Library Section 3
Contains articles and lectures of interest : Adult Education, Culture etc
Cultural democracy and ‘the long march to alternative institutions’
Report to the Raymond Williams Foundation
Owen Logan, Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and the Rule of Law, University of Aberdeen.
In 2022 Dr Owen Logan started a pilot study partially funded by RWF along these lines……..
“Raymond Williams was open to the potential of new technologies to facilitate cultural democracy but warned that communication technologies driven by business, electoral marketing, or the general competition for power would flatten out and streamline opinions. The transformation of the world-wide-web into echo-chambers and information cocoons proves that Williams was right. So perhaps it is time to recover the ancient egalitarian principle of random assembly of public representatives for deliberative purposes. Sortition (random selection) is intended as a counterbalance to the negative effects of the competition for power and influence in any kind of democracy worthy of the name. The claims made for sortition have motivated our inter-university study The Spirit of Fascism in the Arts and the Prospects for Cultural Democracy: Testing a Randomised Jury Model. Drawing on Williams’ materialist sense of culture our research acts on the premise that if widening participation in the arts matters it matters first and foremost at the level of public-funding decisions.ii To this end we have begun using sortition to assemble citizen juries from members of the general public, comparing their hypothetical funding preferences with that of more homogenous focus groups including expert groups. Our initial findings suggest that groups with some kind of direct or expert interest veer between promotion and censorship, whereas independent citizen juries may strongly prefer critical contextualisation of the arts.
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This is the report from that study......REPORT
The Enormous Condescension of Posterity
On reading The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson
Sixty years after it was first published, five essayists reflect on the legacy, ideas and personal inspiration of The Making of the English Working Class – and plot its place in the present day. EP Thompson's landmark social history, The Making of the English Working Class, is a book that changed lives. In an academic world where history was primarily concerned with power and political reform, EP Thompson sought to rescue working people from, as he put it, "the enormous condescension of posterity". It's a book that lies at the root of contemporary social history, of cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, where, in the years after its publication, the idea of agency – the 'making' of the title – came to be a defining touchstone in thinking about culture and society. And it was popular too, even if its easily recognisable blue Pelican covers – and almost 1,000 pages – were possibly more dipped into than read cover to cover.
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5 Radio 3 podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001svv9
An Interview with Lalage Bown 1927-2021 - Interviewer Dr Sharon Clancy
"On 4th July 2019 I was honoured to be able to interview Lalage Bown following a busy couple of days for us both, attending and presenting at the 2019 SCUTREA conference. It was very informal and just a grabbed moment while she waited in my office for a taxi to take her back to the station."
"In our interview, Lalage talked about her time at Oxford and her memories of being there with Tony Benn, Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher, who she was quite unimpressed by. She was very funny and almost mischievous. She also commented powerfully on how she had learned to be an adult educator just after the war and how much of this attention to teaching people to be adult educators as a profession has gone. She also spoke about the importance of the United Nations in creating infrastructures for democracy and peace."
Fostering community, democracy and dialogue through adult lifelong education
The Centenary Commission on Adult Education Research Circle, ran 3 events online in 2021
The events were designed to ask:
• Why does adult education need to be radically reshaped, especially in the Covid era, and how?
• How does adult education link with and foster our democracy?
Events 1 &3 were recorded and available below. Event 2 recordings are unfortunately unavailable.
The Power of Language in the Age of Austerity: Volunteers and practitioners reflect on UK civil society
Dr Sharon Clancy (very active in the RWF) has written an article in the new "Research for All" journal about her experiences running "Keywords" sessions on behalf of RWF.
Raymond Williams and 'The emerging landscape of thought and practice'
The potential for this 'Participation Now' to tap into the many and diverse informal ‘education-for-social-purpose’ groups and activities could extend ‘back to the future’ readings and reflections, making the essential links and connections with the best that is available in established institutions by Derek Tatton - Founder of RWF HERE
Previous Raymond Williams Lectures in Wales - 1989 to 2005
A list of lectures about Raymond Williams' work
A country mansion and a wireless connection: Raymond Williams and the future of transformative education
As formal education in Britain faces commodification, networks of informal participative learning are flourishing. openDemocracy is building ties with these through our relationship to the Raymond Williams Foundation, whose residential last week explored the theme of the Long Revolution. - by Niki Seth -Smith inspired by attending an RWF residential
RWF & the rural women of Nepal
LITERATURE, PLACE AND THE INDUSTRIAL SUBLIME, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ARNOLD BENNETT
Annual Haggar Lecture by Dame Margaret Drabble given at The Symposium, organised by the Reginald Haggar Memorial Lecture Committee in partnership with the Raymond Williams Foundation (RWF)
At The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Saturday 12th November 2016
Written Evidence to the House of Lords Committee on Artificial Intelligence
Members of the RWF submittted evidence to the House of Lords Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
The History, Culture and Politics of Berwick upon Tweed
Saturday 17th November 2018 Day school
Read a transcript of a very interesting lecture by John Home Robinson - retired MP & MSP
Residential library project
Grant of £5000 received from the Westham House Fund for our Residential Library - Reading Retreat scheme. HERE
An Obituary of Stuart Hall by Steve Woodhams
Stuart Hall who died in 2014 was a friend and collaborator with Raymond Williams.
Raymond Williams and the Creativity of Division
From 1946 to 1961 Raymond Williams taught in adult education. His area was south east England, but his own learning had been away in the ‘border country’ of Wales. - a paper by Steve Woodhams
Brazil, Berlin, Burslem: Memory, Identity and Place
Donald Sassoon (author of Mona Lisa, The Culture of the Europeans) has given permission for us to publish his Keynote lecture given at The Symposium, organised by the Reginald Haggar Memorial Lecture Committee in partnership with the Raymond Williams Foundation (RWF)
At The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Saturday 12th November 2016