Thinkpiece 4.. Movement, Form and Meaning:
an extract from a lecture entitled ‘The Excitement of Agency’
This lecture-in-progress was given at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire on 17 December 2024
To my mind, structure and shape require different approaches. I’d equate the concepts of shape
and form and propose that form is related to movement. If structure is the result of putting things
together (a literal meaning of “composing”), form is created through the movement of material.
Movement has sufficient energy to enable the music to take shape.
What is this movement? In the real world, we should narrow this down to forward movement,
which we can equate with momentum. Musical canons create momentum in constantly requiring
new lines. There can be no shadows without something to cause them.
Those arguing in favour of the use of rhyme in poetry highlight the criteria of memorability -
rhyming poetry is generally more memorable than prose - and individuality - the problem-solving
aspect of rhyming eliciting a distinct tactic or technique. It occurs to me that the great strength of
rhyme, for the poet, is that words can serve as markers. A chosen word points forward to a
possible rhyming word. However short-circuited the process, there is momentum: an eddy, if not
a swirling; if not a torrent; less aquatically, an unfolding.
Both theatrical performances and films are created to be experienced in time. Like musical
performances, they play, or make play, with our expectations as we imagine and anticipate.
It is less clear how we experience movement in the visual arts, unless (obviously) it is kinetic.
There is still movement! In pottery, for example, hand and mind might even be said to be working
in canon, or something like it: one guiding the other; and provoking - or exciting! - the other. It is
helpful to remember that the word, “exciting”, can be a verb (a present participle) as well as an
adjective. This gives a new twist to our title, ‘The Excitement of Agency’. We can Excite Agency,
the awareness of this may prompt further Excitement, and so it goes: round and round.
This back and forth is evident in research. We explore online or browse through dictionaries and
textbooks. Either way, we are informed. Under favourable circumstances, or in response to the
headwind of a deadline, we may be able to shape our thinking; thoughts in motion eventually find
a form.
It is through movement, excitement, and a sense of agency, that we can create and cherish form.
Why do we need to do this? In a letter to Willi Reich, dated February 23rd, 1944, [Anton] Webern
paraphrases Hölderlin: “to live means to defend a form”.
It is through our vitality and curiosity, and our responses to the many adventures we undertake,
whether chosen or not, that our lives find their form. “To live means to defend a form”; and with
form, comes meaning.
Howard Skempton
14 December 2024
Thinkpiece 3. Bramley-Moore: As good as it can be?
While watching the Euro football tournament, some of us have been looking closely at the German stadia. With the exception of the former Olympic Stadium in Berlin [which has space for an athletics track, so leaving many spectators far away from the action], they are compact rectangular grounds, tailor-made for football. Everton’s comparable new stadium, under construction at Bramley-Moore Dock, will be a venue in the next Euro tournament in four years’ time. Bearing that in mind, how is it looking a few months from completion?
Everton’s management, on and off the field, may have been dysfunctional for many years, but with the new stadium, are they finally on the right track?
The search for a new stadium site began a quarter of a century ago. The first believable proposal was a partnership with Liverpool City Council for a multi-purpose venue, with 55,000 seats and a sliding roof, at Kings Dock. It was envisaged as a centrepiece of the European Capital of Culture in 2008. However, at the last minute, Everton opted out. The City Council went ahead on its own, building the Arena and Conference Centre.
Everton’s next coherent plan was to propose a new stadium [working with Tesco] in Kirkby Town Centre. However, this was a less-interesting design and remote from the club’s inner-city roots. It was outside the official city boundary. There was fierce opposition and a supporters’ organisation ‘Keep Everton in Our City’ [KEIOC] was established. The proposal was finally defeated in a Public Inquiry in 2009. Meanwhile, there was a lot of support for staying at Goodison Park, and expanding the ‘Old Lady’ as part of a unique ‘Football Quarter’ in which Everton and Liverpool would retain their own stadia [which are less than a mile apart, on opposite sides of Stanley Park] but share new supporting transport and hospitality infrastructure. The notion of a shared stadium was investigated, but rejected as not just unpopular, but also a poor business model [stadia being essential parts of each club’s distinctive identity].
Everton had also rejected an alternative proposal to build a stadium within the approach loop to the Wallasey Tunnel, and Peel Holdings [owners of the dock estate] showed little interest in providing a waterfront site for a stadium, unless it was shared by both clubs. However, this changed when Everton came under new ownership and sponsorship. Peel were persuaded that a stadium of exceptional quality could be a suitable ‘anchor’ for their ‘Liverpool Waters’ development, providing a ‘buffer’ between an expanding City Centre and the industrial docks to the North. It would bring local people [of whom many - or their relatives - used to work on the docks] back to the waterfront.
However, the derelict Central Docks had been included within Liverpool’s ‘Maritime Mercantile City’ World Heritage Site. The prospect of new high-rise developments on the waterfront caused UNESCO to place Liverpool on its ‘World Heritage at Risk’ list, and Liverpool finally lost its World Heritage status in 2021, with the proposed stadium described as the ‘final nail in the coffin’. This was a shocking decision, made by arch-preservationists with no apparent interest in, understanding of, or respect for Liverpool as a thriving city, which had already demonstrated its ability to enable and support the sensitive redevelopment of historic structures, including St George’s Hall, Albert Dock and Stanley Dock. Nevertheless, the new Everton Stadium has gone ahead, with ten-per-cent of its over-five-hundred-million-pound budget being directed to heritage-related work. A fixed-price contract was signed, so nothing could be revised during construction, which remains on schedule.
Bramley Moore: an early computer graphic [from Sky Sports] illustrating the view across the water link to the working docks.
Have Everton got it right? The concept architect was Dan Meis, who gave exemplary initial briefings to supporters and stakeholders. He argued that ‘atmosphere’ was all-important, in providing active support for the team and being attractive for a world-wide television audience. The projected capacity is 52,888 [comparable with the German stadia, but significantly less than Everton’s local North-West rivals]. There were thoughts that this could be extended by another 10,000 in the future, but Meis gave a ‘be careful what you wish for’ warning that these extra seats would be the least-attractive in the house [furthest from the pitch], be the most expensive to construct, and could have a negative effect on the atmosphere. A late decision to bring the roof down to the height of the historic Tobacco Warehouse, may have made potential short-term expansion more difficult in any case.
Comparisons have been made with great theatres and opera houses – in which seating capacity is rarely discussed, but every seat offering an excellent view and experience is fundamental. Test events will begin early in 2025, and all will be ready by the summer.
T.R.S.
Thinkpiece 2: Civil Defence and National Resilience
The world is becoming more dangerous, volatile and unpredictable. Wars in Eastern Europe and the Gulf, terrorism and polarised politics, mean that our traditional defence mechanisms may well be tested sooner rather than later and found to be wanting. An attack (punitive or disabling) on or within our homeland British Isles is becoming more likely and our traditional allies may be more reluctant to be involved and deter the enemy. We should perhaps, reconsider our defences at home and review the concept of a modern Civil Defence.
The means to inflict major damage on the British Isles did not really exist until WW1 when naval and aerial bombing demonstrated that no-one was immune from attack. It was recognised that casualties could be reduced by developing civil defence measures. The range of significant civil defence structures erected during WW2 was immense. Air raid shelters became commonplace and a network of Civil Defence Control Centres covering air raid wardens, fire watchers, water tanks and emergency water, food and medical supplies, sirens, black out provision and signage, was set up. In 1945, the Home Office had the foresight to encourage local authorities to fund the establishment of Civil Defence Associations and in 1948 the Civil Defence Act established a Civil Defence Corps, organised and intended to manage and provide rescue services in areas affected by a national emergency. After the detonation of the hydrogen bomb by the USSR in 1953, Government survival became a major priority and in the 1950s, those designing public buildings were encouraged to incorporate shelters. By March 1956, the Civil Defence Corps had expanded to 330,000. Recruitment continued into the 1960s but the financial crisis of the mid 1960 led to the standing down of the Civil Defence Corps in 1968. Civil Defence responsibilities were passed on to the Police Department in 1970 and the Planning and Emergency Fire Department in 1984. It became the Emergency Planning Division in 1989.
The threat of aerial bombardment, nuclear or otherwise, remains a capability of our potential enemies but modern warfare techniques and capabilities have made the means and effect far more complex. The situation in Ukraine has shown the value of built-in shelter in high rise apartment blocks against conventional munitions but modern satellite photography, GPS navigation systems and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and drones has created greater precision. A school or hospital does not provide the protection afforded by a Geneva Convention! The Police Force and where appropriate, the Armed Forces have plans for protection of traditional key points. However, our modern communications and essential infrastructure, including water, sewage and flood control, have become reliant on computer management and wireless technology, much of which is accessible to cyber experts wishing to create disruption.
Whilst the Government wrestles with the high costs and limitations of a comparatively tiny Armed Service (Regular and Reserve Army of c100k) and raising the capacity to produce munitions and delivery systems, perhaps consideration should be made to engaging the population in voluntarily contributing to a new civil defence capability which embraces all facets of our national existence. Once a structure is set up, then the education needs to be focussed on both youth and adult society to do their bit in defence of the realm, which might be more acceptable than just giving them a rifle, a backpack and a uniform as our conscripts and volunteers were in 1914.
K.S.
Thanks to Historic England for background to the Civil Defence (from first World War to the Cold war)
"I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through…the only defence is offence, which means you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves”
Stanley Baldwin, 1932
Baldwin was PM from June 1935 to May 1937
(portrait by Walter Stoneman 1920)