Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation

Recommending: Growing your own vegetables

Thoughtful graduation speeches

Dana Gioia (head of the National Endowment for Arts in the US, think super-powered UK Arts Council) gave a speech to Stanford Graduates – here:

Saying:

…The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture’s celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young.

There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child’s imagination, and we’ve relinquished that imagination to the marketplace…

And

…Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a culture that bit by bit trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening—not just in the media, but in our schools and civic life.

And

…How do we explain to the larger society the benefits of this civic investment when they have been convinced that the purpose of arts education is mostly to produce more artists—hardly a compelling argument to either the average taxpayer or financially strapped school board?

We need to create a new national consensus. The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.

And closer to home, many congratulations to Dr. David Eldridge who echoes some of the same thoughts in his speech  along with

A favourite memory of my time here at Exeter was with Peter when our year group wrote a Brechtian version of The Wind in the Willows.

We ventured on to Exmoor to experience a real Wild Wood and to find some badger sets and then afterwards the group spent a magical hour or two reading Brecht’s poems to each other in the embrace of a generous pub fire.

Of course, we began to form some of the essential bonds required to make a show and began to taste something of the famous German playwright’s rich flavours and to create a rooted reality for our play.

But years later it occurred to me that actually he mostly did it because it would be fun. He knew that we might remember moments like this as they lodge fast in the heart and are amongst a life’s greatest riches.

Although Peter might baulk at the comparison in a way Hector the hero of Alan Bennett’s thoughtful hit comedy The History Boys seems like a bed-fellow.

Even with the bike and the motorcycle leathers Hector seems a bit old-fashioned even in the play’s context of the eighties – quoting Houseman and espousing the notion that all knowledge is precious. But let me say this IS a precious idea that IS worth standing up for today and tomorrow.

comments

One Response to “Thoughtful graduation speeches”

  1. Lainie on August 3rd, 2007

    googling up london theatre stuff and found…you.
    Hello cousin / uncle / person from family where relatives are found using michelle as a marker.

  • About me

    I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.

  • Recent Work

    Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).

  • Nakamitsu

  • Yellow Gentlemen