Yesterday was a funny old day. On the one hand we had the performance artist known as the Prime Minister doing another gig in Europe where she repeated her strong and stable act. Only this time the penny dropped to the other European Union political leaders that she can’t be relied on to deliver anything so they went into panic mode. Apparently the one good thing about the European Council meeting was the Luxembourg Prime Minister’s green velvet jacket. Just to top things off the Prime Minister then retracted almost every word of her address to the nation from the night before. Of course this being Theresa May sorry is the hardest word so she didn’t say that.
Away from the bright lights of Brussels I spent an enjoyable day in Derby with the ever knowledgeable David Manley as we visited quite a number of the venues that make up the Format Photography Festival. (If you want to a fuller review of the show I’m sure David will be putting something together so why not pop over to his blog to see.)
Even here Brexit influenced a number of the exhibitions but as we walked around the city centre I started to notice that there was a much more telling Brexit motif – most of the visitors were either 6th form or foundation course students who never got the chance to vote on Brexit and yet are the ones whose lives would be most affected by whatever is the final outcome of this whole sorry nonsense.
With this in mind perhaps the most powerful exhibition was 16 at Market Hall. Here we see a series of photographs of 16 year olds from around the country and they get to say what their hopes and fears are for the future. Unlike some people I have great faith in the next generation if for no other reasons they can’t be as bat shit crazy as us so you would hope that well there is hope. After all, as Whitney Houston sang, “…the children are our future…”.
David Runciman, the leading academic from the University of Cambridge believes that we, the older generation, are screwing over the subsequent generation because: a) we control most of the wealth & b) we never had that many children so we out number the young when it comes to voting at elections thus the policies are skewed towards meeting our needs rather than theirs. I will leave others to debate the rights and wrongs of that but as we make another mess of the whole Brexit process you have to think he has a point.
So if you have a day free then take a trip to the Format Festival at Derby it is well worth the time and effort. So are the youngsters of today because remember we were once them – just as feckless and unconcerned about the future i.e when you are in your 20’s!
