to design the hoardings around property developments that are not only gentrifying areas but depopulating them of the culture and colour that made them so desirable in the first place.
Let’s keep creativity for the handful of strategists and copywriters in ad agencies, lobby groups and national newspapers to spin creative campaigns of hidden hateful double speak that Orwell would be proud of like ‘Parents and Teachers for Excellence’, ‘Campaign for Common Sense’ and the Schools Minister’s beloved ‘ResearchEd’ - an organisation specifically set up to spin what Michael Rosen astutely calls
“The usual Govean trick of saying that your view is “evidence-based” (without naming the evidence), I’m not sure why you are the expert in this matter”
Said Rosen in his letter to education minister Gavin Williamson (who isn’t an expert Michael, he’s an alex fireplace salesman. It’s why he got the job We don’t need any more experts. Didn’t you get the memo?
We’ve had enough of experts
After their time at the DfE, Messers Gove and Cummings left a former accountant, Mr Nick Gibb in charge of the department as schools’ minister and he continues to get away with it despite a succession of education ministers theoretically above him
I have been berated and supported by School Leaders in equal measure for satirically calling for his resignation in my #GibbMustGo petition campaign last summer after his very deliberately designed exam algorithm was revealed as the injustice it was.
At an event STEAM Co.ran a couple of years ago, Geoff Barton leader of the moderate head teachers union ASCL talked about how 8/10 state schools have cut the arts yet that “it’s not happening in private schools, as it’s what the parents pay for”
And please be assured that by mentioning private schools and gentrification in the context of this thread I am not issuing a call for class war.
Enough people are digging their political class into a deeper hole doing that as it is with a dogged focus on their ideological corner and ignorance of #That80PerCent we all have in common, the battle ground where most of us would rather fight this battle for hearts and minds on
The battle ground of real common sense, not some spun version.
Light in the tunnel
The Foundation for Education Development (FED) that Michael Rosen mentions in his letter is one of the freshest breaths of fresh air, some light in the darkness that we all need and one that seeks to find that common ground
The recent FED summit featured speakers over 4 days from across the ideological spectrum of the educational landscape which usually connects and collaborates on Twitter like oil and water
Speakers talked about the need and their desire for the government to give up control of education which swings with each change of government.
A worthy aim, but possibly a little naive, given that many speakers also talked about how education is a political tool - Mandela said it is “the most powerful weapon we have with which to change the world”.
Believe me, Gove and Cummings knew that and IMHO won’t be giving anyone else that weapon to play with any time soon.
I suggested this to a founder committee member of the FED who took exception to the insinuation that their aspirations were possibly a little naive.
In hindsight and with help of a wise old owl I realised they had heard what I said and not what I meant - they’d not properly chewed and digested the ‘Compliment Sandwich’ I’d given them (see ADHD diagram above)
Too political?
That FED committee member and another long standing, high profile STEAM Co. supporter also suggested I was “too political” to be part of The FED which despite having aspirations for whole school collaboration, featured few if any people speaking as the parents, artists or business people that make up STEAM Co.
They became most frustrated when I pointed out the irony that the FED summit included two sessions featuring a company called Public First, who were chairing one panel and speaking on another
They admitted to not having heard of Public First let alone have any idea who they are or what they do
And to think that many people think head teachers know everything.
So I told them.
Spin me another one
Public First is one of many spin agencies, lobby groups, all businesses and political parties rely on them.
A year ago Public First’s website proudly proclaimed that their business was to: ‘help organisations change public policy and improve their reputations’
Rather honest, if a little naive, as no credible lobby group would ever say that, be honest and clear about what they do as that isn’t the job
No surprise here as the people running Public First had never run such an agency before, they’d been running UK schools and education policy.
Public First focuses on education and is run by “mates of Dominic Cummings’ and key architects of the Academy system and the Conservative party manifesto hinting at some possible political bias I’m sure you’ll agree.
That can’t be right
One of Public First’s directors and leading education strategists Jonathan Simons worked with Gove and Cummings at the DfE ten years ago and was education director at the right wing Policy Exchange think tank, except they aren’t right wing as I believe they are structured as a charity to save a bit of tax so can’t be political, can they?
They’ve certainly been listed at the bottom of a league table of think tanks due to the shadyness and lack of transparency of their funding
James O’Brien on LBC regularly exposes the dirty deeds of these firms he calls the ‘Ghouls on Tufton Street’ and almost certainly behind the almost endless campaign of teacher hate “dripped into the ears” of main stream media audiences.
Simons is now a director at Public First, who must since have had professional advice on their messaging statement which now reads: “Public Policy and Research Specialists” – much safer and more ambiguous.
Only a week before the Fed Summit, a senior civil servant called Public First a “Tory party research agency that tests Tory party narrative on public money” – they were in court to defend a claim that £840k of tax-payers money had been unjustly awarded to them without tender under emergency Covid legislation.
EDUCATION THE NEW WEAPON
The master stroke of this masterplan of deception and dirty tricks came when Ed Dorrell, editor at the Times Education Supplement announced he was leaving for the job of his dreams at… Public First.
He has since proceeded to write regular pieces for a former TES employee now Education Editor at the Independent (sic) newspaper and is BBC Radio London’s newspapers reviewer and a regular commentator.
Anyone who knows how the majority of the media works will tell you how the majority of editorial is driven by if not written from press releases from PR agencies by lazy and/or hard pressed journalists.
(If you’ve ever wondered wondered why media literacy and the critical thinking that media studies teach are so derided by mainstream media, is the penny dropping now?)
Ed Dorrell wrote an article just before Christmas about how the Labour party was set the lose the hearts and minds of working class communities and families and indicated that the key levers to this would be education, not just any education but a narrow knowledge rich/experience poor curriculum, children sitting in rows, learning by rote with strict zero tolerance behaviour policies and ruthless exclusion strategies hidden under a veneer of warm strict cultural capital for all.
Public First’s master stroke has been to cut out the middle man journalist and employ an ex journalist like Ed to write and place the stories for them.
Just watch as they take to the road of the working class communities across the North and weaponise school behaviour and educational pedagogies against teachers and children, who will have the art of teaching and the impact of being inspired to learn taken away from them.
Their dreams stolen.
Untouchable
Moreover they hired Ed’s black book and general chumminess, in the process making these #LongGovid education policies untouchable, most ironically by those who complain most amount them, who are most impacted by them, namely our school leaders and teachers, people who happen to like Ed Dorrell more than the policies he peddles (assuming the understand all this) and certainly more than those who criticise him. People like me.
As a result, when I flagged a tweet to the former friend and adviser who had found having all this pointed out to them really rather exhausting, they reminded me of that fact and publicly shamed me, causing a number of other leaders and teachers to close ranks against me too, without knowing the facts of our conversation
And of course Ed Dorrell seized the opportunity to block me, albeit after a very friendly txt message.
And there you have it, a number of deliberately divisive strategies that have divided people who really should have been on the same side.
Quite sad really, especially given that everyone claims to care.
About quite what, remains the question.
And for all the talk at conferences, all the books written, whether they’re going to do anything, especially in the short term or actively support and not demonise people who are is what I’d like to know.
And now.
Thanks for reading this. It means a lot.
Support the movement
My work in and with school communities has been grateful for Arts Council England and DCMS/HM Treasury Funding through lock down but that just ended.
School budgets have been decimated by supply teacher and PPE costs.
But our work connecting our kids with their art and our communities with their schools is needed now more than ever.
By supporting our Creative Carer Patreon project for just a pound a month you can help keep us going.
For a little more we could run a half day #RocketKids Session in a UK school in your name. You could come and help us (subject to school safeguarding protocols)
You or your organisation may even want to sponsor one of our Drop Trucks.
We want to raise funding to put up to 22 of our Pop-Up Day Drop Trucks and STEAMsters on the road.
See the short film here to get a feel for our work and ambition for our own #Ignite22🔥 Festival of Community Creativity.
CHANGE IS POSSIBLE. HOPe IS POWER
We’ve been very grateful to the commercial side of The Guardian for their support these last few years. They gave us two whole pages in the print paper to support our #ArtConnects19 Festival year.
Their ‘Change is Possible, Hope is Power’ campaign gave us a lot of inspirations and we made a subtitled version of their brilliant TV commercial which was endorsed by their then marketing director, but later deleted from our YouTube channel.
With the exception of a great article six years ago when we rebranded to STEAM Co. from The Little House of Fairy Tales with an event at the Royal Institution we’ve struggled to engage them editorially so were grateful to have this letter about Brexit published, even if it wasn’t about Brexit.
Their Education Editor, Richard Adams, even blocks us on Twitter.
Go figure.
