The trains weren’t running, so we took the bus to town, alighting at the back of the old Argos building on the Priory Queensway, where the bridge crosses Dale End and overlooks HMV vaults (where Toys R Us used to be) and the space previously occupied by the O2 Academy. Our root took us Hobgoblin music and the Old Square, where Tony Hancock glowers from under his Trilby, through the Victorian Arcade where the refugees from the much-mourned Oasis Market have gathered, and along the side of Pigeon Park. We arrived at around 12:15, forty-five minutes before the cortege was due to make its way down Broadstreet. People lined Centenary Way, standing on the flower beds to look over the sides of the bridge. A tram parked up outside The Exchange had been given a new name to mark the occasion, and fans paused to take a picture next to it. We joined the crowd—perhaps a dozen ranks deep—before the barriers at the junction where Broad Street meets Centenary Square. As the appointed time approached, the crowd lining the route swelled until it numbered in the tens of thousands. Others stood in the rooftop gardens above the library to get a view of proceedings, and people working in the office blocks took to the balconies to see the local hero on his way.
Forty-five
minutes is a long wait for a five-year-old, but once she’d had a sandwich and
was settled on my shoulders where she could see things, Freya stopped telling
us she was bored. We had explained, in simple terms, who Ozzy Osborne—the man
up on the screen—was, that he came from Birmingham, that he and his band had
invented Heavy Metal (‘the shouty music that mommy likes’) which made a lot of
people happy, and that he had died. We told her that all these people were
there to say goodbye. We played a little bit of eye-spy and ‘what animal am I?’
while we waited. Freya looked around at the crowds and asked what happened to
the gold men (Boulton, Watt and Murdoch. ‘They’re statues, Freya: they were
important people for Birmingham too. Birmingham used to make lots of different
things, and they were inventors’), occasionally asked questions about why Ozzy
died and ‘what he was doing’ (this latter inspired, as far as I can tell, by
the idea that if we were waiting this long he must be doing something,
rather than any curiosity about the afterlife).
When
the procession came into view, she understood that something was happening, and
asked for my phone so she could take pictures (the one above being the best one). For me, at
ground level, proceedings were passed on as rumours through the crowd, glanced
between the backs of people’s heads or mediated through strangers’ phone
screens. The motorcade of police bikes, the tops of the black limousines—as
they came into view, the crowd’s football chants were replaced with a
respectful applause—and tailing behind, the Villa-kit clad Bostin’ Brass Band,
playing an oddly joyful New Orleans Jazz rendition of ‘Crazy Train’. I’m not
really a metal head, but I’ve been metal-adjacent since my mid-teens and as a
proud Brummie I’m glad I able to mark the passing of someone who had such an
impact on music and on the cultural life of this city. As the gathered masses
started to dissipate, we made our way to the library, feeling sorrow but also
connection to our community. I’m not sure how much of this Freya understood,
but it’s something she will be able to look back on and say, ‘I was there’.
***
There’s
a concept in education called ‘Cultural Capital’. It posits that when we’re choosing
what texts to teach, what composers or artists to study, we are building
children’s stock of ‘cultural capital’; ensuring that everyone who passes
through our school system has some knowledge and awareness of the artwork that
we, as a culture, have decided is important. Usually when we talk about it, it
leans towards ‘high culture’, we’re talking Shakespeare and Dickens, Van Goch or
Beethoven. Critics of this idea say it is elitist, and of course there is an
important debate about ensuring that the canon of works that we teach in
schools includes voices that are not exclusively straight, male and Western
European, but if we agree that there is such a thing as an important piece of
art, then it is right that all our children should have some way to access it:
we are saying ‘this does not belong to the rich and powerful, or to those who
have studied/intend to study literature or music or art at University[1],
it belongs to all of us as part of our heritage as human beings.’ It allows
them to engage more fully when those things are referenced in public debate or
in other artworks, or when it speaks to some circumstance in their own lives.
This
does not negate the importance of all the cultural knowledge that a child will
pick up from outside of school. The things that tie them into their
communities, whether these be religious, civic, traditional[2],
pop-cultural and even sub-cultural.
Thinking
about the varied cultural experiences of the children I work with has made me
quite aware of the things we share with Freya and how that will shape her as
she grows up. We've supplemented the canon of Disney Princesses with Studio
Ghibli and Matilda. She recognises Darth Vader (although when she asked
to watch Star Wars, she got bored before the Death Star Trench Run) and
can name at least a dozen Pokémon. She lists Rammstein and The White Stripes
among her favourite bands and we came up with a dance to 'Cherry Bomb' by the
Runaways which involves throwing her up in air a lot. She's been wassailing and
apparently loves watching the Morris dancers at Warwick Folk Festival. I've
been teaching her skatepark etiquette and which one of the mini-figures that
came with my Lego Yellow Submarine is John, Paul, George or Ringo; Vicky has
taught her to fly a kite and how to catch crickets in the long grass. By nature,
some of these things will be ephemeral (Freya is now one of perhaps a thousand
people globally who are aware of the mid-2000s Welsh indie act The Hot Puppies)
some will have staying power within a particular niche interest group (Freya
has commandeered a set of pink polyhedral dice from my tabletop-RPG stuff. She
can identify a D20, and one day I will teach her to play Dungeons and Dragons),
and some things have a big enough cultural impact that they cut close to that
high cultural-capital (like when my dad sat me and brother down to watch The
Godfather).
Of
course some of the things we pick up in this way, we jettison or reject when we
are teenagers and we are trying to work out who we are outside of the context
of our families, but some of it will stay with us, and some we will return to
later with a sense of nostalgia. And it all still helps to form our value our
sense of self and our connection to the world around us. I’m not sure how many
of the people who pass by that Tony Hancock statue in Old Square every day know
who he is, but when I pass by, I am reminded not just of his unmistakably
Brummie humour, but of listening to tapes of Hancock’s Half Hour with my
granddad when he drove us to caravan holidays in Barmouth or Paignton.
I
don’t really have a conclusion or an argument to make beyond this: share the
stuff that matters to you with your children. Human culture is rich are
multi-faceted and offers myriad ways to connect with each other.
[1]
I’m deliberately separating these categories: most people who have studied at
university (including myself and all of the hypothetical teachers referred to
in this paragraph) are neither rich or powerful.
[2] It
took me ages to choose this word, and I’m still not sure it’s right one, but it’s
better than the alternatives: Ethnic sound far-right and icky when talking
about white people, and patronisingly othering when talking about people of
colour; national puts too much emphasis on political boundaries; I like the
word ‘folk’ but in this context it has a bit of an unfortunate blood-and soil
feel too it, and can’t be applied to other cultural groups without dismissing
the idea that those groups and places have their own ‘high’ cultures too.
Basically, I want Freya to feel connected to her heritage without thinking that
makes her better than anyone from a different heritage, and understand that
these things can zoom-in and out, and can mix. I also want her to be able to
experience things from other cultures, and Birmingham is a great place for
that.
