Sometimes I find it
hard to believe how lucky I am. Not only do I have a career working
with books and people that I love, but occasionally I get to travel
internationally as well. Two years ago I visited the first Lahore
Literature Festival in Pakistan, an amazing experience that showed me
just how unifying a force culture can be in a society starved of the
opportunity to meet in public. How important open discourse is to the
health of a society, and how art can be the catalyst for so much
discourse.
This past week I have
had the pleasure to visit two more international literature
festivals, this time in South America: Hay Cartagena in Colombia and
FLUPP in Brasil. They are separated geographically by half a
continent, but also by a philosophy and a purpose, as well as being
separated from me by two languages I can't speak very well! In these
ways they offered a fascinating comparison for my Clore Fellowship
learning, a point to further explore what I might wish to do in the
future. Indeed, the comparison was as stark as the landscapes of the
Sahara and the Amazon that we flew on the way there.
First up was Cartagena,
a stunningly beautiful city on the Caribbean Sea. Historically
influential leader of the fight for Latin American independence from
Spanish rule. Home of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and setting for some of
his most celebrated works, most notably Love in the Time of
Cholera and Of Love
and Other Demons. Within 20 minutes of arriving in Cartagena I
had fallen in love with the city – or at least the Colonial walled
city in which I was staying. It's narrow lanes, painted buildings,
ornamental balconies, relaxed atmosphere. After three days I
regretted not being able to stay longer.
And there: HayCartagena, the first franchise in the increasingly global Hay-on-Wye
success train, celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with an
appearance from Nobel Laureate JMG Le Clezio among a host of others
from around the world. I was there on behalf of Writers' Centre
Norwich, and our (Inter)National Conversation programme, curating and
delivering a debate about global writing and publishing in the
twenty-first century, and whether digital technologies are enabling a
challenge to the traditional dominance of the London/New York centres
of activity. With a particular focus on writing and publishing in
Africa and South America, it proved an interesting discussion on
where the power lies in global literature, and how individual
countries or regions can have relevant local conversations within
this increasingly global landscape. You can watch Binyavanga
Wainana's thoughts here, in
which he talks about his desire for African writers to find new
routes to share their work, to reach local readers and create a new
impetus for writing across Africa. Essentially he argues that African writers need a new process by which to reach readers, because the current outcomes are stacked in the favour of publishers and readers in London and New York. It was the sort of high
quality discussion that excites the intellect, and felt
representative of the other events I heard while I was in Cartagena:
political, active, engaged. There were some good events, some packed
houses, and a remarkable feat of quality live English-Spanish and
Spanish-English translation. In so many ways it was a brilliant
festival and I loved being there.
On the last afternoon I
met Jonathan Levi, and we spoke briefly with Ellah Allfrey about
reading, and about the challenges and value of encouraging widespread
interest in books and literature. Jonathan is a fascinating man with
a wealth of experience, and the way he talked about audience
development really excited me. This whole area is my main interest
and will form the core of my research during this fellowship, and it
was with this conversation in my head that I flew to Rio de Janeiro
for a trip that I knew would be a very different experience to
Cartagena.
In Rio, I was due to
meet FLUPP, an annual festival and year round programme of activity
taking place in various favelas that aims to break down the barriers
between communities and encourage reading and writing for the many.
(It is named after the UPP - the military police who 'pacify' the
favelas; Festival of Literature of the UPP). FLUPP is led by Julio
Ludemir and Ecio Salles, whom I met for the first time as an evening
thunderstorm crashed around us. Julio came across as a forthright
conviction-driven man, eager to to speak clearly and exactly despite
having to do so for my benefit in English. And despite 24 hours
confusion in which I mistook his talking about 'slam poetry' for
'Islam poetry' – a very different kettle of fish that made far less
sense! – we were able to share ideas and learn a great deal from
each other.
He challenged my
assumptions. Each time I referred to FLUPP as a festival – as I did
on at least four occasions – he repeated his mantra: 'FLUPP is not
a festival, it is a process.' At first I took this for a semantic
difference, but as our time together wore on, the significance came
to embody something important – the activity he does isn't one
directional, it is a collaboration and a deep relationship with
individuals and communities. It begins long before a festival starts,
and continues long after it has finished. The short festival that
takes place in November is merely the most public and prominent part
of this. But not the most important.
The other aspect of
FLUPP that Julio was keen to convey was about quality as a
demonstration of power. When FLUPP was set up to directly rival the
more illustrious and international Flip festival in Brasil, he was
clear that it couldn't just be a small offering for local people, but
had to be big and professional and exceptional. FLUPP may be a
literature festival in deprived neighbourhoods, but it refuses to be
limited in its ambition and professionalism. Indeed, this commitment
to excellence is at the heart of its social message. 'How can we
change perceptions if we fall into them ourselves', said Julio. 'We
must treat these people as powerful and worthy of quality, because
they are, and the world needs to know that.'
Over the next two days,
Julio and another FLUPP collaborator, Toni Marques, showed me around
Rio, introduced me to their work, and took me to visit some of the
sites of their work. We talked at length, and I visited the favelas
of Cidade de Deus and Morro dos Prazeres, sat in on an event, and saw
for myself what Julio was talking about: how the process of building
trusting relationships with people drives everything that FLUPP does,
how it unlocked opportunities for a great number of people, and how
important that sense of power and quality was for the communities.
And how, rather than seeing the time spent with people as a
distraction from the terribly-important-work-that-must-be-done, it is
the site of the most significant work they do. I loved this approach,
it felt like a liberation.
Over the last couple of
years, my work has often felt like a grand exercise in window
dressing, where being seen to be impressive and highly literary by
funders was more important than being of value for people, where the
finances of the art, and the intellectualism of that art for the few
were more significant than the many who create and consume it. As
such, Hay Cartagena was a natural and exciting place to be, that same
milieu in which I have operated for a while. Where valuable,
interesting things happen, but they happen in an elite place out of
the reach of the many. But it was in conversation with Jonathan Levi,
and with FLUPP that my heart skipped and my values entwined with the
work I saw. I'm fascinated by the impact high quality audience
development could have in challenging the perception of the arts as
elitist, in actively spreading access more widely, in encouraging
deeper engagement, and in creating social benefit for people while
also producing even more knowledgable, skilled, and confident
audiences for the exceptional artists we already have.
Indeed, the more I
think about it, the less I can see the value of significant state
funding for art that doesn't have a distinctly social impact. At
least in music and literature, two art forms in which the production
of high quality art is perfectly well served by commercial
enterprise. I'm not sure exactly what will come after my Fellowship
ends in July, but I am committed that it will be about process first,
and that people and art together will be focus. I'm planning a piece
of research exploring best practice and the construction of a
coherent programme for audience development. This feels an exciting
place to be as I crack on with my Clore Fellowship.
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