The Sociological Imagination

Dr Anton Popov, University of Warwick MYPLACE team member, on the new exhibition by Turner Prize nominated local artist George Shaw at the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery in Coventry, and its particular relevance to the work of MYPLACE.

This article was initially posted to the MYPLACE blog. For more information on the MYPLACE project, follow the project on Twitter or visit the project’s website: HERE

On 18 November, the George Shaw exhibition ‘I woz ere’ has been opened for the public in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Among those invited to the exhibition launch event on 17 November were a number of VIPs (from different art councils, Coventry City Council, etc) but also many ‘ordinary’ people from Coventry and its Tile Hill aria in particular.  A Turner Prize nominated artist, George Shaw was born in 1966 and grew up in Tile Hill, a predominantly white, working class and rather poor area of the town. He left home in 1986 to do his formal art training in Sheffield, but he stayed in touch with the place through frequent visits to his parents who continued to live in Tile Hill. What was left behind is the place and time from which he grew out as an artist – something which is material and, therefore, perishable, but also social – being embedded in the fabric of everyday relationships between people in this neighbourhood in the late 1970s-erly 1980s. The exhibition is an attempt to come back to that time and place on the Tile Hill housing estate, to remember what is forgotten, or as George Shaw put it ‘to paint what you don’t remember’.

The key theme of the exhibition and George’s works presented there is memory. The visitors from Tile Hill many of whom were people in their 40s, 50s, or even 70s were looking at the paintings of pubs and social clubs which had been demolished for some years as a reminder of the time when they were young. I heard phrases like ‘I remember the stuff we were doing there…’. One man told me pointing on the painting of the pub ‘New Star’ with excitement as if he had just met an old friend, ‘It’s flat now there, know, this place’s gone.’ Two elderly ladies were talking to each other while looking at this painting and almost touching it with their fingers pointing on different part on the building depicted as if they were looking at the old photograph of a family home and remembering what flowers or trees used to grow in which corner of the yard.

In his speech before the opening of the gallery for visitors, George, however, warned an audience that his works were not photographic representation of the past but rather pictures from his imagination that represented the places to which he felt connected. In a way this was his way of saying ‘I was there’ (hence the title of the exhibition), to add his mark to the walls that are already heavily covered with graffiti in the places… which are not there anymore. Therefore, these paintings access the past and memory through emotional engagement with the special realm of the urban landscape. In our brief conversation, George said that for him memory is not textual but emotional, something which you can feel and painting is the way to do it. When he was painting these places the details that he did not remember (did he forget them, or were they there at all?) started emerging. These details are essential for his memories but before they materialised through the bodily work of painting they were not there. For me this captures perfectly the sense that social memory is a sensorial process which might be expressed through text, narrative, image, sound, etc – representing the past, the meanings of which are socially constructed. But it also has to be felt emotionally and therefore awaken physical responses of your body, becoming part of your bodily experience. It is this emotional and sensorial nature of memory that makes it possible to connect paintings representing George Shaw’s memories of growing up in Tile Hill in the 1970s-80s with other individual recollections of that place and time or even with recollections of other places and other times. Looking at George’s paintings of dilapidated garages on the town outskirts, I suddenly realised that I was familiarising this strange landmarks with my own memories (something which I was not aware, or remember, before) of hanging out around old sheds and garages in my ‘block’ in the 1980s in Krasnodar, Russia. As children we were attracted to these secluded places (in the rather busy centre of the big city) covered with strange graffiti, old domestic stuff and litter.

In their attention to details and implicit presence of the social context, the works presented in the exhibition are very ethnographic.  The paintings are devoid of any human presence in them, but yet one can feel that something is going on there, which makes sense in this particular place and time. George often depicts the ordinary places as if they were just left by people (residents, random passers-by, adolescents socialising there, children rushing to and from school). This interest in memories of ‘ordinary’ brings his paintings closer to ethnography with its preoccupation with building insightful interpretations of the everyday, mundane and ordinary. One of the paintings presented in the exhibitions ‘Details of untitled’ is particularly striking in this respect. It shows the part/corner of the red brick wall with a very violent splashes of paint on it. In his comments to this painting Shaw writes:

‘I used to see these paint incidents all the time when I was growing up. They always struck me as being very violent or the gesture of violence or a symbol or drawing of a violent thought. They appear in tucked away places or in the old places that buildings have appeared around. Such places hang on to their savage and brutal origins before time and drag half-innocents into a magical alliance involving ritual and transformation. Participants would no doubt have returned home with telltale signs of gloss paint on their clothing or hands – shame on a shirt sleeve or shoe – to be ignored most likely, excused, forgotten like the thousand tiny crimes of all our growing up. The getting caught was always the real blunder. How many of those tiny crimes grow up with us, becoming the tragic horrors we read about or have the misfortune to meet. Of course like most violence it has a beauty all of its own…’

This almost ethnographic contextualisation of landscape and its meanings with violence as part of it (broken-in garages, violent graffiti on the walls, secluded paths, and piled old furniture on the edge of the wood) sometimes is interpreted by observers as a reference to the particular period in the UK, and more precise Coventry, past. The 1970s-80s is the period which in British history is associated with the name of Margaret Thatcher and radical transformations in the social, political and economic life of the country. With economic recession at its background, the conservative government attempted a restructuring of industry that led to closure of many factories, plants and collieries. Driven by the individualist, neo-liberal in its core ideology, the government launched its attack on ‘society’ (Thatcher stated that ‘there is no such thing as society’). The state was withdrawing in different ways its support for the most vulnerable. The tenants of council houses were encouraged to buy their homes in pursuit of the ‘homeowners’ democracy’ ideal. The social tensions grew resulting in the deterioration of inter-racial relations and popularity of far-right groups and movements such as the National Front, and street violence (in which police took active part) manifested in racial riots and miners’ strike in the early 1980s. The Falkland War, to some extent was instrumental for the government to resurrect an ‘imperial nostalgia’ in response to the public discontent with the economic and political climate. Thus in his recent article Stuart Hall defines that period as an ‘authoritarian populism’ (Hall, S. (2011) ‘Neo-Liberal Revolution’,Cultural Studies, 25 (6)).

This atmosphere had been captured and expressed in the music of the Coventry Ska band The Specials. Perhaps their most famous 1980 song ‘Ghost Town’  (it is sometimes seen as a song about Coventry)

Clip from EMI records official Youtube channel

raises the issue of the growing violence in the fragmented society of the increasingly deindustrialised British cities. As a true Two Tone band, The Specials were driven by both white and black music heritage and British working class culture. They were essential for the revival of the traditional skinhead scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s (songs like ‘Skinhead Moonstomp’ (1979)) singing about the problems which British society faced including racial violence perpetrated by the National Front supporters and nazi-skins (‘Why?’ (1981)).

The cross-references to the George Shaw paintings and The Specials music are not surprising therefore. Growing up in the 1970s, George Shaw could directly relate his experience of living in working class housing estate on the outskirts of Coventry to The Specials’ songs. Some of his early paintings from that period (before he did any formal fine art training) presented at the exhibition in The Herbert depicted young skinheads and punks as well as scenes of street violence. One or two of these early paintings look as if they were snapshots from the film ‘This is England’, the film which was shot in 2009 but tells the story of a skinhead group in the early 1980s. (The soundtrack to this film includes The Specials’ songs). In fact George Shaw mentioned The Specials and the impact which this band had on people of his generation in some of his interviews (http://blogs.coventrytelegraph.net/privateview/2011/11/exculsive-turner-prize-nominee.html).

At the same time, during his recent appearance on Radio 4 Loose Ends programme, Jerry Dammers (The Specials) talked about George Shaw and how his art (the paintings from 1990s-2000s rather than the earlier works) visually represents what the Specials expressed in their music. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0171yjw/Loose_Ends_12_11_2011/)

In his speech at the exhibition launch, George Shaw said that as a kid he saw The Herbert as an opportunity to encounter a ‘real culture’ beyond watching TV and listening to The Specials. Ironically, he has his first single exhibition in this museum on its first floor exactly above The Herbert’s history galleries where The Specials and Two Tone music are displayed on the permanent stands (see photo above). This brings me to my final point about the way in which memories and representation of the past and particular periods of history are transmitted and, at least partly, shaped by museums. In agreement with Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Scott points out that the museum displays of culture require deliberate ‘fragmentation’ of ethnographic objects as they are detached from their larger context in order to be later ‘reconceptualised’ through the recreation of the absent context but within a theoretical frame of reference which provides viewers with explanations, comparisons and historical background (Scott, J. (2002) ‘Mapping the Past: Turkish Cypriot Narratives of Time and Place in the Canbulat Museum, Northern Cyprus’, History and Anthropology, 13: 226).

The Herbert is a museum of the people of Coventry and it represents a particular vision of these people and their city’s history and culture. Thus the current George Shaw exhibition can be interpreted as a celebration of something which people of Coventry are proud of. Together with The Specials and the Coventry City FC FA cup victory in 1987 (both stands are situated side by side in the history galleries, and the 35^th anniversary of the Coventry City FA cup victory was mentioned by several VIPs in their speeches at the launch event), the work of a ‘Cov kid’, George Shaw, is something which put Coventry on ‘the map’. The Coventry accent, so to speak, here is particularly important. After all the exhibition is a collection of the paintings from the artist’s different series on which he was working during last 15 years, but it is framed by the above mentioned early works and a series of very recent watercolours commissioned by The Herbert especially for this exhibition, acquiring its historical context which links the artist’s biography with Coventry’s (in fact, rather, Tile Hill’s) history.

At the other level, ‘I woz ere’ represents a political position of The Herbert; that is to promote diversity and multiculturalism (something which current government is rather sceptical of, if not hostile to). Therefore, memories of Tile Hill, a marginal area, both in terms of the city’s geography and socio-economic demographics, are put forward and in the focus of this exhibition, and indeed of the museum as a whole. To draw a parallel with The Specials’ representation in the museum’s historical galleries, the extract from filmed interview with members of the band on the growing inter-racial violence in the UK in the early 1980s is demonstrated there on a monitor placed under a big “Coventry Colliery Miners’ Wives Group” banner together with other short clips about the people of Coventry in active political participation (see photo below). Interestingly politicians present at the launch event (in this case the representative of the city council) formulated the purpose of the George Shaw exhibition as to ‘bring the people of Coventry together at this difficult time’. Perhaps it is too naïve to expect that paintings representing personal memories of the vanishing places would fulfil such an ambitious political task. However, George Shaw paintings being contextualised within a particular historical and cultural perspective can be an invitation for reflections on why and how society has changed. To some extent it provides the space for ordinary people to voice their memories which might or might not resonate with the ones of George Shaw. I heard, for example, how en elderly man was saying to his much younger friend, looking at the drawings of skinheads, ‘At that time many kids were dropping out…’

The Herbert museum is Warwick University’s partner within the MYPLACE project’s ‘Interpreting the past’ work package. Our colleagues in the museum are very enthusiastic about the project and proactively search for possibilities to explore how historical memories influence the young people’s political participation and civic engagement. The George Shaw exhibition presents a great opportunity for us to address the issue of memories of the 1970s-80s as the ‘difficult past’ in both the local (Coventry) and national (Britain) context. The exhibition contains the watercolours which George painted during one of his most recent visits to the area. By his own admission, they represent the places which used to be familiar but now almost alien. Maybe because of this they are  more document-like than his more memory-based paintings. These watercolours, however, document the presence of the same anger and violence and frustration manifested through burned down signposts in the park, expressive graffiti, decaying furniture in the woods, etc. On one picture, an empty road corner can be identified as a site of the ‘New Star’ pub – one of four pubs in the area that have vanished since 1986. It would be interesting to see what young Coventry people would make of these memories of the ‘ghost town’ – memories of disappearing places, stories and ways of living.

It would seem that the travails of contemporary capitalism offer the left a huge opportunity to present a comprehensive alternative analysis and programme of action to neo-liberalism. Yet this has not proved to be the case. There has been protest a plenty and a deluge of moral and economic critiques but no comprehensive theoretical analysis integrated with an alternative political programme. When asked what is their alternative to capitalism, radical activists and intellectuals tend to offer specific suggestions rather than a blueprint for change. To be fair many social movement activists have taken an informed decision to seek change from the grass roots upwards rather risk a preconceived top downwards approach that ends up merely replacing one elite with another – and sometimes not even that. This blog argues that it is possible to combine a ‘bottom upwards’ approach to radical change with party politics. However, for this to be successful the flow of influence would have to be predominantly from the social movement activists to a political party rather than the other way round. The key lies in clarifying what the central principle of the new radicalism is and how it can be effectively implemented. The argument here is that the social activist left and ultimately a major political party of the left should put the idea of a second phase of democracy at the centre of a worked out political programme leading to a national institutional revolution. Currently the social movement activists provide the dynamism for change but they lack the power of implementation.

While this blog goes beyond piecemeal suggestions it does not pretend fully to solve the problem indicated above. The argument put forward is that the most convincing and effective route to a genuinely different society is through a radical implementation and extension of institutional democracy linked to an increase in material and cultural equality. The two goals of democracy and equality are conceived of as complementary but it is argued that a substantial shift towards equality is highly unlikely to occur unless the main beneficiaries of such a shift are in a position to implement it. I expand on this central point to the blog later.

Perversely the widespread consensus that capitalism is seriously malfunctioning has hindered the left from achieving a distinctive alternative position clearly perceived as such by the public. David Cameron has referred to ‘a crisis of capitalism’ and David Miliband distinguishes between predatory and productive capitalism stressing that there is far too much of the former. While there is considerable agreement that capitalism is unstable, erratic and opaque there is much less so about what to do about it. For all their criticisms of capitalism, centrist politicians are fundamentally pro capitalist and their limited suggestions for reform would leave the elites well in control. Essentially their motivation is to save capitalism rather than make the socio-economic system more radically democratic and fairer. They come up with various suggestions as to how this can be done: Cameron wants shareholders to get a grip on executive pay and bonuses; Miliband pushes for employee representation on company boards; Clegg weighs in praising the John Lewis model, particularly in respect to employee shareholding. It is likely that if all or most of these reforms were implemented, especially in a robust form, capitalism would become somewhat fairer and less out of control. However, for the left this is not remotely enough.

The problem though is that the extra parliamentary left is unclear about its own programme. While many radicals reject or are deeply sceptical about a capitalist driven model of society there is uncertainty about what might challenge or replace it. Social movement activists and radical intellectuals want to go further than the piecemeal reform of capitalism but often struggle to articulate even the basic framework of a radical alternative let alone the detail. This is not the case for unreconstructed state socialists but few contemporary radicals are much attracted to that ‘solution’, although many envisage a greater socio-economic role for the state than is currently the case. For those radicals committed as much to democracy as to equality a genuinely alternative society to liberal capitalism remains illusive. Most want to see more mutuals and cooperatives established but when a critic as rightwing as Simon Heffer states that he has no problem with this and Cameron himself is in favour, a more comprehensive and thought through programme seems necssary. No doubt the left regards the mutualist and cooperative movements as much more fundamentally significant than the likes of Heffer and Cameron for whom they are of marginal importance. However, the strategy and scale of implementation has not been adequately addressed.

The left will continue to lack conviction until it revisits its basic values and extrapolates from them the kind of society it wants – always granted that reality, including the process of democratic negotiation itself, imposes limits on the achievement of ideals. Specifically the left needs to redefine or, at least, rearticulate the relationship between democracy and equality, giving far more emphasis to the former. A new democratic revolution is needed that goes beyond both the democracy of direct action and parliamentary democracy. Historically the socialist and communist lefts have identified primarily with the achievement of greater equality – materially and also substantially, culturally – ‘bread and roses’ (even though the majority have barely had a sniff of the ‘roses’). Democracy has often run a poor second to equality in theory and certainly in practise. Even so, given the appalling industrial conditions of poverty that gave rise to socialism, the emphasis on equality was understandable. This is less so now although even in the developed world it remains a priority for those in acute need. However, I propose that what will most empower the majority is a democratic institutional revolution on a massive scale. Such a revolution would almost certainly stem the trend to greater inequality and lead to greater social equality and equality of cultural access.

Democracy is, of course, itself a form of equality in the minimal sense that (nearly) all citizens have an equal right to vote and to that extent express an opinion. However the practical point about democracy relates to power. Democracy empowers individuals and groups either to maintain or change things. Political democracy is important for many reasons but it is not the only form of democracy. Nor should it be. While supporting political democracy, Wright Mills argued that in the United States and by implication in other Western democracies decisive power was in the hands of the military, economic and political elites. Whether or not Mills overstates the case it is worth considering how the majority of citizens might be more substantially empowered. The American New Left in the early sixties focused on this issue as central to the development of a new radical politics. The term they used to express this was ‘participatory democracy’ by which they meant that people should have the right to be involved in those decisions that affect their lives. Today radicals might take the view that the concept of participation is too weak a term to describe the kind and extent of social democracy they support. ‘Democratic control’ might be preferred. Here I intend to defer consideration of this admittedly crucial issue by simply using the term ‘institutional democracy’ by which I mean a substantial and ultimately a decisive shift in organisational power to the majority of people at the national and local levels. This can only be achieved if ‘ordinary’ people acquire institutional power. Much of the work to achieve this can be and to some extent is being done by social movement activists and some NGOs. However the scale of change suggested here is such that at some point it would require a major programme of national legislation. Such legislation would codify what has already been achieved in this direction but would also expand on it.

Economic democracy would be central to any plan to put democracy at the centre of a revived ideology and programme of the left. Large firms should have not just one but two or three or more employee delegates on the board, proportionate to the size of the organisation. These should not be merely consultative but have a major share in decision-making power. The principle that members of an organisation should also be involved in running it should be widely extended. Thus parents and students should have the right to be involved in the running of educational institutions. The particular importance of democracy within education is that it would provide a learning ground for democratic practice in the wider society. Given that employees, parents and students have other major commitments they should have time made available for their organisational work and be allocated an appropriate level of payment. By definition, delegatory positions would be elected rather than appointed and also be subject to recall and rotation – in the later case periods of office holding would need to be of a practical length.

The relationship between democracy and equality that the above suggestions reflect is that democratic empowerment is almost certain to lead to a demand for greater equality but that it is otherwise unlikely to occur. The political power of the working class preceded the welfare state and was instrumental in its development. The current level of power of the less well off and progressive middle class is probably just about enough to ensure the survival of at least a minimal welfare state. However currently these groups lack the power to achieve significant further progress towards social justice and equality. A second surge of democracy is likely to facilitate further equality. If the poorly or moderately paid acquire a significant or decisive say in the distribution of pay and rewards they are surely likely to reduce the staggering inequalities that have developed in recent years. Further, the experience gained by ‘ordinary’ people through organisational democracy should over time erode the gap in skill and confidence between them and professional management enabling some to take on more demanding roles.

The left, including the Labour party once it is persuaded, needs to put a second phase in the extension of democracy at the centre of its ideology and policy. On the scale argued for here this becomes a change not merely of degree but of kind and quality. Protest is not enough although the right do so is fundamental. What is needed is a democratic institutional revolution. But first it has to be imagined and then spelt out in some detail. There is no shortage of ideas about how democracy might be extended but they tend to be seen in isolation rather than integrated into a theoretical and programmatic whole. The left needs to adopt the perspective of Weber and Wright Mills that bureaucracies, including industrial and financial corporations, tend to develop hierarchically and undemocratically. If the socialist and communist parties of the early and mid-twentieth century had done this they might come much closer to creating the kind of societies aspired to. However as Milovan Dilas pointed out over half a century ago many of these parties themselves became blighted by the curse of bureaucracy. These insights do not undermine Marx’s vision of greater social equality and equality of cultural opportunity. Properly understood and implemented they make its achievement more likely. It is not a question of Marx or Weber. We need them both.

Bibliography

Dilas, M. (1957) The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Mills, C.W. (1951) White Collar: The American Middle Classes. Oxford University Press.

Mills, C.W. (1956). The Power Elite. Oxford University Press.

Various Authors (1969 (1962). The Port Huron Statement. In Jacobs, P. and Landau, S. (eds.), The New Radicals. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 154-167.

Copyright © Franko B 2011
Photo taken by artist Franko B – the rest of the collection is well worth seeing:

The building looked different to how I’d seen it previously.. that is before the guests had arrived.  The hall was large and it was the only area that both guests and volunteers had access to. In the corner a TV blared. Groups of tables and chairs were set out, next to areas for clothing distribution and a hatch were guests were given hot drinks and food.  Bowls of crisps, sweets and biscuits were everywhere. This felt slightly odd.  Creating a party atmosphere was perhaps well intended but seemed a little disingenuous to the reality of the circumstances.

Regardless of the training sessions I’d attended I felt apprehension.  The situation, we had been warned, could be unpredictable.  Violence sometimes occurred but this was usually outside and between guests. The biggest threat was overdose. The year before a guest had died at the shelter on New Years Eve. Although beds were checked every 15 mins the wheezing ‘or death rattle’ had not been identified in time.  Most guests I’d been told, had been philosophical about this. ‘He had died with a warm meal inside him in a safe bed surrounded by his mates’.  ‘God bless’ they wrote in the art workshop the next day.

I was working front of house – so this meant companionship, tea fetching and board games although my first official task was toilet duty.  Drugs and alcohol were not permitted but addiction, I witnessed, was a relentless master.  Toilet checks were performed under the neon lights every 15 minutes for substance use, overdose or other illicit activity. There was no real bother on any of my shifts.

The volunteers were plenty. They outnumbered the guests on some evenings and encompassed a wide range of people. Food was donated generously, was in excess at times and of top quality. Some of Bristol’s best chefs were doing shifts in the kitchen. Three meals a day were given out, sweets crisps and biscuits in-between and the shelter tried to ensure that no one was turned away from the 50 beds available. Most guests moved in and stayed for the two week Christmas period. This was usually the most stable place they had been for the entire year normally moving on every night.

The guests were of all ages, and came from all walks of life. Some were local residents who were alone at Christmas and wanted company.  Some were ‘hidden homeless’ – who survived by kipping on mates sofas and gave their usual hosts a break over the festive period.  Most though were homeless the year through and stuck in unbreakable cycles of addiction, unemployment, mental health illness and prostitution.

It was a Christmas bubble. We all knew that the situation wasn’t real. That nothing would change. But for those two weeks of the year, life was made more bearable for the guests.  Jokes were exchanged, games were lost and won.  Second hand clothes were traded.  Tea was drunk and songs were sung.

It was difficult to see how some of the guests had ended up there.  Clever, funny, personable, educated.  Others illustrated the miserable and mostly hopeless reality of those living in the grip of addiction.  Missing person cards were handed out to us at the beginning of the shift in the hope that amongst the guests a specific friend or loved one could be identified. Occasionally people were recognised, but often they didn’t want to be found ‘Give them the message I’m alrite’  They would say.

Nicholas was seventeen. He had problems with his family and at school and had been crashing on mate’s sofas for over a year.  The first thing I noticed about him was how clever he was. If he was engaged in something he was really bright. He would win at nearly all the games he played and would teach others. He was extremely patient at my totally inability to pick up a lot of the games we played.   Nicholas didn’t have an obvious class A or alcohol addiction (although I’m not medically qualified to make any kind of assessment especially given it was only three shifts I volunteered). He talked about wanting to go to college and said he spent most of his time smoking weed.  I saw so much potential there.  Don’t drop anchor here, I thought.

Edward and Rosa seemed to be a couple -  both alcoholics. They were in their forties would have once been well dressed had it not been for the dirt and tatter of their clothes.  I found them the most difficult to sit with.  He would insult her constantly, both to her face in front of other people. A consistent barrage of verbal abuse.  She had swollen ulcers on her hands and feet – infected track marks. She seemed indifferent to the constant degradation.

Alan scared me. He was very tall, he may have been in the forces once. He observed the room and stood apart from everyone. He was always watching. Always looking for an opportunity, assessing the power relationships and dynamics in the room.  Street life teaches you a different set of survival skills. There was something intimidating which overwhelmed me yet in a flash it was gone and he was crying like a baby.

Ricardo was from Brazil. I spent my first evening almost exclusively with him.  He was in his twenties. He was a rent boy – and extremely distressed.  I held his hands as he cried for hours. He told me stories of life on the streets, of rape. Of concerns over HIV and the stigma amongst homeless communities about homosexuality.  He had been a dancer. He delighted at dressing up and ransacked the clothing piles for fuchsia fur coats and sequin handbags which quickly got traded for cigarettes and other favours.  The only thing I could do was be with him and see him and hear him for who he was and what he had been through.. He cried so many tears that night.  I really felt that I had helped.  The next day I was happy to see him again and bounced over to catch up on how he was doing. He didn’t remember me.

It was a year ago I volunteered.  I know I helped but ultimately found it hard to feel good about my contribution. The shelter was over staffed – some shifts even had waiting lists. Food flowed as did the goodwill to almost obscene amounts…what a lot of Christmas spirit…  But where are we the rest of the year I wondered? The shelter struggles to find staff outside of Christmas.  Sure. A brief respite from the trauma and danger of life on the street, but the ‘guests’ in reality were lost.   This was a bitter pill to swallow.  The experience stayed with me but it was a good lesson.  Anyone can be homeless. Anyone can be the victim of abuse or suffer mental illness or become an addict. And it happens all year round.  I decided that it’s more important to contribute in a way which were sustainable and longer term. But I guess most of us didn’t get around to being that altruistic yet.

There are other stories from the shelter of course, but its Christmas and there is shopping to be done and I guess you won’t have much time to read them all.. I’m lucky that I get to choose not to be at the shelter this year. I’ll never forget my experience. I’d like to think that the same ‘guests’ will make it through to 2012 but then ….I will never know.

Elena Omel’chenko and Nastya Min’kova, MYPLACE team members at Centre for Youth Research, Higher School of Economics (St Petersburg) on the latest from Russia’s ‘Snow Revolution’  (27th December 2011)

This article was initially posted to the MYPLACE blog. For more information on the MYPLACE project, follow them on Twitter or visit the project’s website: HERE

The snow revolution in Russia continues. The pro-Kremlin movement activists are still searching for evidence of the involvement of the US State Department and the residents of Russia’s cities are attending protest meetings for the third Saturday in a row. Among them are many young people. Among them are many who regularly engage in street politics. But among them too are many who have never taken to the streets before. The following blog collates links to all communications about protest meetings in Russia and abroad which took place on 24 December:

http://podosokorskiy.livejournal.com/1426720.html#.

Moscow is beating all records: http://zyalt.livejournal.com/499063.html. On 24th December on Sakharov Square 50-100,000 people gathered. The figures provided by the city police and the by the meeting’s organizers vary significantly and this has become the source of much humour. The web columnist (at ru.net), Aleksandr Pliushchev, published in his blog photographs of various events from Sakharov Square  (http://www.flickr.com/photos/plushev/6564495887/). In the first case, the police estimated that there were more than 50,000 participants of the pro-Kremlin movement ‘Nashi’ while in the second, they claimed there were 29,000 participants at the opposition meeting.

The Moscow protest set the town for people’s creative input. Many placards took up the theme of ‘Putin and his condoms’ because, a day earlier, the Prime Minister had likened the white ribbons, which have become a symbol of protest against the dishonest elections, to contraceptives. On the 15^{th December, during a live TV broadcast and in response to a question about whether the ribbons might become a symbol of a new ‘colour’ revolution, Putin said, ‘Even though it is a little unseemly, I will tell you honestly that I thought they were promoting the battle against AIDS, that they were some kind of contraceptives’. At the meeting a group of young people distributed condoms under a sign saying, ‘You didn’t like that rubber?’ Pick another! You have a choice!’ [Translator’s note: in the original Russian this is a play on words since the word for ‘elections’ (vybory) is the plural form of the word for ‘choice’ (vybor).]}

Another humorous theme have been source of humour has for jokes has been the ‘bandar-logs’ in reference to the same direct address to the people on the 15th December when Putin explained how he would work with the opposition by equating them to the ostracized anarchic ‘monkey people’ of Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’: ‘All citizens must be treated with. Of course there are people who have Russian Federation passports but who act in the interests of a foreign state and using foreign money. We will also try to establish contact with them although often it is pointless or impossible.  “Come to me, Bandar-logs”. From childhood I have loved Kipling.’ The news site newsru.com created a selection of the funniest protest  materials:

^{http://newsru.com/arch/russia/25dec2011/saharov_creo.html (select ‘all photos’/ ‘ВСЕ ФОТО’).}

On the tide of these feelings, there appeared on the official Russian prankster site, a recording of a conversation conducted by the prankster nicknamed Vovan222 with the head of the Central Electoral Commission, Vladimir Churov. The young man introduced himself as a well known Kremlin official and, on behalf of the ‘twins’ [Medvedev and Putin], told Churov he had been sacked. Judging by the conversation, the prank worked; Churov, whose responsibility it was to deliver the vote count at the elections, believed he had been fired. The audio file was quickly disseminated via the diaries of Live Journal contributors (^{http://www.livejournal.ru/themes/id/42793?from=twitter).}

The authorities have responded already; some representatives of the Presidential administration have called people attending protest meetings ‘sympathetic’ or ‘worthy’. And recently Putin’s deputy, Sergei Ivanov, declared recent events to indicate ‘genuine freedom of speech’ in Russia. However, despite the protestors finally having been noticed, and even shown on central TV channels (previously the subject had been ignored), the authorities remain deaf to their demands. Dmitrii Medvedev has promised the people that he will restore some of their power to elect regional governors, but so far nothing more.

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