Working Class Creatives Database Reading Group- Session 1

Reading Groups, WWCD

This is a recording of myself and another member of the group, Lolly, reading out the essay “More Than Just a Dream Land: Why the British Seaside Means So Much to the Working Class” by Yvonne Singh, from the book “Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class, by the Working Class” for the first session of our reading group. I have edited out our discussion of the text, so that this is purely the text, for anyone who missed the session.

This first group ended up being just the two of us, but I am hopeful that we will attract more members of the group as time goes on, and I am excited to see what happens and what we can learn from each other!

BABEWORLD READING GROUP: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Lectures/Talks, Reading Groups

The_Carrier_Bag_Theory_of_Fiction_-_Ursu

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K Le Guin, lead by Elena

the human aspect- not sure if we agree that heroes are the driver of a story, necessarily- people in the modern day enjoy watching people do mundane everyday activities- i.e. ASMR videos, or the TV show Gogglebox
the container as the most important human invention
collecting and storing v.s. the spear and violence
you harvest something but you need to get the excess home, the excess that you cannot eat then and there
the container being more important than what is inside
if capitalism is the container- there might be one or two good things inside the container, but the container still needs to be changed/remade
oppressive systems and structures could be seen as containers
the work we make, as marginalised groups, might not be as meaningful or important if not for the “containers” we are in
are we submitting to the container by being part of it, by taking part- i.e. being working class and going to uni- are we becoming part of the problem (container)?
can we spread the knowledge and power we have acquired?
are we forgetting and leaving behind our original communities (containers)?
you carry everything with you- you are the container for your memories, experiences, ect
personally I think this text needs to be handled carefully lest it be spun and used for TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) rhetoric with the undercurrents of how the container is inherently female (Read: womb, the act of harvesting, home, childcare) juxtaposed with the spear- violence, thrusting, penetrative, adventure, male
I am not saying this text is inherently transphobic, just that we need to discuss these interpretations and be aware of them
this text is a product of the times- in the 80s Science Fiction was dominated by men, the “hero” role of fighting aliens, so as a woman Science Fiction writer at the time this must have been how she felt trying to write her stories at the time
Also in that era trans people had much less of a voice and presence, which is important to note
“It is the story that makes the difference”
the idea that people only want to see the extremes- easier to turn into a narrative, to simplify something and make it easier to digest, but doesn’t show the full nuance and scope of a situation. It is easier to visualise a hero saving a village than a mum feeding her kids, and you don’t have to learn from it or put yourself in it- because no one is that extreme
It’s easier to focus on one or two individuals rather than the whole system they are propping up and are part of- i.e. the current Dominic Cummings scandal- what he did was wrong and he should be fired, but the media focusing on him means that we aren’t looking at the wider issues- that the whole political party in power are corrupt and doing a huge amount of terrible things, that getting rid of him won’t really make that much difference to the bigger picture, he would just be replaced by someone else equally (or more) corrupt
the human connection can be really important; it can make a story feel more real, more relatable, you are more likely to learn something
“It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality”
science fiction as an extension or mirror to reality, rather than a mythological tale of heroism
the book or novel as a container for a story, rather than a spear travelling in a linear direction
not relating to this violent hero narrative and deciding to create your own narrative
you don’t always have to be the hero of the story, you can be a villain, or just a person- not a hero or a villain, just a human being
the best stories are where things go wrong, or you expect something to happen and it doesn’t (or not quite in the way you planned/thought) and where life happens
life is messy and doesn’t always have a clear conclusion, needing a conclusion can be reductive
the world will always need saving somehow, there will always be things that need to change, there is no clearly defined finish line in real life

Anna Suggested this podcast, linked below:

READING GROUP PLAN AND NOTES FROM GROUP: The Blob by Dr Charlotte Cooper

FAT Project, Lectures/Talks, Reading Groups, Uncategorized

I am leading next week’s Babeworld3000 reading group, and have chosen to examine a zine made by Dr. Charlotte Cooper, The Blob. This post is essentially my notes covering what I want to discuss during the group so that I have something prepped!

I have chosen this text as it is something very close to my heart- I have lived my whole life as a fat person, and like the author I was was particularly affected by the Obesity section of the now closed Medicine Now exhibit at the Wellcome Collection- particularly by a sculpture by the artist John Isaacs, called “I Can’t Help The Way I Feel” which is the piece that inspired the zine we are reading. I think speaking about marginalisations is super important and I have learnt a lot from our reading groups so far, and whilst we talk about a lot of different intersections- class, race, gender, disability, mental illness, sexuality- we haven’t given much time to the discussion of being fat, and what that means in the society we live in. I think this has a lot to do with how we view being fat. We see those other things as things we cannot change about ourselves, or things that we are born into, but being fat is often still seen as a moral failing, or a flaw that we can work on and change, as opposed to simply being a different body type or being a product of various other factors. All this is why I decided to suggest this text, so that we can open up the discussion and get to grips with how being fat can interact with our other marginalisations.

The sculpture mentioned above provoked a very visceral reaction in me, so much so that I made a video using clips I filmed on my phone of it, interspersed with clips of my own body and other related imagery called “I Can’t Help The Way I Feel: My Fat Body”. It also inspired me to run a drawing workshop by the same name, which wasn’t as successful as I had hoped, but which has continued and evolved into the FAT Project I am currently working on, including the zine I made during my residency at The Playground and a series of sculptures and drawings I have been working on.

I think it’s really important that fat people control our own narratives; if the sculpture, which Dr. Charlotte Cooper nicknamed “The Blob”, had been made by a fat artist who was exploring their own relationship to and feelings surrounding their body and body image I think my reaction to it would have been a little different. I would still have had the visceral reactions of disgust and uncomfortable-ness that it provokes, I think, but knowing that someone like me had made it to express themselves would make it feel more genuine and relatable. Finding out that is was in fact made by someone who is not, and it seems never has been, fat felt like a slap in the face. I am not saying that thin people can’t have body issues or eating disorders (for clarification, don’t jump down my throat!!) but for someone to come along and create this narrative, to decide he knows how fat people feel about being fat is just really gross in my opinion. It isn’t the only work of his that sensationalises, trivialises, and makes the fat experience seem “gross” or “other”. He has made a whole series of fat sculptures where they seem to melt onto the pavement and ooze as they dominate the spaces they are installed in.

“I Can’t Help The Way I Feel” AKA “The Blob”

Points we could discuss:

This idea of co-opting or taking over narratives from marginalised groups- when people who do not belong to a certain group of marginalised people try to tell us how we feel or how we should feel (i.e. how THEY think we should feel) it takes spaces/opportunities/audiences away from those people
The “Headless Fatty” concept
Fat as symbolism for wealth, greed, laziness, ugliness, as a fetish, or as the “maternal”
doctors and fat people
body positivity movement being co-opted by thinner, white, cis, straight people when fat queer people, fat people of colour, fat disabled people, FAT fat people are still facing stigma and trauma at higher levels
the links to poverty and fatness- as discussed in our first reading group session
The Adele situation currently happening
The idea that fat people are a modern creation- see Historical Fat People Instagram

Then we’ll see where all this takes us I guess!

READING GROUP WITH BABEWORLD3000: The Problem With Imposter Syndrome

Lectures/Talks, Reading Groups

EXCERPT 3 IMPOSTER SYNDROME
(there are a few pages missing)

Notes made during the 3rd reading group The Problem With Impostor Syndrome is a chapter from a book called Steal As Much As You Can by Nathalie Olah:

the writing style uses a lot of academic language to make it more palatable to academia
the way it portrays mental health in the workplace is very centred on middle class white collar working environments- it is wildly different in working class workplaces
the dissonance between big brands and companies pumping out mental health slogans who at the same time pay their workers minimum (i.e. not liveable wages) which is a large factor in poor mental health amongst the working class
“Advertorials”- editorials in magazines that are meant to subtly advertise a product or brand they want you to buy into
M&S LGBTQ sandwiches- they could donate to LGBTQ charities any time of the year but they did this during Pride for publicity, made into a meme/sell-able novelty/joke/gimmick for clout – banks/companies at Pride ect
Brands co-opt marginalised people’s narratives and then toss them away when it’s no longer profitable
Kim Kardashian and her white saviour complex
appropriation of platforms- safe spaces are taken over and appropriated by brands and the media
“Advertising that masquerades as activism, whose tactics go a long way in corrupting our language and stripping our lives of a certain sensitivity; because no sooner have we found a way to articulate our feelings, then it’s commandeered by an advertsing industry which by default reduces it to cliche, leaving us once again unable to articulate ourselves…becoming emotionally impotent”
allies need to know when to step back and listen
placing responsibilities with the individual rather than the systems in place that cause the difficulties they are facing via phrases like “reach out” and “love yourself” than brands pump out
social mobility- forcing people to perform and change things about themselves in order to move up the social ladder
people forget or ignore their privileges and assume that because they have been successful that anyone from their background or similar can too
“radical education” – Radical to who???
solidarity is a choice- you can choose to act or not act, whereas people you are in “solidarity” with don’t necessarily have a choice
“code switching”
“Whilst it might go against the ideas peddled by most self-help and management books, I would suggest that rather than internalising the structural shame imposed by the corporate workplace, as well as by certain seats of learning and social circles, it is important for all of us to remain vigilant to the many ways in which is dehumanises and strips us of our identity” we are always told it’s our fault for not being good enough, not the systems failing us, is the message we’re fed- we just need to try harder! We need to realise that these are lies and stay vigilant to these messages we are being fed as they impact how we treat ourselves and others
we are sold the idea that the “working class dream” is to no longer be working class
discussion around accents and how it can change how we are perceived, understood and treated; and how we change our accents to fit different situations or as a way to distance ourselves from where we are from
“To do this, it’s essential to remember that in the market economy, you- your body and your mind- are no more than a commodity in the eyes of your employer, and that any attempt they make to improve your wellbeing is for the sake of securing profit” CORPORATIONS AND BRANDS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS!!! YOU ARE A COMMODITY TO THEM
“…find ways of putting that experience as an imposter to good use: writing about your experiences, harnessing the dynamics you witness to mount political movements to create a more empowered workforce” this bit kind of doesn’t match up to the rest of the text in my opinion- it takes a lot of mental energy to be able to do these things, on top of already working probably full time and trying to manage your life. When you are already mentally ill/a person of colour/working class/trans/gay/under privileged in some other way being expected to then be an activist and fight for your rights on top of all this is a really big ask! Yes we are angry, but we’re too exhausted to constantly be fighting it on top of the everyday battles we face.
Allies need to step up and help marginalised people in this and support them- stepping in when you can see your friends struggling under the weight of their marginalisations
An example: If you are cis and in a meeting rather than waiting for your trans/non-binary friends to announce their pronouns, jump in and introduce yourself with your pronouns! This takes the pressure off of them, normalises the conversation, and gets everyone else to share their pronouns without making your trans/non-binary friends feel awkward or uncomfortable and making them feel like they have to out themselves just to have their pronouns respected

BABEWORLD3000 Reading Group: Intro to “Taking Up Space”

Lectures/Talks, Reading Groups

TAKING UP SPACE EXCERPT

Notes made during the second BABEWORLD3000 reading group, reading the introduction to Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change by Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi

the expectations placed on minorities- remembering where you come from, but not allowing yourself to be tokenised
the pressure to succeed that others who are not marginalised will not experience, or at least not to the same degree
being black and British as a unique experience
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the fact that no one could pin down my identity. I never wanted to have one defining characteristic. I wanted people to see that I could be all of them at once. I wanted to be complex, be able to change my mind, have opinions and interests that didn’t necessarily make sense all the time. My identity was never just me: it was perfect distillation of everyone around me.”
the quote above particularly spoke to me as I have Borderline Personality Disorder- I find my personality becoming defined by different aspects of my identity, because I don’t know what else “I” am, and it often feels like my personality is made up of bits I have stolen from other people- certain opinions, likes, dislikes, that belong to people I know, rather than being my own
already exhausted by microaggressions and you then have to educate your peers every time your marginalised group is mentioned or discussed
reductive- reducing people down to one single aspect of their identity- i.e. being black, or working class, or disabled- you are a “black artist”, or “disabled artist”, ect- you become an involuntary spokesperson for that whole group of people
a lot of us talking about how to our families and friends we sound “posh” or “well spoken” but in the art world we never feel good enough, people point out our accents, ask where we are from, we have to change parts of ourselves to fit in, dilute our identities and break ourselves down into bite-size digestible chunks
maintaining the effort of being “presentable”
discussing how in the media black British people are rarely called British, despite being born here or having spent the majority of their lives here- for example the recent thing with the Windrush Generation, compare this to African Americans who are considered “American”. Also discussing the COVID19 pandemic currently happening and how the media is reporting the fact that British people of colour are dying at higher rates but skirting round the reasons why this is happening- institutionalised racism- and still refusing to call these people British. One example is a BBC News headline from a few days ago: “Coronavirus: Black African deaths three times higher than white Britons- study” – Why is it worded this way, as if to imply that they are not British?
having to hide disabilities and mental health issues to get into these institutions
people who have privilege often don’t want to acknowledge that they have privilege
“It would soon become my most defining characteristic, in a place in which I had thought I would have licence to explore every facet of my identity.” Obviously the author is talking about being black at uni, but for me it relates to being reduced to a few parts of my identity- i.e. being working class, fat, LGBTQ+ (when I eventually came out) and mentally ill. It felt like the only acceptable bit of identity that I could explore during my degree at uni was being queer, the other things were not seen as acceptable- I shouldn’t flaunt my fatness, or my mental illness, or be “too working class” whatever that means. Even in LGBTQ+ circles though, particularly in the LGBTQ+ society at my uni I was made to feel not “queer enough”- I hadn’t yet dated a woman or other genders apart from cisgender men, and I didn’t and still don’t look stereotypically “non-binary” (i.e. skinny, shaved head, masc clothes, wearing a binder to change my chest)
I made a conscious decision on my MA to be loud and outspoken about all aspects of my identity, but it is exhausting to always have to be that token person to bring up accessibility, classism, racism, ect
“As a minority in a predominantly white space, to take up space itself an act of resistance.”

Reading Group With Babeworld3000: “The Pleasure Button: Low Income Food Inequality”

Lectures/Talks, Reading Groups

FIRST READING – THE PLEASURE BUTTON- LOW INCOME FOOD INEQUALITY- EXCERPT FROM KNOW YOUR PLACE
PDF of scans of the text above

Notes made during the reading group:

Fish and chips on a Friday night with my Granddad
sharing of working class experiences via the reading group
“aftertaste of regret” – this hit me because immediately after eating or drinking a “treat” you start to regret it and think about all the things you should have spent the money on instead. Also as someone with an eating disorder I am also hit with the guilt that I shouldn’t have eaten something that unhealthy, and start to spiral about that
coca cola- Andy Warhol, shared experience- everyone knows what it tastes like and can have the same experience
“press the button” really like the rhythm, it flows well
“the pleasure button” it’s exactly that, scratching an itch
being working class isn’t a monolith- it can vary area to area, and is really diverse- there are some experiences that are universal, but some that are dependant on various factors
This text is definitely very focused on the British working class experience, but it does feel super white
Right wingers see working class people as pawns but we are also demonised by the left
commodification of working class aesthetics and foods by non working class people
“Distracting myself from depression” “I associate bad food with free time”
the more visible markers of class and the invisible boxes that are tangible but harder to see
fast food is immediate relief and a break from reality- nothing exists but that momentary enjoyment- it can be all we have in an otherwise mundane and hopeless existence full of worry
facts mixed with lived experience and feelings
real life lived experiences are just as valid as facts and figures, if not more so
the current education system needs to change- representation needs to improve, and the curriculum needs to become more diverse and accessible, the system needs to change so that we don’t just have to conform and fit into the system in order to learn, achieve and become successful- we shouldn’t have to perform to fit in

This is the first time I’ve been part of a reading group like this and I really enjoyed it! It was nice to be part of a group of working class artists like myself (I found at uni I was always in the minority in this regard) and to be reading a piece of work specifically about class with these people; we all found we had shared experiences and common ground despite being from a range of places in and outside of the UK. The essay focused on food and it definitely rang true to a lot of my own experiences growing up and even now living alone in London and being self sufficient- my choices even aged 25 are deeply rooted in my working class childhood.

KAT OUTTEN

Artist/Designer

Reading Groups

Working Class Creatives Database Reading Group- Session 1

BABEWORLD READING GROUP: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

READING GROUP PLAN AND NOTES FROM GROUP: The Blob by Dr Charlotte Cooper

READING GROUP WITH BABEWORLD3000: The Problem With Imposter Syndrome

BABEWORLD3000 Reading Group: Intro to “Taking Up Space”