Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online discussion organised by the Royal Society of Arts focusing on the current debate about the removal of statues of controversial figures. The discussion brought together the cultural and historic commentators Mary Beard and David Olusoga who had debated this topic on Twitter taking slightly opposing views. They discussed the recent removal of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol agreeing that it had been a pivotal moment with one of them (sorry bad notes!) saying “the removal of a statue is the creation of a new history”. In reality their views were quite similar and both called for more nuance in the debate which was not possible via the sound bites of social media. I liked Olusoga’s call to judge people by what they did not what they thought as often what they thought was a reflection of the times they lived in. I was also interested in Beard’s example of attempts to ignore difficult bits of history and culture in students she had had who wouldn’t study Ovid Met...

Fascinating talk at RSA looking at how we can get the urban environments which are good for us. The talk was given my Richard Sennett, an academic and planning practitioner, who had recently written a book of the same title looking at the emergence of the urban age and the spaces which have worked well. He felt that the idea of community led planning did not always work and had in the past led to segregation   and that in current times there is a demand in developing countries for gated communities   but he feels these lead to ghettoising other areas of the city. He did however praise Nehru Place in Delhi as a space which has developed by use into an open place where different religions and castes mixed. He talked about the concept of open and closed spaces. Open doesn't just mean large and outdoors but spaces which were conducive to the mixing of people. He also looked at how to open up the edges of a city by placing public services on that edge to try to bri...