In Part 2 of his historical analysis of Scotland’s relationship with slavery, David Black highlights a typical ambivalence: progressive views sitting alongside naked exploitation.
Culture
Schools ahead of their time – and ours too
What might we learn from the progressive thinking which gave power to local public health officers who understood local lives and deaths.
Monumental follies 1
‘…our statue problems in Scotland are surely puny; our current outrage a mite self-indulgent and synthetic, though the emblematic validity of our public monuments should indeed be critically scrutinised from time to time.’ Pt 1 of an exploration of our ambivalent representations of history.
Scotland’s largest Pictish settlement
We discovered (Tao O’Noth) had once contained 800 dwelling platforms – housing as many as 4,000 people – and if they all date to the same period this would stand as almost urban-scale settlement, which archaeologists previously did not believe existed in Scotland until the 12th century.
Monkey Barrel Comedy Club
How to keep comedy live in lockdown and no Fringe in town? Craig Angus heads for Monkey Barrel Comedy Club. They have plans.
Independence or bust
John Lloyd book review: ‘What marks the book out is Lloyd’s personal transition to virtually self-hating Scot. This is not just the regular Unionist assertion that Scotland is too wee, too weak, to cut it as an independent country but a visceral assault on “Scotland’s self-serving, self-pitying, self-obsessed keening about others, mainly the English, stealing their birthright and smashing their culture” and/or continuous “moral superiority.”‘
Pop Matters – in and out of lockdown
Craig Angus explores the lines between pop, politics and using art to both escape from, and make sense of a fractured world. Meet the makers of Pop Matters workshops: Maria Sledmere and Conner Milleken
Easing out of our lockdown bubble
The psychology world has recognised the Covid pandemic as a form of trauma. Lockdown brought added stress but how will we deal with the anxiety of easing back into the outside world?
Katie Lynch: Ventures in lockdown
“The arts, like everything, have absolutely fallen victim to capitalism. The ‘product’ of artists ripped from them while people in charge decide its value.”
We’re all islanders in a pandemic
In retrospect it seems eerily prophetic. Those faces framed in small screens, distant voices interconnecting in the ether. Yet that’s not really it. What interests Giles Perring is something simpler, but more profound than a Zoom event.