About me … 
Heythrop College 2012, University of London
Kingswood School 2008, Bath
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By victoriayates, on November 21st, 2011
The Plight of Literacy and Literature in Modern Times
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 05~
On the 19th of October I went to spend my evening within the warming intellectualism of the RSA’s walls. It was not a professional trip; no review or report to produce, rather a sort of familial tradition wherein my father and I spend a few hours in the presence of great debate. This particular night we had tickets to the RSA/BBC Radio 4 corroboration, “Four Thought”. I had never attended this particular style of event before and as we entered the Benjamin Franklin room to the chorus of “there’s free wine!” and settled onto the forced mingling mixed tables that littered the room like a well-lit comedy club, I was honestly not sure what to expect.
It was an evening of great dialogue. To say nothing of the brilliant opening presentation on the American health crisis, nor the irreverently frank Eden project discussion, or the unique conception of drugs-based YouTube research within the DEA, my evening was completed when I had the immense pleasure of seeing James Daunt resting slightly anxiously in the wings.
For those of you who have never strolled the length of Marylebone High Street to find a gem of an old-fashioned bookstore (and flagship of Daunt Books) where geography has its own cavern and books are laid out in old, thick wooden bookcases, you will nevertheless have had contact with the Daunt legacy. Nowadays you will find the Daunt name on a far more prolific masthead; the man himself ensconced in a meeting over the future of one of the high street’s most iconic bookstores, Waterstones. Daunt took control of the failing company in May, bringing his independent store charm and veneration of the written word in an attempt to not only change the monetary fortunes of the store, but perhaps their approach to their product as well.
 Flickr User o5com Daunt’s talk was one of a true bookish romanticism. He argued that when he started out in bookstores he never would have conceived of his profession as having any impact on society but contended that now we are at a crisis moment; sitting in the same ship, albeit largely coincidentally, with the libraries who are struggling to keep their place in British society. The staggering statistic that one sixth of adults in this country have trouble reading was still swirling around the room’s collective consciousness when he began discussing the way that bookstores had failed this country. For Daunt, they had allowed the commercial imperative to stop their engagement with the local community; to prevent the possibility of that inspirational transmission that is such a huge part of my childhood memories. Where contention arose was in Daunt’s assertion that the digital systems sprouting up like weeds throughout the world of reading are, and should be understand as, a support system to the physical book, not a replacement.
As we rehashed the debates over dinner my dad staunchly disavowed this belief. He argued that such an opinion was antiquated. For him it was simple; the ketchup is out of the bottle, we can’t reminisce our way into the past. Digital affords the reader an incredible selection of conveniences. It fits far better with our instant gratification world, and is arguably more compatible with our constant commuter movements. And yet, I love books.
I love the paper, the feel of the product, the look of the type on the page and (to fall to cliché) the smell. The idea that libraries are closing, and bookstores are threatened by the ease of Amazon or the ebook revolution saddens me.
For those who caught it I recently watched Stephen Fry’s Planet Word, a remarkable documentary on the complexity of language and our relationship with it. The combined skills of the BBC cinematography team, Fry, and his wide ranging guests made for a compelling series which again touched on this modern crux of word and the modern age.
 Harry S. Truman remarked, “not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”; 4 in 5 CEOs in America read at least a book a month, the average American reads one a year. Perhaps he was on to something. In their report Literacy: State of the Nation 2011, the National Literacy Trust reported that while 92% of the British public believes that literacy is vital to the economy and essential for getting a good job, a quarter of children and young people do not recognize this link between reading and success. 30% of five to eight year olds read a book everyday, a figure that drops to 17% of fifteen to seventeen year olds. It would seem that young people have lost their love affair with reading books. This isn’t news, the slow death march of the pleasure reader has been sounding for a good few years now, but we now have a glimmer of hope. The same study that displayed staggering weaknesses in British literacy also informs you that teenagers are also more likely to read alternative sources such as blogs and websites. In this I undoubtedly need to concede to my father’s opinion, technology has changed the social fabric and we can’t hope to reverse those effects, no matter how much shiny red heel clicking we do.
Perhaps our modern issue lies in the partisan divide between the traditionalists and the modernists for whom books will suffer the fate of vinyl within the next decade or so. A common goal has to be the celebration of and engagement with reading, on whatever platform can most grab attention. I don’t want to see libraries and bookstores relegated to history, but then I don’t truly believe they will.
Reading is a hot topic of debate in today’s media, policy, and educational arenas whose reformations and challenges are emblematic of the new age we live in. It’s a matter of importance for those of us entering the adult world as its institutions begin to quake under the weight of change; thank goodness I could read about it.
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on November 9th, 2011
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 04~
After visiting Anri Sala’s current exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery I had to give myself the better part of a weekend before I could contrive to review it. Sala’s work appears at the outset to be a cohesive collection seeking to aid his great goal of “[recasting] sound’s relationship to the image”; affording the public, as is the usual expectation, a show of thematically related pieces to incite a poignant, reflective sentiment. However, enter further than the anteroom and you find yourself in the midst of a diverse collection of codependent fragments, each alone self-fulfilling but, brought together, creating something altogether more majestic.
Two of his films center on different deconstructions of The Clash’s well-known song Should I Stay or Should I Go, occurring simultaneously on opposites wings of the gallery, each filtering through and engaging with their partner piece. One of these films, Le Clash, is set around a derelict concert hall in Bordeaux where performers play a pared down reconfiguration of the song through a barrel organ and music box. In its counterpart,Tlatelolco Clash a series of individuals play fragments of the song, creating a similar, if disjunct, rendition through a barrel organ abandoned in the ruins of Tlatelolco site in Mexico City. Describing both works in these technical terms does little to impart the beauty Sala imbues his films with. The cinematography is stunning, while his keen eye focuses on the minute details of his subjects with such precision as to invoke the exalted pioneers of film from a bygone era. One need only look to the work of D.W. Griffiths, whose groundbreaking recalibration of shots and musicality altered the potential of cinema, to see the ancestry to which Sala’s art pays a resplendent homage.
Answer Me, is filmed with the same exquisite eye for framing and detail in the abandoned dome of a Buckminster Fuller designed former surveillance station. The natural acoustics of the space echo and refract the work of a lone drummer, who drowns out the words of his female companion for all but the repeated phrase “isn’t that so, answer me”. There is an intimacy and fragility about the work which the aggressive but rhythmic melody of the drummer seems to amplify more than any verbal response Sala could have written. It is a remarkable emotive discourse of image and sound.
One of the most striking works featured is Long Sorrow, a slow, building piece in which the noted free Jazz musician Jemeel Moondoc performs whilst suspended from a dour looking apartment block in East Berlin. The video merges a visual element of playful fantasy with an intense and skillful musicality full of unguarded emotion so profound in jazz. None of this however, would be complete without Sala’s final performative flourish, the staging of 3-2-1 in which saxophonists respond live to the work; engaging with Moondoc in an engaging and unique post-production duet. The very action of this new reprisal of activity reminds the viewers of the process of creation, of the initial musician and Sala, whilst simultaneously completing the work.
Beyond the video works, Sala presents a collection of physical additions, notably Doldrum, the freestanding snare drum that greets your arrival and plays seemingly unaided in relation to low frequencies elsewhere in the exhibition. Whilst they are interesting conceptually, they provide little compared to the power and scope of the video and performance works. In these there was a raw sense of power and energy that resonated, not only within the space and with each other, but through the barrel organ scored walls and into the park beyond.
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on November 7th, 2011
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 04~
I arrived at the Fusion launch party suitably early while happy hour was still in its first incarnation and the sparse crowd all gathered around the edges and tittered at the two solitary dancers whose wildly confident dancing hinted to early inebriation.
The anticipation that I’d built up was not left wanting as I descended into the velvet-clad opulence of Café de Paris. The venue itself is a breathtaking throwback to a golden age of glamorous cocktail hours and witty repartee. The majority of the roughly 800 strong crowd rose to this unique occasion, bringing out some beguiling and elaborate costuming rarely seen within the usually lax student community. People gazing alone could have kept you occupied all night.
The evening’s entertainment was a varied mixture of musical styles. The opening act, Jemima Jo (myspace.com/jemimajo), presented a collection of her own pop/R&B tunes reminiscent of Britney after her musical puberty; a lot of sexualized sound injections and some accomplished stage gyration. For all that it wasn’t necessarily my kind of sound I couldn’t fault Joe’s abilities, her professional voice quality and aptitude for writing within her genre gave the whole performance the glow of a radio hit parade.
After a brief pause the next group took the stage this time offering up some consummate a cappella singing from Apollo 5 (apollo5.co). The selection of melodious emotive renderings and upbeat jazzy numbers hit the tone of the venue perfectly and got most of the crowd toe-tapping along to their enthralling vocals.
The Lorelles (thelorelles.com) were the first group to enjoy the now much expanded crowd as the fashionably late took their place on the dance floor and at the bar, and they fed off the fresh and excited energy with relish. The girl group’s music sated the crowd’s appetite for danceable, upbeat, and catchy tunes, delivering a wonderful set with their charmingly assured stage presence.
As an interlude to the vocal array The Waacktitioners (waacktitioners.co.uk) briefly took to the stage for a high energy live Strictly style interlude. Their evident popularity with the crowd was evident from the raucous applause and generally excited reception. Warming the crowd for the headlining Clement Marfo and the Frontline (myspace.com/clementmarfo) who were for many the greatest highlight of the night. Whether this was because of the average blood alcohol level or the almost anthemic, imposing tunes, or (most likely) some magical mixture, it was a festival worthy set. Although for most in the crowd this was their first exposure to the group by the second round of a chorus the band managed to have a more or less cogent sing along and a very exuberant selection of synchronized swaying, jumping, and fist pumping that rounded off the evening with a flourish.
I cannot claim to have stayed long beyond the talent; the increasingly antagonistic crowd that shouted off the obscenely generous raffle prize draw was, with all the masked anonymity, beginning to pang a bit of Derren Brown’s latest morality stunt (if you haven’t seen it you should, see 4od). However, I went away contented and foot-sore. It was a brilliant night to launch a great cause onto the London psyche, if the main event is half as good as its taster session you’ll be in for a great night.
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on November 7th, 2011
Here is a biography I wrote for the LeaderValues newsletter …
Dorothy Emma Howell (later Rodham) was born on the 4th of June 1919 in Chicago to Edwin John Howell, a firefighter, and Della Murray. Her parents had a violent relationship, frequently falling into physical arguments, and her father sued for divorce alleging abuse and abandonment of their children (Rodham and her younger sister Isabelle). Her mother never appeared in court and the girls we left in the care of their father who, unable or unwilling to continue raising them, sent the young children, Rodham was 8, on a cross-country train journey alone to live with his parents in California.
Hilary Clinton has written that she thought of her mother’s childhood when she attempted to understand the difficult childhood of her husband, Bill Clinton.
“I thought often of my own mother’s neglect and mistreatment at the hands of her parents and grandparents, and how other caring adults filled the emotional void to help her,” she wrote in “Living History.” She added: “Her sad and lonely childhood was imprinted on my heart.”
Edwin Sr. and Emma were unhappy with the arrangement, leaving the majority of the work to Rodham’s strict and austere grandmother with a penchant for wearing black and a dislike of visitors or parties. One particularly well noted example of her discipline was when she confined the young Rodham to her room for a year (excluding school) after the girl was caught having gone trick-or-treating. Rodham moved out at the age of 14, taking on the role of housekeeper and nanny for a kindly family in San Gabriel. It was her employers that encouraged her to learn to read and continue attending school. She subsequently enrolled at Alhambra High School, relishing the classes and engaging in some extra-curricular activities.
Following her graduation Rodham was contacted by her mother and her new stepfather who asked her to rejoin them in Chicago, promising to cover her expenses and allow her to attend College. Rodham hoped to enroll at Northwestern University but instead found that, upon her arrival, the offer had evaporated and her mother had in fact intended for Rodham to take up as her housekeeper.
She left and found secretarial work in Chicago, and married Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, a travelling salesman, in 1942. Hugh went on to later own a small fabric business and the couple moved to the suburb of Park Ridge where they raised their children Hillary, Hugh, and Tony. The marriage wasn’t an easy one, Hugh was known to be a dominating patriarch with a quick temper but she didn’t let this deter her and poured passion and a desire to learn into her children.
Perhaps because of her tough upbringing Rodham always urged her children to stand-up for themselves; famously sending the 4 year old Hillary back out into the neighborhood to confront a bully. Hillary has always regarded her mother as the greatest source of strength, a constant force in her life convincing her that nothing was beyond her reach. Both Rodham and her husband encouraged their daughter to attempt anything her brothers would, never accepting her gender as a barrier in her efforts and encouraging her to excel academically.
Despite her husband’s staunch Republicanism, Rodham held fast to her Democratic beliefs (Hillary would later remark, ‘although she kept it quiet in Republican Park Ridge’), and her Methodist religion the faith in which she raised her children. In 1987 (while Clinton was Governor) Rodham and her husband moved to Little Rock, Ark. to be near her daughter and granddaughter. Whilst there, Rodham enrolled on college courses in various subjects including psychology, child development, and logic, never graduating but just enjoying the opportunity to learn.
After the death of her husband in 1993, she followed her daughter to Washington when Bill was elected and as Hillary served as Senator, also owning a home close to the family’s NY property. Despite the public life of her daughter and son-in-law, Rodham valued her privacy and was rarely a public figure. She appeared on the campaign trail and was often seen at her daughter’s side in times of need but retained a dignified silence, speaking to the media only on sparing occasions.
Since 2006 Rodham has lived largely with the Clinton’s in their Washington home.
She died on November 1st 2011 at 92 years of age.
Throughout her time in the public eye Hillary has championed her mother as a powerful force in her development, staunchly urging her ambition and affording her the strength and character to persevere life’s hardships. A lifelong homemaker as most of her generation she nevertheless dreamed of more for her children.
Rodham was exemplary in showing how to live a life of dignified endurance. Her daughter has become one of the most powerful women in American politics and, while she herself never had the opportunities to achieve, there is no doubt that no small part of the credit can be left with this remarkable woman.
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on October 26th, 2011
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 03~
Early Monday morning I slipped out of London’s commuting frenzy and into the meditative darkness of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Usually the space is buzzing with a sort of vital and unfocused energy, but on this day the rambunctious, disheveled human activity was replaced by an awe of something I can only describe as sacred.
As you pass into the end portion of the hall you see looming in the distance a dominating 13m high screen on which are projected a disparate collection of images from the industrial walls of a building, to the movement of escalator stairs, to the slow, rolling motion of a tree in the wind. Sitting down on the long black bench you feel weighted with a pervasive ease, as though entering a Cathedral to worship before the dazzling stained glass narrative. Watching as the silent film flicked by, the complexity of its range seemed only to heighten; modernist impositions of a small wiggling toe on the backdrop of those factory windows leaned towards the contemporary whilst consistently natural injections and color charting which reminded me inescapably of Mondrian grounded the piece in a fluid, organic history.
   
This year’s Unilever Turbine Hall installation was the brainchild of Tacita Dean, a master of the poignantly personal narrative work, and proved to be another magnificent credit to her craft. It all began earlier this year when Dean became the prominent voice against the systematic demise of analogue film, the medium of her practice. On the 22nd of February Dean’s piece in the Guardian declared, “on Tuesday last week, the staff at Soho Film Laboratory were told by their new owners, Deluxe, that they were stopping the printing of 16mm film, effective immediately… That was it: medium eviction without notice”. At the time she “didn’t realize it was the beginning of this journey,” but the cause to which she ascribed her name went from a capitalist problem to an artistic tragedy in rapid succession. “This beautiful format we created 125 years ago or so is under threat” its temples are “closing down and closing quickly”. “In March… people thought I was hysterical but now…I hope we have a year, it really is that critical”.
It is impossible to understand the evocative beauty of the work without understanding this looming scythe. The whole piece, as the curator Nicholas Cullinan succinctly expressed during the attending press conference, attempts to make the viewers “fall in love with film again”. Referencing the intimate works Dean has created in the past about subjects who passed away shortly after (most notably Merce Cunningham), and drawing on Dean’s earlier observation “I realised it was a portrait, and with the patterns of my subjects, it’s probably the death of film”, Cullinan persisted “subjects die because that’s the nature of humanity but film doesn’t have to die”.
The opening to the accompanying book also entitled FILM seems to best encapsulate the poignant theme of Dean’s remarkable labour of love, it states: “this book and this film are not valedictory; they refuse to be. But they are, nonetheless, a call to arms. Culturally and socially, we are moving too fast and losing too much in our haste… Analogue, the word, means equivalent. Digital is not the analogue of analogue”. I only hope that this haunting homage to the art of film prevents it from becoming another artifact of a discarded history. Certainly for requiem or inspiration, Londoners should all flock to stand at the feet of this artistic divinity and decide for themselves.
Victoria Yates
Tacita Dean’s installation FILM will be showing at Tate Modern until the 11th of March 2012
See the Tate Modern website for details and opening times
By victoriayates, on October 25th, 2011
Requiem to a Fallen Giant
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 03~
You would be hard pressed not to have heard of Steve Jobs’s passing on the 6th of October. In the litany of eulogies heralded from all echelons of the media world, the blogosphere, and the world’s masses, how you frame such a figure as Jobs has been shown to be a divisive issue.
Upon the death of such an historic individual it can be easy to sing their praises into a heroic chorus which levels their life with a magnitude that, in its profoundly human nature, it did not reach. And indeed, there are some who throw their voices into the wind to decry Jobs in all manner of insults, denouncing him as a brutally cunning salesman whose ability to exploit our inner cultish drives made the naïve world roll over and lap up yet another unremarkable product. Some of you may agree, the diehards on the other side of the advert screen who propound the PC, or who throw aloft their Blackberry, Android, or Samsung, are welcome to their heroes, but I will have mine.
For me Jobs will forever be a true titan of the age. He wasn’t just another CEO who built an empire and a healthy bank balance on the back of clever marketing and an infamously pedantic eye for detail. Jobs represented something greater than a business case study. How many companies have ridden the waves of a media event that proclaimed their loyal fans to be acolytes of a quasi-religion; whose products and identity have inspired the same mental reaction as God has on the minds of his faithful?
In an intricate web of tangible and coincidental ways Jobs has reconfigured the terms of modernity. His products have, in an irony of cyclical cause-and-effect, afforded the tools by which the Internet was formed before redefining the way that we use it. He changed the manner of personal communication, and brought into our outstretched palms the incarnations of science fiction fancy. I only wish we could all see what he would have done next.
Of course, he did none of these things alone. His was a team of disciples whose unique and exorbitant talents were not always given society’s praise, and whose skills and dedication were the platform from which Jobs and his company launched themselves onto history. Their continued march into the unchartered waters of the post-Jobs era has a great chance of prolonging a remarkable legacy.
We followed Jobs along an unchartered path, believing faithfully in his innovations and his dreams of the future making them our own. If you need any greater proof of his impact you only had to turn on a computer, or a television to see the world heave a collective sob of grief. His was a mind which defined a generation, and he won’t soon be forgotten.
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on October 13th, 2011
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 02~
For all of you who have wandered the city’s concourses in a haze of modernist commuter ennui there is in Lavinia Greenlaw’s latest work Audio Obscura, a tailor made antidote. Based in King’s Cross St Pancras this beguiling piece promised to be “a framed and heightened reflection of the passing world”, a case study to perception, and it certainly delivers.
On arrival you make your way through the milling throngs to the Audio Obscura kiosk near M&S, phone or debit card at the ready to leave hostage while you borrow a pair of headphones. It was clear that the women patiently manning the piece had been rather more frequently harassed by those confused by their presence than by the art pilgrim’s amongst us; “let me guess, you’re wondering what we are right?” greeted our arrival.
Once you put them on though you seem to be pulled out of reality and into some sort of theatrical montage. A series of voices unfold the personal thoughts and worries of a disparate catalogue of characters ranging from a man too anxious to communicate with the outside world to a painfully venomous scorned elderly woman. The diverse gathering reminded me of a reimagined Canterbury Tale of the modern age, these unrelated traveller’s narratives meeting in Greenlaw’s melting pot and forming a cohesive tapestry of social commentary.
It is, in essence, an experience of amplified voyeurism. The piece not only hints at engagement but actively encourages those within it to associate the audio with the station surroundings, going so far as to instruct you to “follow someone” (an edict I ignored, the internal struggle between authority figures and social acceptability being won by the latter, but which was sorely tempting).
The piece wastes no time dragging you into its alternative world. The haunting whispers that blur, overlap and entrance meld with the natural sounds of the station, at times forming a coincidental synergy. For me one of the strongest turning points came when the French voice’s dulcet tones lamented “he’s going to walk straight past her, he always does, poor man, poor man” and I began to search for this imaginary man and his unrequited, unrecognized love. From this point you can’t help but fall down the rabbit hole. Every narrative is careful unraveled, and you come to see those around you in a sort of haze, transforming their unaware activities into a performance that is uniquely personal. It is the commuter experience but profoundly humanized.
For a brief omnipotent moment you feel you can see these people’s real lives, you can wonder about their day and their journey as if from inside their thoughts (“everything evaporates and what is there is what’s really there” emerged as poignantly astute). The whole experience for me seems encapsulated in the fragment proffered by our French narrative host, “I want you to know that someone has seen”, said with such empathy it lost the Stasi like connotations and took on an affirmative, comforting aura.
If this seems all overly sentimental and emotive I can only tell you to try it for yourself, for me it was nothing short of profound. This sort of philosophical gushing might tint my opinion as a bit arty but they are the only sorts of terms that really frame the experience Greenlaw gives you. The clichéd condemnation of metropolitans as unerringly individualized merges with more poignant social critique in Greenlaw’s well conceived and brilliantly executed work.
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on October 13th, 2011
Cancer Research UK on what Fusion@London means for their work
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 02~
 Image Courtesy of Cancer Research UK London Student: Fusion London’s target is to raise £50,000 for Cancer Research UK, what sort of difference can that sort of money make to the charity and its work?
Natalie Brownless, Cancer Research UK: It’s fantastic to have the support of Fusion@London. It’s such an exciting and unique event and we’re really pleased to be involved with the first one of its kind for London.
The money raised from Fusion will help to make a big difference in getting us that one step closer to beating cancer.
Cancer Research UK funds scientists who work to understand why cancer starts, grows and spreads. But what’s important is that our work doesn’t stop there. We take our learnings from the lab right to the patient’s bedside and work to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer. What’s more, we are the only charity with the knowledge and expertise to tackle all 200 types of cancer.
Although cancer affects many people, the picture is getting so much better today. Thanks to research we know more about cancer and how to treat it than ever before. Compared with 40 years ago, cancer survival rates have doubled, and it’s our doctors, scientists and nurses that have been at the heart of this progress.
Obviously the Charity’s involvement in Fusion stems from the President (Angela Udemba’s) own experience having her PhD funded by your organization, how important is this sponsorship scheme? Do a lot of students get funded by Cancer Research?
We fund over 4000 doctors, nurses and scientists who look into all aspects of cancer research, from ways to prevent and diagnose through to finding new and effective treatments. We fund some of the best scientists in the world, but we are also committed to funding the next generation of researchers. We have grants available for people such as Angela to help start their career in research.
What is the importance of these small individual/group led fundraisers in raising money and awareness for cancer research?
Most people are not aware that we receive no government funding for our research so without our supporters we simply wouldn’t save lives. With the help of the Fusion Committee and other fundraising groups across the country raising money, we are able to fund the best possible research which is going to make the biggest impact.
Over 90% of our donations are for £10 or less and therefore we rely on a lot of people giving us a relatively small donation to be able to continue our life-saving work to beat cancer.
Students are well known for being low on money and therefore picky about where they spend it, what would you say to convince them to go out and buy a ticket for the Fusion event?
I would encourage everyone to go and get a ticket for Fusion. It’s going to be a fantastic event and the committee is working very hard to make sure everyone is going to have an amazing time!
By buying a ticket, you’ll not only have a great time at Fusion@London but you’ll also be supporting the work of Cancer Research UK and helping to save more lives.
Visit cancerresearchuk.org for more information on the work of Cancer Research UK and ways you can help
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on October 13th, 2011
In Conversation with Fusion@London’s President Angela Udemba
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 02~
We met in September when the weather was still warm but not ‘climate-change-abnormally’ so. As I wandered around the Imperial Campus in dire search of the given landmarks I began to soak up the odd aura of studiousness pervading the site and its pre-term inhabitants. I have been on many of the UoL campuses in my time (somewhere having fallen prey to a collect-em-all pattern) but this was somehow a world apart.
At the foot of this scientific summit philosophy felt a shameful three years of whimsy, and my minimal memory of separate science GCSE a deplorable waste of good, solid knowledge. Luckily, Angela Udemba, the President of Fusion, is one of the most welcoming people I’ve met in London, and even graciously side-swiped my awe, “well at least in science there are right answers, in philosophy… I don’t think I could do it”. Spend five minutes with this woman and you’ll know that’s most likely fallacious, but it sure made me feel better, until I realized that I was sitting down to chat with an unassuming, good-natured powerhouse.
Our Saturday rendezvous was the equivalent to a tea break in Udemba’s over-packed schedule. She was in the middle of a weekend of lab work, catching up on her research following a week overtaken by the heavy burden of doctoral level education and organizing a London-wide event (of which we had met to talk). After an obscene number of required card-swipes we settled in the break room of the chemistry building to get down to the matter at hand, her pet project Fusion@London.
 Photo Courtesy of Angela Udemba Born in York seven years ago, Fusion is a society in the university that brings together the students with a flair for fashion, art, dance, or choreography into three nights of entertainment, all to raise money for a good cause. Udemba first came across the concept in her own studies at York, and was hooked, not leaving it long after her southward migration to bring Fusion to the capital with her. Her reasons were simple “because there’s nothing like it and that’s one of my main reasons… when I came to Imperial and I looked to join societies I assumed there must be something like Fusion because it’s London. I looked around and there was nothing… a lot of societies have their own smaller events but nothing really infuses loads of other societies and especially nothing integrates other universities”.
Although spawned from its northern ancestor, London’s Fusion is in itself a very different event, “London Fusion fuses three different universities, that’s the one major difference, whereas York was just York… it’s a lot bigger. We’re looking to book headline acts, celebrity artists, comperes… although we’re still focused on showcasing student talent; most of our designers come from London College of Fashion, Central Saint Martin’s so in that sense we’ve also involved those two universities. Whereas in York they showcase mostly High Street fashion stores, like Hugo Boss, Mango, River Island, places like that”.
As an outsider looking in the idea of managing to control a team of 18 from three different universities, and wrangle sponsorship, venues, celebrity acts, and a plethora of other tasks it seems a mammoth if not impossible challenge, “yes (she laughed), it’s on a lot bigger scale than York and also in York it was easier because it’s a campus uni so you see everyone around anyway and you tend to work with your friends. But involving three universities and a committee from all those universities you have to in some ways take more of a business or formal approach coordinating meetings. You have to be really organized. There’s a lot to be done!” And indeed Udemba has been chipping away at the to-do list since before the ice had thawed for the year when she first approached the Deputy Pesident of Imperial SU and began mailing out application forms for her team, “I’ve been working since February but the team didn’t really start until the beginning of June, we still have a lot to do”.
The Fusion@London project hopes to involve many more students than simply those at the helm, the entire concept being rooted in participation, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many would be in this little army by the end. “Going by what you have in York they have about 150 maybe slightly less than that and that’s including other societies, so I’m hoping to go for that same number in London. Especially with three universities involved I want to give as many people a chance as possible. And in terms of societies… it goes on and on! But because there are so many societies we are going to merge them into official Fusion teams and mix the societies together like ACS in King’s would have to join ACS in Imperial for example, so it’s fusion” she laughs.
And is this something she hopes will continue beyond this year? “I hope so… the whole point is to make this year very exciting and to get all the university students from the different universities to make friends, to stop focusing on the competition and work to bring this one big show to London every year”. The power of the triumvirate heavy weights in the now Imperial free UoL could certainly do with a smattering of intercollegiate cooperation, if only for the one night.
I must admit that on first learning of the Fusion’s launch event I was uncannily excited, not only does it fall on Halloween a childhood favourite that is a bit neglected on this side of the Atlantic, but it affords the chance to wonder at the bedecked innards of the landmark Café de Paris. “We wanted to have our first event around October time which is when freshers are still new and are looking to get involved, and it made sense to call it a launch event. Halloween actually turned out to be one of the cheapest dates to book a venue so it was an easy option to go for! We’ve gone for a sort of fun, classical theme; you just have to put on a mask, look funky, turn up, and don’t have to worry so much about what you’re wearing. We’ve got some amazing acts for then lined up: Sunday Girl… she’ll be DJing; Clement Marfo and the Frontline; The Lorelles; Apollo 5; The Wacktitioners, so it’s hopefully going to be one of the best Halloween parties around at one of the best venues in London”. And, I hastened to add, at a good price (£9 for students), “yeah, compared to what you would normally pay to get in to Café de Paris, it’s a real treat”.
Eager to bond over a shared enthusiasm I enquired what Udemba was most excited about for the night, “just getting the cast and the committee together and having some fun, we’ve been working so hard organizing everything that we’ve forgotten that Fusion is supposed to be fun”. The SATC viewer and occasional Vogue reader within me couldn’t help but wonder aloud if she had her outfit ready (as I mentally attempted a wardrobe catalogue) “I have an idea of what mask I’m going to wear, still looking for the perfect dress –laughs- I’m taking it very seriously!”
In all the excitement over the remarkable entertainment Fusion affords, its easy to overlook that at its core it has a golden heart; the event’s whole purpose being to raise money for Cancer Research UK. To question why this was the charity of choice would be a bit of an ignorant faux-pas in a world where one in three people will develop Cancer in their lifetime, but Angela’s involvement was a unique point to me. “My PhD is funded by Cancer Research UK and I wanted to give some
thing back. Without just deciding on my own I spoke with the committee about what they thought about Cancer Research UK and they all went for it so it was a very easy choice. I mean, I thought we could raise enough that I could cover how much it cost them to put me through a PhD but actually we wouldn’t get anywhere near that much because I realized it cost about £300.000, its quite a scary amount!” Their aims are more modest, hoping to get all told “at least 50 (thousand), and that’s why we need everyone to turn up and support us. That’s the target which is ambitious for the first event but definitely doable”.
The team have put a huge amount into Fusion@London, and for Udemba the sacrifices haven’t all been hers alone. As she led me back out the warren of electronic doors she told me that later that day she was going to go wedding dress shopping with her sister, the pleasure evident in her beaming smile, and she herself would be the maid-of-honour. I idly asked when the wedding was, “March, just after Fusion… originally it was planned for February but it got moved because I’d been like ‘but I won’t be able to attend!’”
Visit fusionatlondon.com for more information on all Fusion events and how to get involved
Victoria Yates
By victoriayates, on October 9th, 2011
Here is a biography I wrote for the LeaderValues newsletter …
Maathai was born Wangari Muta on the 1st of April 1940 in the small village of Ihithe in the central highlands of Kenya. At age eleven she moved from the local primary school to a Catholic boarding school in Nyeri where she would stay for four years, becoming fluent in English and converting to Catholicism. It was because of her time at St Cecilia’s that she was largely unscathed by the violent Mau Mau uprising that raged around Kenya, forcing her mother to move into an emergency village. Maathai excelled academically and came to graduate first in her class before being afforded a place at the only Catholic high school for girls in Kenya at that time, Loreto High School Limuru.
In 1959 Maathai became one of around three hundred Kenyans (including President Obama’s father) to be offered the chance to study in an American University as part of the “Kennedy Airlift”, funded by the then Senator John F. Kennedy. She began at what was then called Mount St Scholastica College (now Benedictine College) in Kansas in September 1960, where she majored in biology. Her education still continued to flourish as, upon this graduation, she went on to the University of Pittsburgh for her MSc in Biological Sciences. It was in Pittsburgh that she first came to embrace environmental activism in the form of the anti-air pollution lobby underway in the City at that time, something which continued to resonate with her throughout her career.
With her Masters in hand, Maathai returned once more to Kenya, aiming to enter University this time as a research assistant for a zoology professor at the University College of Nairobi. However, it wasn’t to be. Upon her arrival at the University she was told the position had been given to someone else, something Maathai attributed to gender and racial bias (she was from a Kikuyu tribe). Her long search for employment ended when she was offered a post within the same University this time as an assistant in the microanatomy section of the new Veterinary department. She worked under Professor Reinhold Hofmann, originally from the University of Giessen, Germany, who was to be a huge force in convincing Maathai to go to Giessen and complete a Doctorate.
In 1969 Maathai married Mwangi Mathai, falling pregnant with her first child later in the same year. It was a turbulent time politically in Kenya, with Tom Mboya, an instrumental member of the team that allowed her to study abroad initially, being assassinated and President Kenyatta by and large ending multi-party democracy in the country.
When in 1971 she received her PhD she made history as the first East African woman to do so. Her string of achievements didn’t end there as she rose through the ranks from senior lecturer (1974), chair of the department (1976), and associate professor (1977), at each stage being the first woman to hold the position in Nairobi. Beyond the classroom she had given birth to a second child, a daughter, and also been hugely active in feminist politics relating to equal benefits for female staff members.
Throughout the 70s Maathai involved herself in human right’s organizations as well as becoming involved in the Environmental Liaison Centre that promoted participation in NGOS in the United Nations Environment Programme. The activism that had early inspired her continued to flourish, and with this involvement came her conviction that the problems faced by her country were rooted in environmental degradation.
1974 saw several larger developments in Maathai’s life, starting with the birth of her third child. She was also involved in her husband’s second attempt at gaining a seat in Parliament. Part of his election pledge, to find jobs to help with escalating unemployment, led her to combine her environmental sensibilities with this business lilt, forming Envirocare Ltd. which involved the local communities in planting trees as part of conservation project. Although it ultimately failed, her efforts brought her to the attention of UNEP who had her sent to join the UN Conference on human settlements in ’76.
This knowledge and experience further kindled her conservation efforts, and was a huge force in spurring the first Green Belt Movement (the year after the conference there was a procession through Nairobi to the outskirts of the city where seven trees were planted as symbol of community leaders). Off the back of this, Maathai encouraged local women to plant nurseries in their local communities throughout Kenya. However, with her political success came personal trial when later that year her husband sued for divorce, citing that Maathai was “too strong-willed” a woman for him to control. After the divorce was finalized, Maathai’s ill-advised criticism of the judge in a magazine interview led to her spending six months in jail. Her lawyer however successfully had her released after three days. The added ‘a’ in Maathai’s surname was her last act of defiance against her husband who demanded that she give up his name. The divorce was costly and the wages Maathai earned at the University weren’t enough to cover her and her children. So she made the painful decision to send her children to live with their father, taking a position with the United Nations Development Program on the Economic Commission for Africa.
Maathai entered the political fray herself in 1979, attempting to become the Chairman of the National Council of Women in Kenya (NCWK), a charitable organization. However the crackdown on Kikuyu’s in power by the government meant that she narrowly lost, being instead voted Vice-Chairman by an overwhelming majority. Not to be deterred by the racial politics, she ran again the following year, this time succeeding when her opponent withdrew. The withdrawal, however, led to the majority of funding for women’s programs to be diverted to the government favourite while her organization was left virtually penniless. Under Maathai’s skilled leadership the group shifted its focus to the more environmental and made itself a key player. She continued to be re-elected until her official retirement in 1987.
During this same time period she also ran for Parliament, only to face allegations of ineligibility and duplicitous conduct that prevented her from running. She paid a heavy price, having had to resign from the University she lost her job and her housing. Adding insult to injury her reapplication to her post was denied, a fact that she ascribes to the President’s role as Chancellor of the University at that time. The NCWK work consumed her time as she again searched for employment. She was approached by the executive director of the Norwegian Forestry Society who hoped to partner with her on the Green Belt Movement a deal she gladly accepted, making her the project coordinator. The project thrived under the joint support of the NFS and the UN, expanding its employee base and ensuring that women planting trees were still granted a small stipend.
When the UN global women’s conference came to Kenya in ’85 Maathai took the opportunity to speak on the Green Belt and to show delegates around the nurseries. The UN’s support was redoubled and under their wing Maathai took the project to the rest of Africa the following year, creating the Pan-African Green Belt Network. Despite the showering of media attention and awards, the government demanded that the NCWK be separated from the Green Belt Movement, leading to her resignation and the creation of a newly wholly NGO Green Belt.
The human rights and democratic messages inherent in Maathai’s work continued to stir up political discontent, bringing down the wrath of the government in the 80s through various legislative attacks. However as the decade came towards its end the movement had been far from hampered, and Maathai, ever unperturbed, involved the organization in the registering of voters and voicing opinions on governmental reform and freedom of expression.
One of Maathai’s greatest triumphs came in her opposition to the creation of a sixty-story complex to be built in Uhuru Park in 1989. Maathai reached out to every conceivable individual with the power to help, including the British High Commissioner in Nairobi, and equated the project with an attempt to create a skyscraper in Hyde Park. The Government painted Maathai as a crazed and ignorant woman, refusing to acknowledge her complaints and minimizing the real scale and impact of the project. And Maathai was made to give up her offices and move the operation of the Green Belt Movement into her home, immediately followed by a government audit of the group. Although it seemed as though the government would triumph, the publicity Maathai had succeeded in generating meant that foreign investors called off the project in early 1990.
Maathai’s battle with the government continued to escalate when, a few years later, she learned that her name was on a list of people targeted for assassination in a government-sponsored attack. In response, Maathai publicly barricaded herself in her home which was soon surrounded by police. Three days of siege later the police finally broke into her home and arrested her on charges of treason and malicious rumour mongering. The charges against these pro-democracy leaders were dropped only after international organizations and several prominent US Senators including Al Gore and Edward Kennedy called for substantiation of the government’s claims.
When the country’s first multi-party elections were held in 1992 Maathai was a pivotal force in attempting to unite the opposition and to garner free, fair democracy for the people. Despite her efforts the opposition remained fragmented and the government, through intimidation and its control of the media, again triumphed. Again she was targeted by the government, falsely accused of producing inflammatory material. Maathai went into hiding. It was because she declined an invitation to go to a meeting of the new environmental organization funded by Mikhail Gorbachev that she could again escape the threat. Gorbachev stepped in to demand the government allow her free and unhindered travelwhich the government granted, claiming it had never prevented her from moving as she pleased.
For several years Maathai continued to be active in environmental preservation and politics, masterminding an effort which twice scuppered the government’s plans to privatize large swathes of public land. She also returned to teaching, serving a tenure at Yale University as part of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Finally, in 2002 she was elected to parliament when the opposition, the National Rainbow Coalition, defeated the ruling party. Maathai served as the Assistant Minister in the Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources for the following three years until late 2005. She also founded a National Green party as a way for candidates to run on issues of conservation.
In 2004 Maathai received her greatest accolade yet, the Nobel Peace Prize for her dedication to sustainable development, democracy, and peace, the first African woman and the first environmentalist to do so. As soon as the announcement was made public a controversy ensued when Maathai was fallaciously accused of claiming that Western powers had created HIV/Aids as a biological agent against the African population. Her further clarifications only confused the media, until she finally laid the issue to rest on grounds that she was simply trying to debunk the myths relating to Aids as a curse of God and to belief in cures like sleeping with a virgin.
In the following years Maathai remained as active as ever, one of her greatest tasks being the spearheading of the UN Billion Tree Campaign and her work helping to co-found The Nobel Women’s Initiative. On Obama’s visit to Kenya in 2006, Maathai and he met and planted a tree in Uhuru Park, an occasion which the Senator used to denounce the limiting of press freedom and the global climate of lethargy regarding environmental problems, particularly in American politics.
Maathai died on the 25th of September 2011 in Nairobi following a battle with ovarian cancer. Her death was a huge loss to the environmental movement and the fight for human rights, and women’s equality across the world. Throughout her life Maathari led the way, first educationally excelling far beyond the norms or the perceived possibilities, and later in her continued work often under extreme opposition.
Victoria Yates
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A Daunting Task Ahead
The Plight of Literacy and Literature in Modern Times
~Written for the London Student Paper, Volume 32, Issue 05~
On the 19th of October I went to spend my evening within the warming intellectualism of the RSA’s walls. It was not a professional trip; no review or report to produce, rather a sort of familial tradition wherein my father and I spend a few hours in the presence of great debate. This particular night we had tickets to the RSA/BBC Radio 4 corroboration, “Four Thought”. I had never attended this particular style of event before and as we entered the Benjamin Franklin room to the chorus of “there’s free wine!” and settled onto the forced mingling mixed tables that littered the room like a well-lit comedy club, I was honestly not sure what to expect.
It was an evening of great dialogue. To say nothing of the brilliant opening presentation on the American health crisis, nor the irreverently frank Eden project discussion, or the unique conception of drugs-based YouTube research within the DEA, my evening was completed when I had the immense pleasure of seeing James Daunt resting slightly anxiously in the wings.
For those of you who have never strolled the length of Marylebone High Street to find a gem of an old-fashioned bookstore (and flagship of Daunt Books) where geography has its own cavern and books are laid out in old, thick wooden bookcases, you will nevertheless have had contact with the Daunt legacy. Nowadays you will find the Daunt name on a far more prolific masthead; the man himself ensconced in a meeting over the future of one of the high street’s most iconic bookstores, Waterstones. Daunt took control of the failing company in May, bringing his independent store charm and veneration of the written word in an attempt to not only change the monetary fortunes of the store, but perhaps their approach to their product as well.
Flickr User o5com
Daunt’s talk was one of a true bookish romanticism. He argued that when he started out in bookstores he never would have conceived of his profession as having any impact on society but contended that now we are at a crisis moment; sitting in the same ship, albeit largely coincidentally, with the libraries who are struggling to keep their place in British society. The staggering statistic that one sixth of adults in this country have trouble reading was still swirling around the room’s collective consciousness when he began discussing the way that bookstores had failed this country. For Daunt, they had allowed the commercial imperative to stop their engagement with the local community; to prevent the possibility of that inspirational transmission that is such a huge part of my childhood memories. Where contention arose was in Daunt’s assertion that the digital systems sprouting up like weeds throughout the world of reading are, and should be understand as, a support system to the physical book, not a replacement.
As we rehashed the debates over dinner my dad staunchly disavowed this belief. He argued that such an opinion was antiquated. For him it was simple; the ketchup is out of the bottle, we can’t reminisce our way into the past. Digital affords the reader an incredible selection of conveniences. It fits far better with our instant gratification world, and is arguably more compatible with our constant commuter movements. And yet, I love books.
I love the paper, the feel of the product, the look of the type on the page and (to fall to cliché) the smell. The idea that libraries are closing, and bookstores are threatened by the ease of Amazon or the ebook revolution saddens me.
For those who caught it I recently watched Stephen Fry’s Planet Word, a remarkable documentary on the complexity of language and our relationship with it. The combined skills of the BBC cinematography team, Fry, and his wide ranging guests made for a compelling series which again touched on this modern crux of word and the modern age.
Harry S. Truman remarked, “not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”; 4 in 5 CEOs in America read at least a book a month, the average American reads one a year. Perhaps he was on to something.
In their report Literacy: State of the Nation 2011, the National Literacy Trust reported that while 92% of the British public believes that literacy is vital to the economy and essential for getting a good job, a quarter of children and young people do not recognize this link between reading and success. 30% of five to eight year olds read a book everyday, a figure that drops to 17% of fifteen to seventeen year olds. It would seem that young people have lost their love affair with reading books. This isn’t news, the slow death march of the pleasure reader has been sounding for a good few years now, but we now have a glimmer of hope. The same study that displayed staggering weaknesses in British literacy also informs you that teenagers are also more likely to read alternative sources such as blogs and websites. In this I undoubtedly need to concede to my father’s opinion, technology has changed the social fabric and we can’t hope to reverse those effects, no matter how much shiny red heel clicking we do.
Perhaps our modern issue lies in the partisan divide between the traditionalists and the modernists for whom books will suffer the fate of vinyl within the next decade or so. A common goal has to be the celebration of and engagement with reading, on whatever platform can most grab attention. I don’t want to see libraries and bookstores relegated to history, but then I don’t truly believe they will.
Reading is a hot topic of debate in today’s media, policy, and educational arenas whose reformations and challenges are emblematic of the new age we live in. It’s a matter of importance for those of us entering the adult world as its institutions begin to quake under the weight of change; thank goodness I could read about it.
Victoria Yates