What future for Birmingham's museums?
What future for Birmingham's museums?
Saturday 10th May, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
Bosta Room, Cherry Red's Cafe Bar, 88-92 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BN
Free entry but please register via EventBrite
Birmingham Museums collection is of over 800,000 objects including the finest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. Nearly 60,000 of the Museum collection’s objects are artwork. Decorative art and design objects in the collection give a strong sense of Birmingham’s past achievements and acclamations in this field. However, with two museums closed and a third only partially open, opportunities to view and enjoy the collection in the Birmingham Museums are limited. The Trust’s Collection report for the year 2023-24 points out that outside of Birmingham Museums, 9 million visitors were able to enjoy items from the collection. Some loans were made to the Barber Institute at University of Birmingham to ensure they could be seen locally, but the Barber Institute is also now closed for refurbishment.
Nevertheless, the 2023-24 Annual Report states that “we have begun a process of change engaging our workforce, trustees, stakeholders, community partners and the wider public, to rethink what a museum is…We will renew/reinvent our buildings and programmes to redefine the museum so that it is a catalyst for active citizenship, democratic renewal, and inclusive pride in Birmingham.”
What is the future for Birmingham’s museums? Is it further deterioration of the buildings’ fabric whilst volunteers are trained to take iPad pictures to create a digitised version of the collection? Will a £35 annual charge to see 5 museums be enough to raise the money to fix the three others and the Collections Centre? Is the vision set out in the report hubristic in the face of such challenges, misguided as to the role of a museum, or a sign of ambition which will help secure renewal and continuity? What else can be done to support Birmingham Museums and their collection?
Speaker: Councillor Robert Alden. Robert is on the Board of Trustees of Birmingham Museums. Robert is also the Councillor for Erdington (Conservative) and has been Leader of the Opposition in the Council since 2014. He will join us to share his views in a personal capacity and as a Conservative Councillor.
Does Britain inspire aspiration?
Does Britain inspire aspiration?
Saturday 5th April, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
Map Room, Cherry Red's Cafe Bar, 88-92 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BN
Tickets £4.50 plus booking fee via EventBrite
In 2022, in her inaugural speech as prime minister, Liz Truss promised to transform the U.K. into an “aspiration nation”, by growing the economy, tackling the energy crisis and fixing the National Health Service. She was in power for less than two months and unable to see her plan through.
Whatever it was Liz Truss thought was missing in Britain in 2022, it appears it is still not a place one would currently associate with aspiration. Whether it’s one millionaire/potential wealth creator leaving the country every 45 minutes since the Labour Party came into power last year, or the removal of the private schools VAT exemption affecting the ability of middle classes to pay for their children’s education, Britain does not feel like a country that encourages people to strive to be better than their current circumstances.
In his book The End of Aspiration, Duncan Exley spoke to academics and experts and developed four themes that help or hinder aspiration:
- it helps if children have families and security of income and of housing tenure.
- if helps if people have what Exley calls a “posh friend”, someone who can inform people of unthought of educational and career options.
– it hinders if there are barriers on the road to opportunity, which some can’t afford but which the privileged (who tend to be in the most influential positions) can afford, such as internships, certain items, and entry to places
- mobility is easier when room at the top is made available.
While there is truth in all of these points, a lack of desire and ambition is not restricted to financial success. The derogatory phrase “too clever by half” has been in use since the 16th century. Other countries do not seem to appear to have phrases deriding a person’s intelligence and ambition.
On the flip side, Britain has shown ambition before. From the Industrial Revolution to inventions which have changed people’s lives to scientific breakthroughs, Britain has a history of great achievements. But do we laud them? Perhaps it’s the ubiquity of British inventions such as cement, stainless steel, jet engines and tin cans, the seemingly ever present items that make up the modern world, that mean they are no longer remarkable and nothing to aspire to. But what about the internet?
Is the lack of aspiration in Britain a modern trend? If so, why is this the case and if not, why not?
Does telling children from particular groups that they are oppressed suppress or encourage ambition, or is it just done to underline the reality of poverty and the difficulties poverty can present for a person realising their potential?
America developed the American Dream. What is Britain’s dream?
Speakers:
Alastair Mellon - Alastair qualified as a civil engineer and has built railways, factories, and apartments. He has also invested in businesses, including Europe’s most successful online psychiatry business.
Rob Laker - after starting his working life as a physicist, Rob set up his own software and analysis business, and has now expanded into tutoring in physics, maths, computer science, philosophy and religious studies.
Chair: Chris Akers
Reading:
Britain has lost its aspiration, Duncan Exley, The Independent, 2019
Tax loss from millionaires leaving the U.K. last year, Adam Smith Institute, 2025
Trump 2 and "drill, baby, drill."
Trump 2 and "drill, baby, drill!"
Saturday 8th March, 11.00 am - 1.00 pm
Bosta Room, Cherry Red's Cafe Bar, 88-92 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BN
Tickets £4.50 plus booking fee via EventBrite
Labour's school reforms - good or bad for education?
Saturday 8th February, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
Map Room, Cherry Red's Cafe Bar, 88-92 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BN
Tickets £4.50 plus booking fee via EventBrite
The legacy of the last 14 years is that England has risen in terms of educational attainment in international league tables, whilst Scotland and Wales are struggling. 90% of schools are now rated good or outstanding compared to 68% in 2010.
However, more than a million children are now in classes of more than 30, and there are challenges in recruiting teachers to teach physics, computing, and foreign languages. There is a real and persistent educational attainment gap between the north and south of England, between Wales, Scotland and England, and between private and state school pupils.Forty thousand teachers leave the profession each year, and pay, workload and flexibility are cited as the reasons.
Increasing numbers of children are not in the school system, a situation seemingly exacerbated by the Covid measures, with Rachel de Souza, Children's Commissioner in 2024 identifying some 10,000 children having disappeared out of the system "to destinations unknown to their local authorities." Additionally, the cohort of primary children born during the Covid pandemic measures is said to be experiencing speech and language delay in much higher numbers than normal.
Via the Children’s Well-being and Schools Bill, Labour’s intention is to introduce one national curriculum, a shared core, which all state schools including academies will have to follow. The new curriculum, they claim, will reflect the diversity of communities in the U.K., prepare students to overcome barriers they face and address the issues facing our society. Music, art, drama and sport will not be neglected. Reforms will set young people up for life and work and will drive high and rising standards. Children with special needs will be made to feel more included.
Following the tragic suicide of a head teacher on receipt of an "inadequate" rating for her school, Ofsted ratings have moved from the current inspection regime of single-word overall grades. Ofsted will produce a scorecard report where different aspects of the school’s performance are detailed. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that the ratings were “low information for parents but high stakes for teachers”.
To address the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, teachers will be allowed to work more flexibly and carry out more of their duties from home. Imposing VAT on private schools is intended to raise funds to recruit 6,500 more specialist teachers. Measures for fewer items of school uniform and universal free breakfast club provision aims to encourage more children from poorer families to stay in the school system.
Will the new national curriculum provide consistency to ensure all students have a broad education and clarity for their parents on what they should be taught, or produce conformity where experimentation and innovation are driven out? Will scrapping the one-word Ofsted ratings mean opacity on school performance for parents and prospective teaching applicants. Will it improve teacher morale? Are standard schools the place for increasing numbers of children identified as having special needs, however inclusive they might attempt to be?
In November 2024, Oxford educated Phillipson, who attended Saturday drama lessons and learned to play the violin told schools to focus on wellbeing and belonging, rather than exam results. Becky Francis, who is leading the Curriculum and Assessment Review, has called setting children by ability “symbolic violence” and condemned the obsession with academic achievement. Is Labour’s approach going to be effective in addressing the problems facing schools and teachers? Does it downplay or minimise the problem of the attainment gap by instead refocusing on wellbeing? Or is wellbeing the foundation for attending school and getting an education?
Speakers
Dr Ruth Mieschbuehler - Ruth is a Senior Lecturer/Programme Leader for Education Studies at University of Derby and was an executive member for British Educational Studies Association (BESA) between 2016-2025.
Tarjinder Gill - Tarjinder trained as a primary teacher and taught in inner city schools in Birmingham, Leicester, London, and Great Yarmouth. Currently she is Associate Director of Research and Pedagogy at Outwood Grange Academies Trust, and blogs at teach-well.com
Chair - Rosie Cuckston, Salon organiser
Reading
Children's Well-being and Schools Bill - Explanatory Notes Publications.Parliament.UK
"End school trips to middle-class museums and theatres" curriculum review told, Arts Professional, November 2024
The Observer view on Labour's plans to reform education, The Observer, December 2024
The problem with diversifying the curriculum, Kristina Murkett, The Spectator, January 2025
PISA 2022 Country Notes United Kingdom, OECD, December 2023
The state of the state
Saturday 12th October, 1.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Arthur Sullivan Hall, Birmingham & Midland Institute
Tickets £15 plus EventBrite fee
Please book via Eventbrite
1.15 pm - 2.45 pm
The state of care
3.15 pm - 4.45 pm
Religion and the state: should Britain secularise?
One of the strongest selling points of secularism is that, by separating religion from the state, it protects every person’s freedom to choose what to believe or what not believe, within the law. This protects religious people from other religious people, as well as from people whose beliefs are not religious. And vice-versa. Secularism advocates that the state should not be involved in matters of religion and religion should not be involved in matters of the state.
Although everyone is supposed to obey the laws made by Parliamentary legislators, there are also some parallel institutions, ostensibly set up as routes for alternative dispute resolution, adjudicating on matters in relation to marriage and divorce with reference to religious belief. The founding this year of a Sikh court on a similar basis to Muslim sharia councils and Jewish beth dins caused an outcry from the National Secular Society. These institutions have been accused of failing to provide people with information about their rights under British law in order to assert their preferences for how divorce should work in context of the religious faith.
Other countries such as France, India, Mexico, Turkey and the USA have eschewed such links between church and state and have secular constitutions. In summary, a secular constitution can mean that the state and church are separate; the state doesn't legislate on the basis of any religion, or recognise, or financially support any religion. It also means a principal of religious toleration and freedom of religion.
But Britain is already socially secularist, and secularism doesn’t mean parties based on religion couldn’t form and stand candidates. Or that groups couldn’t campaign on issues from a religious perspective, such as abortion. Countries which take a secular approach seem to still be strongly subject to religious influence which dominates the lives of those who may not share those beliefs: Turkey is becoming increasingly Islamist, and it's been argued that the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on abortion due to a predominance of Catholic Supreme Court judges. Would a secularised British political system better protect our freedom and democracy, or is that too simple a prescription for what ails our society?
Adrian Bailey, Birmingham Humanists
Justine Brian, Director, Civitas Schools
Creating dangerously or the art of conformity?
Saturday 15th June, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
Map Room, Cherry Reds, 88-92 John Bright Street, B1 1BN
Tickets £3.50 (plus EventBrite fee)
Please book via EventBrite
In the Second World War, Birmingham Surrealist painter Conroy Maddox had his works seized by Scotland Yard in a raid, as they were suspected to contain messages to the enemy. Perhaps Maddox was an example in action of the exhortation of writer Albert Camus in his 1957 lecture to create dangerously. On the other hand, he might have not been subject to a police raid in a different historical time, and he was more like Keynes’ description of an artist, not really knowing his direction.
Earlier this year, artists were outraged about changes made to the Arts Council’s guidance suggesting artists and art institutions should be careful not to damage the Arts Council’s reputation through “activity that might be considered overtly political and activist”. The argument advanced was that art should be political.
As Camus observed, “The question, for all those who cannot live without art and what it signifies, is merely to find out how, among the police forces of so many ideologies (how many churches, what solitude!), the strange liberty of creation is possible.” Whether actual or ideological policing of the arts is taking place, there is an impact on the freedom of the artists and their creativity.
We’re very pleased to welcome Denise to Birmingham Salon to discuss the Freedom in the Arts project and its ambition to make the arts a place for the exploration of difficult ideas.
Speaker
Denise Fahmy - Denise has 30 years’ experience in arts management and is a museums and visual arts specialist. For 15 years she managed a portfolio of over £2million pa at Arts Council England until, in 2023, she resigned and won an Employment Tribunal against ACE after her colleagues harassed her due to her beliefs. Denise's tribunal win was the first case to test the historic Forstater Judgement.
Freedom in the Arts Manifesto, Denise Fahmy/Rosie Kay
Artistic freedom is worth the risk, Denise Fahmy, The Critic, February 2024
Letter on Liberty - Art against orthodoxy, JJ Charlesworth, Academy of Ideas, February 2021
Meet the modern day censors, wielding their purse strings over artists and their work, Sonia Sodha, The Guardian, February 2024
Is there policing by consent?
Saturday 11th May, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
Map Room, Cherry Reds, 88-92 John Bright Street, B1 1BN
Tickets £3.50 (plus EventBrite fee)
Please book via EventBrite
The Peelian principles on which the U.K. police were established state that public consent for policing is maintained “not by pandering to public opinion” but by applying the law fairly, impartially and by using minimal force. But accusations of two tier policing are frequently made by people with a wide variety of political views and from different backgrounds.
Between 2010 and 2019 around 20,000 officers left the police force and government funding was cut by 20%. Nine thousand, the highest number on record, quit in a single financial year ending March 2023. The current number of police officers is a few thousand more than in 2010, but has not kept pace with U.K. population growth.
In the year leading up to March 2022, half of the police officers who left had retired , leaving the police force struggling with a significant reduction in experienced police officers with young officers not having enough inspectors to train them properly. One third of police officers has less than five years experience, more than double the number in 2017 (Source: BBC News).
In spite of the obvious police numbers, retention and public trust issues, police powers are due for an unprecedented increase via the Criminal Justice Bill. Currently, only local authorities can issue Public Spaces Protection Orders, but this power would be given to the police via section 68 of the Bill. In effect, this gives the police powers to make up by-laws to make their lives easier without any need for public consultation or democratic accountability. They will also be able to issue Community Protection Notices to children as young as 10.
What will restore the Peelian principles and our trust in our police force?
Tom Andrews, Lecturer in Policing, University of Derby
Dolan Cummings, writer, co-ordinator of Manifesto Club campaign against the Criminal Justice Bill
Chair: Chris Akers
Reading:
Survey finds country police force has second lowest morale in the country, Dominic Robertson, Shropshire Star, April 2024
Stop the Criminal Justice Bill, Manifesto Club, February 2024
Only 40% of people in England trust their police force, research reveals, Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, April 2024
How woke policing betrays ordinary people, Neil Davenport, Spiked Online, April 2024
Work, anti-work, post work
Work, anti-work, post work
Saturday 9th March, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
Map Room, Cherry Reds, 88-92 John Bright Street, B1 1BN
Tickets £3.50 (plus EventBrite fee)
Please book via EventBrite
However, it appears in the 21st century we have fallen out with the idea of work in a very fundamental way. There are 2.8 million adults designated as suffering from long-term illness and the labour force inactivity rate has increased by 1.4% since the pandemic, now standing at 21.4% and one of the highest since records began in 1993. The NHS has an enormous backlog of people waiting for operations, but is some of this illness a manifestation of anxiety and neurosis: sanctioned shirking? Even so, what would we do if this were to stop? There are currently around 900,000 vacancies, a significant number, but not enough should most of those people become well enough to work.
The pandemic measures saw many workplaces close or limit access, and some companies have never reopened their offices or have drastically cut their use of office space and promoted hybrid working. Arguably, one compensation of even the most tedious and menial of jobs was to be found in the companionship of colleagues. Close technological monitoring at work attempts to produce productivity increases, whilst HR promotes policies that focus on people as members of separate identity groups. Perhaps people are too isolated, self-censoring, and closely scrutinised to find work anything other than dehumanising, and unable to develop friendships at work which might help make it more rewarding. But if that’s the case, why encourage work and home to blur and readily give up opportunities for face to face contact, as many have done, rather than fight for management to back off and for a space wholly dedicated to work?
There is also a generation gap, with 18-24 year olds the least likely to want to work from home. But in this age group, too, there is also a tendency against showing open ambition and making your work a focus of your life.
Is this all okay? Does it mean society is reacting against an empty idea of having it all which has meant unsustainable sacrifices in other areas of life? Or are we giving up on opportunities, via our work, to show ourselves at our best?
Speakers:
Three of our Salon regulars, Rosie, Rebecca, and Derrick will discuss their thoughts on this topic.
Rosie Pocklington works in the 3rd sector advising on health and finance. Rosie will focus on work ethic.
Derrick Scott is a retired computer systems manager. He will focus on the impact of e.g. robotics, AI and other developments on work from shop-floor to C-suite.
Chair: Rosie Cuckston
Reading:
Which is worse, work or no work? Peter Franklin, UnHerd, February 2020
'There's nothing sexier than a 9 to 5 job': how a generation fell out of love with work, The Telegraph, August 2023
Post work: the radical idea of a world without jobs, The Guardian, January 2018