This month Owen Kelly discusses Arlene Goldbard’s new book, a novel titled The Intercessor, and asks why she chose to write this unusual kind of novel at this particular time.

The novel offers a linked series of short stories, each foregrounding one character from a group whose stories eventually interlock. All of the characters have political, social or spiritual issues which come to seem less like categories than like different coloured lenses through which we can approach the world.

The novel explores the Jewish Renewal movement, among other themes, without wanting its audience limited to Jews or even less to Jews with an interest in the Jewish Renewal movement.

Arlene explains how this specific writing began, how the novel grew from the initial writing, and what she hopes the published book might achieve.



The Intercessor

The General Election of June 2017, and the massive Labour surge under Jeremy Corbyn's socialist leadership, has provided a new sense of optimism for those hoping for an end to utilitarian approaches to culture and swingeing cuts to arts funding. This month, Juliet talks to Loraine Leeson, Hassan Mahamdallie and Hilary Wainwright about the concept of cultural democracy, the recent The World Transformed conference and the Arts for Labour initiative. What are Jeremy Corbyn's arts policies, and how are they informed by the anti-austerity movement? What has been learned from the Greater London Council's arts programmes of the 1980s, or the Attlee government's cultural policies? How did writers and thinkers such as William Morris, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams establish a long British tradition of 'cultural democracy', and what can we take from them in the 21st century?

WORKS REFERENCED:

Campaign to save The Cinema Museum: www.cinemamuseum.org.uk

'A Creative Future for All' - https://www.policyforum.labour.org.uk/news/a-creative-future-for-all
The Great Exhibition of the North - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-43324069

The Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company - http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/gay-sweatshop/
LORAINE LEESON, Art : Process : Change (2017) - https://www.routledge.com/Art--Process--Change-Inside-a-Socially-Situated-Practice/Leeson/p/book/9781138670631
KEN LOACH, The Spirit of '45 (2017) - http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-spirit-45
HASSAN MAHAMDALLIE on William Morris - https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1996/isj2-071/mahamdallie.htm
WILLIAM MORRIS, News from Nowhere (1890) - https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/17/guardian190-william-morris-news-from-nowhere
HILARY WAINWRIGHT, A New Politics from the Left (2017) - https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/persuasive-points-on-new-politics-from-the-left

Cultural Democracy

Episode 1 of of the first series of Meanwhile In An Abandoned Warehouse, a discussion about cultural democracy in theory and practice. All the episodes with additional commentary and linked references at http://miaaw.net

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse - series 1

Cultural Democracy in Practice

An interpretation of urban decay. Mix of field recordings, voice, synthesis, narrative soundscapes and elements of pop.

The Intercessor

miaaw.net

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