Jewels

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A mixed bag of stuff going through my head today: I initially wanted just to comment on the piece in the FT Weekend about whether the music business can rid itself of its historically normalised sexual abuse. Centering on the R Kelly case, it highlights the depth of the problem and the difficulty faced by those who are trying to reform a hitherto entrenched culture of misogyny and paedophilia, and bring the industry into line with society.

I was reminded of the art school scene in the 1970s - I went for my interview at what was a politically radical college in 1975. One thing that stood out from that meeting [with an all male interview panel] was a comment made by one of the lecturers, whose name escapes me, that they always 'allowed' a number of female candidates in, irrespective of merit, because 'they were decorative' [I paraphrase as the exact wording is lost to memory, but the crux and substance is accurate in intent]. This struck me as extraordinarily crass, even in those unreconstructed 'Life on Mars' days.

Which leads, by a rather twisted 'Pinpoint' [very old black & white TV programme - Google, please] moment, to when Jane pointed out an article in today's Observer about the potential nail-in-the-coffin for Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, with the de-restriction of property use there. The 'Pinpoint' is that one of the lecturers at Bournville School of Art, where I did my Art Foundation Course, was a jeweller who had learned his trade in the 'Quarter and whose daughter was at the college here in Bangor, where I worked in the late eighties.

I'm not sure where this warped chain of thought appears to be leading, but I think it can be summed up by saying that whilst welcome change is happening and we are moving slowly towards a society where prejudice and hatred are being consigned to the sin bin of history [at least for the mainstream - the margins will always be there whilst there is inequality, poverty and poor education], but that not all change is positive and that any loss of culture and history to the maw of capitalism simply feeds the negative. Some things need saving, and the Jewellery Quarter and it's long established firms are up there on the list.

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