How to be both...
From an early age my now 7-year-old son has been practising how to answer the familiar question: where do you come from? Growing up bilingual in Sheffield where this question frequently doubles as a query about national identity, his first tactic was to reply according to the language in which the question was posed. If you asked him whether he was English or Spanish in English, he would always be English. Try the same question in Spanish and, perhaps not surprisingly, he would suddenly be Spanish. (Woody Allen’s Zelig acts similarly, changing his accent and appearance depending on who he is with.) As my son got older, probably around 4 or 5, he preferred to be both. “I’m English and Spanish,” he would affirm, the stress always landing on that conjunction.
Posted on: 21 February 2017
When day breaks we will be off
A poem by James Byrne.
Posted on: 21 February 2017
We need to think about redefining citizenship in the Anthropocene
The hottest year on record was 2016. It was also the year scientists advised that Earth’s citizens were now living in the Anthropocene, the name proposed for an epoch in which humans influence geology and environment on a global scale.
Posted on: 17 February 2017
Britain does not break Treaties dixit Maggie Thatcher
If you, like me, are feeling bereft by the potentially imminent loss of your European Citizenship, then you might agree in finding the jokey vocabulary, which creates portmanteaus of ‘British’ and ‘exit’ and ‘British’ and ‘remain’ and ‘British’ and ‘moan’, simply irritating.
Posted on: 10 February 2017
What Can Art Do?
I’m British, but never thought too patriotically about that knowing that my father’s ancestors invaded from Normandy in 1066. My mother arrived more recently, in 1938. She was German and did not approve of her government. She escaped in a hurry and was welcomed in England with an immediate offer of British citizenship. My childhood home was continually populated by folk from all over the world. ‘My country right or wrong’ never made sense to me, an internationalist.\n
Posted on: 8 February 2017
What's in a postcode?
As I step off my local bus and walk down the street on my way home I see two things: a boarded up Victorian shop-front, the second floor and attic level newly collapsed onto the street, exposing the remaining interior structure to the elements; and a ‘Leave’(EU) sticker placed in the window of a house several doors down. The dilapidated scene of this street is harrowingly neglected, but not uncommon among the working class postcodes of North Liverpool. Since my adolescence, Anfield has always been classified as a financially poor, socially deprived, ward – today, these symptoms have manifested into toxic ideas concerning culture.
Posted on: 8 February 2017
Blog
How to be both...
From an early age my now 7-year-old son has been practising how to answer the familiar question: where do you come from? Growing up bilingual in Sheffield where this question frequently doubles as a query about national identity, his first tactic was to reply according to the language in which the question was posed. If you asked him whether he was English or Spanish in English, he would always be English. Try the same question in Spanish and, perhaps not surprisingly, he would suddenly be Spanish. (Woody Allen’s Zelig acts similarly, changing his accent and appearance depending on who he is with.) As my son got older, probably around 4 or 5, he preferred to be both. “I’m English and Spanish,” he would affirm, the stress always landing on that conjunction.
Posted on: 21 February 2017