Tuesday 13 January '09
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

A response to Simon Barnes

Dear Simon  

Thank you for making your points about Adam's article for Cumbria life (see entry under January 5 below), they are useful, but to my mind an acute illustration of the attitudes being increasingly forced upon rural communities. There are three pertinent statements in your text that need to be addressed:

I see nothing wrong with wanting to get away from the crowds and seeking a little solitude, or selected company.

You are absolutely right in that there is nothing wrong with this, the trouble is, as Adam indicates, the Lake District is packed to its rafters with people seeking solitude, from day trippers to lifestyle residents, and seem to get very cross when they rub up against them. This is not a wilderness but a working environment, even if that work is now predominantly the leisure industry rather than tilling. I would suggest Outer Mongolia but you'd probably find that's the same now.

Unfettered hedonism has its place too!

Again, I'm inclined to agree in part, but crucially, at whose expense? Unfettered hedonism anywhere crowded has an annoying effect on those unsuspecting bystanders. The problem here is that those folk seeking all-out-guns-a-blazing-pushing-themselves-to-the-brink-of-finding-out-who-they-really-are-experience tend to regard the rural as some neutral zone that's up for grabs, that you should be able to do what you want here and it doesn't matter. Well it does, because this is a social space like anywhere else and we all need to be considerate to those around us. You just need do hedonism where it won't get on someone else's nerves. All the outdoor pursuits centres specialise in what they term 'a beasting' which is basically is an initiation, dragging the innocent on a lung bursting and tortuous rampage through the hills, preferably in cold wet weather. You can transcribe this attitude to the landscape and its people and this is something that even the School of Outdoor Studies in Penrith (that trains the trainers) has now realised and is looking to correct.

We have a rural ideal which perhaps bears little relation to reality, and I don't think the dwindling numbers of country dwellers have much cultural impact on the rest of us.

Yes you are right once more. Your rural ideal bears little relation to reality. For the first time ever, rural populations are increasing and will do for the foreseeable future as long as technology and communications continue to enable increasingly mobile living patterns. In case you hadn't noticed the world recently got a bit global and with the odd flap of a butterfly wing and the odd carbon sink here and the odd eco-issue there the rural has shifted rather high up the list of important things. A bit like when Kevin Mcleod went to the top of the leader board in Top Gear's Star in a reasonably priced car. Most of my neighbours work in the local arms and nuclear industry and I'd say they have quite a bit of potential for impact on the wider world. The reason why Grizedale Arts is here is to ensure that the rural does exactly that, trying to influence culture in a major way like all those other country dwellers who did the same - Rousseau, Wordsworth, Ruskin, Darwin, Jefferson and the like who all had quite a bit of a say in how things turned out.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 13/01/09 at 14:42 0 Comments