The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Song and dance over art meme
Poor Fa tim a the ballerina was a lightning rod for pent-up frustrations this week. It was a case of bad taste and bad timing. A poster, possibly a cheesy nod to Degas, features Fatima sitting in a tutu looking thoughtfully at her pointe shoes. “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet)” says the caption.
Social media caught fire. Fatima became a meme faster than the famous 32 fouttes in Swan Lake, with “f ” alliteration featuring. A nerve had been struck.
While the creative industry struggles to survive and venues stand dark, the last thing artists want to be told is to give up and do any work that will pay.
So how did the fictional Fatima start the fur y? Things kicked off when ITV News tweeted a quote from Chancellor Rishi Sunak, which implied those in creative industries badly impacted by the corona virus pandemic should retrain and find another job.
The tweet was deleted, with the quick clarification that Sunak was referring to workers in “all walks of life ”. But the outrage continued – and the memes got funnier.
Now for the bad timing. It seems the Fatima poster was part of a 2019-20 UK Government campaign intended to attract newcomers to a career in tech. It featured people from all professions, not just the arts. How the campaign re-emerged now is unclear, but Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden took to Twitter too, agreeing the advert was “crass” and pointing at his department’s £1.67 billion support package to the UK arts industry, announced in July .( The fact his department is called the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport could be an indicator of priorities, but I digress).
Scotland ’s arts and heritage community gets £ 97 million from this lifeline , as per the Barnett formula, with Holy rood pledging a further £10m.
In good times, the arts make a significant contribution to the economy. Creative Scotland estimates Scotland’s wider creative industries contributed £4.6bn to the coffers in 2015, while a 2013 Scottish Household survey found 72% of Scots had attended a cultural event or place of culture in the previous 12 months, and that’s excluding cinemas.
One day the art, music and literature from this time of Covid will define it. Where would we be without the arts, if all the Fatimas of this world went off to a worthy profession in cyber security? Churchill famously (and allegedly) said, when asked to cut arts funding for the war effort in the Second World War: “Then what would we be fighting for?”
The arts have been part of what makes us human since early man first drew on cave walls. They define us, and art, literature, theatre and music remain representatives of an age long after its time has passed.
Once the preserve of the elite, arts are now for all of us and not just a gilded plaything for posh people. Our own Janey Godley dispels that myth every day, using her art form, comedy, to provide her astute social commentary. It’s clever, funny and far from posh.
The Edinburgh Festival began in 1947 after the de vastation of war to provide a platform for the “flowering of the human spirit” and today it is one of the most successful and egalitarian arts festivals in the world.
In Dundee not only did flax, and later jute, spawn a newly prosperous middle class in the 19th Century, it also created a new pride in the arts and a new class of professional artists, as the burgeoning newspaper and magaz ine indus try employed them . The
history of art is our history, art is about us. We need Fatima, and we are Fatima too.
The creative industry is resilient, it adapts quickly to change and is ever-innovative in finding new ways to survive. Courier Country theatres and other institutions have been clever during Covid, using social media and digital platforms to reach their communities when their venues went dark.
The Artist Support Pledge is another ingenious example.
Devised by artist Matthew Burrows, the idea is that an artist puts up a work for sale online at a price not exceeding £200. Once they have sold £1,000 worth of works, they buy a work from a fellow artist for £200. It’s now caught on internationally. You can find out more on Instagram #artistsupportpledge.
And so, to get back to that outrage –Fatima can dance if she wants to. Keep dancing, Fatima!
High flyer
Three cheers to the bartailed godwit that broke the world record for avian non-stop flight this week, flying 7,500 miles from Alaska to New Zealand in 11 days, without rest, food or water. Apparently built with the aerodynamics of a jet fighter, this innocuouslooking bird has the ability to shrink its organs while flying to lighten the load. It usually weighs between 190-400g but can double in size before a long flight.
This one, a male known as 4BBRW because of its tags, also had a 5g satellite tracker harnessed to its lower back, so scientists could track its progress.
Hopefully it’s enjoying a bristle-worm and shellfish dinner on a mud flat, oblivious of its new fame.