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  • 2021 highlights: Lessons from the Last Pandemic

    2021 highlights: Lessons from the Last Pandemic

    As the world comes out of COVID-19, Iris Spark looks for lessons from art created during the Spanish flu pandemic about where we go from here  

    Edith Schiele, Egon Schiele, 1918 

    Consider this woman above. Unless we were to look closely at her, we might not know that she is set to die tomorrow. It’s true that her gaze is melancholy, but we might miss that her sadness has a leaden weight to it, distinct from the sadness we see in many romantic portraits. The clue to her condition is her gnarled and crooked hand, which tells the rapid encroachment of death more than her face, which still – heartbreakingly – has youth on its side. The more you look, the more signs of the seriousness of her condition are brought home. There are the strokes of discoloration on her cheeks. The lips are thin, a sign of the cyanosis which accompanied a deadly case of influenza.  

    The woman’s name was Edith Schiele, and she was married to that brief star of the modernist period Egon Schiele, whose works today can fetch as much as $40 million. Egon himself would die three days after drawing this picture. He was 28. It was an unhappy end to a life about to take off. As inauspicious as this story might seem, as we seek to emerge from the other side of the pandemic, it is a useful place to start if we wish to consider what can be learned from a study of the last pandemic about our current direction of travel. 

    We all know the statistics about the pandemic: the numbers dead or infected; and the jobs lost. But the data does not tell the full story. 

    Modern Family 

    Statistics blur over time; what’s left is the poetry and the art which a society creates. If we consider the so-called Spanish flu pandemic, which raged from 1918-1919, and which killed 100 million people, and infecting 500 million, we can see clearly in the era’s painting a trajectory which might well prove relevant for our times as we implement our vaccination programmes. 

    We have to start with an acknowledgement of the enormity of what has happened to us with the pandemic. This was evident too during the Spanish influenza. It can be seen, for instance, in the pictures Schiele made towards the end of his life.  One is The Family (1918) – one of his last, and it would remain unfinished. This is a picture which in its mood is capable of placing us back in February 2020. It contains the foreboding of a vitality about to be stymied.  

    In this picture, two things alert us to the tragic state of affairs about to engulf the family: the first is the artist’s decision to depict his unborn child as if he wished to personify a child who would not survive the womb. The second is his painting of his own expression as blank and melancholy, his skin as jaundiced.  

    The baby might stand as a symbol for all the unborn projects which are stymied by the arrival of disease. But the definition of the musculature and the solidity of the forms make one feel uncomfortable about calling this an entirely pessimistic picture: there is will to endure here, and we can’t say it is any the less important simply because, in this instance, nobody in the picture survived.   

    Schiele, The Family 

    The picture is a reminder that the sheer oddity of what we have come through needs to be reckoned with and assimilated.  

    Fever Pitch 

    But surveying the art which arose out of 1918 pandemic, the most noteworthy thing is how difficult it is to depict illness. In pandemics we seem to enter a disjointed dreamscape. Illness isolates us, cuts us off from the solidity of the world. It partakes of the insubstantial, and can only be communicated in kaleidoscopic colours and the pictorial language of dreams.  

    In 1918, those artists who did experience a brush (or worse) with the Spanish flu, had already begun to intuit life as being at its core somewhat feverish and strange. This means we cannot always see how the influenza affected artists – they were, in some sense, feeling rather fluey about life beforehand. 

    Most notable among these was Edvard Munch (1863-1944)  who also contracted the flu and produced two portraits (see opposite) about the experience Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu and Self-Portrait After the Spanish Flu. In the first, Munch is depicted in a seated position with a blanket over his knees. The sheet beside him seems to be developing into a face, as if artist or sitter is hallucinating. The detail of his face is subservient to a swirl of colour. But how different is this picture philosophically to 1893’s famous picture The Scream?  

    When I talk to art specialist Angelina Giovanni she explains: ‘It’s very interesting that in the case of Munch – probably because themes of loss and death had already been present in his work – the way he depicts himself is no different in terms of style. Instead, it has a certain linearity within his existing body of work.’  

    Giovanni explains that it is as if Munch found some sort of confirmation of his prior experience by falling ill. The world had seemed disjointed before; and it continued to feel so when the influenza struck him. Giovanni continues: ‘Munch can so effortlessly depict himself within his predicament that were it not for the historical information that tells us that the work was painted when he had contracted the Spanish Flu, we might not have been able to place it in a particular point in time.’ 

    While pandemics might illustrate our vulnerability vividly, they might not fundamentally change our method of vision. The world is elastic, and will return to its former shapes and structures.  

    But there is also no doubt that pandemics create an atmosphere of reflection which can be harnessed in future years. When I catch up with Fake or Fortune star Phillip Mould, he says: ‘When you’re locked down, and you remain in your own habitat, it’s a more meditative cultural experience and you think about the outside world in a different way.’ Mould even wonders whether we shall have more full-length portraits in future, now that we are all looking at each from six feet away.  

    For Mould this meditative spirit is best captured by Lorna May Wadsworth’s superb still lives painted during lockdown, in which mere things – cups and vases – attain a meditative quality which, in his view, supersedes her previous work as a portrait painter.  

    Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu, 1919. 

    It was the American novelist Saul Bellow who once wrote that ‘Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.’ The Spanish flu and COVID-19 pandemics caused a widespread awareness of mortality: what appears to happen is that our relationship to death is placed again under the microscope.  

    In 1919, the experience of finding oneself so suddenly vulnerable expressed itself visually.  

    Death Becomes Us 

    Egon Schiele was not the only major artist to be claimed by the influenza. The other was Gustav Klimt, who suffered a stroke and died as a result of catching the infection. He was famous at the time for his painting Death and Life (1916). Here we have a close approximation of what death meant to the early 20th century mind – albeit through the prism of an individual of genius.  

    Death hovers to one said of the main grouping, his clothing patterned with crucifixes. These religious symbols act as a reminder that as radical as we think him, Klimt inhabited a world where Christian imagery was more prevalent than it is in our time. 

    Gustav Klimt, Death and Life

     

    How are we to feel about the figures on the right? Are they detached from death – in a kind of legitimate bliss of colour, and shared bodily warmth? Or are we to feel that they are failing to be awake to the menace of death as shown by the Reaper on the left-hand side of the painting? It’s likely that the picture contains both interpretations.  

    For Philip Mould the art of this period presents a problem in that ‘it is always hard to be sure what devolves from the First World War and what from the flu pandemic.’ What is clear is that with death more prevalent, something like a medieval acquaintance with death had been transposed into a modern setting. This can connect us with primitive political instincts – as was shown in the 1920s rise of fascism and as may be evident also in the riots in the Capitol, Washington D.C. on January 6th 2020.  

    Of course, in our own times, death has been depicted somewhat differently. Whereas death is still symbolised in Klimt by the medieval figure of the Grim Reaper, today death is represented with scientific diagrams such as the one opposite. Such images give a different sense of death. Here the virus appears has something spherical but prickly, but undeniably alien: an intruder. The Klimt picture shows death is demonic – which is to say almost human. It is an indicator of how our society has shifted. 

    Full-length illustration of a fashionably dressed flapper standing with one hand on her hip and a cigarette in the other hand. A stream of smoke from the cigarette forms a curving, twisting, decorative line.
    Russell Paterson, Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

    Cocktail Hour 

    But what happens in the 1920s once society has recovered from a pandemic and we are able to interact confidently again? In the visual arts of the 1920s, we see the return of the line. The Art Deco style, as shown by the superb Russell Patterson illustration ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire’ couldn’t be further from the blur of the Munch paintings. Society has returned to health. The owner of this body is again confident not just in herself but also in the bodily pleasure of smoking.   Likewise, a renewed bodily confidence is again suggested in the cover of Life opposite which shows the joy of dancing – and again, all told in a strong line and healthful colours.  

    So might we find that once the world returns to normal we shall see the meditative aspects of our art today cede to something more dynamic, more fitting to the partying spirit?  

    That remains to be seen, of course, but as everyone knows the 1920s are not the end of the story. We find a move towards health and life in the art of the 1920s, but it is a fine line between this development and excess. In literature, the crucial text would be The Great Gatsby, in which F. Scott Fitzgerald’s own ‘crack-up’ is prefigured. His friend Ernest Hemingway would soon find his work affected by the excesses of drink – alcoholism would also lead to suicide. 

    In the visual arts, it might be said that the artistic world bifurcates along two vectors of greatness: towards Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Both were active at the time of the Spanish flu, though neither experienced a sufficiently severe case for us to say with certainty how it impacted their creative output. 

    Picasso’s own commitment to the line was always, with the invention of Cubism, synonymous with the notion of fragmentation. He seems in his pictures from 1906 onwards to see round things – to intuit time and meaning at work within the appearance of a given object.  

    But by the time we reach Guernica (1937), his vast oil painting depicting the Spanish Civil War, we can see how he is no longer depicting the complexity within objects as some fundamental fracture in society. Here, we find the sort of visions which might be intuited in the work of Schiele and Munch with which we began. It is as if we are now confronted with their worst fears enacted. 

    Pablo Picasso, La Guernica, oil on canvas, 1937 

    So what had happened in the intervening time? The short answer, of course, is fascism and there will be few who have witnessed developments in America these past years who can be certain that once the deprivations of coronavirus have passed, we might not head in that direction. 

    But the art of Henri Matisse shows a more hopeful story. In old age, he became a celebrator of simple colour, simple pattern, and graceful movement. If Picasso’s nightmarish canvas shows the fears of Schiele and Munch more than realised, then we might argue that Matisse’s scissor art in its childlike delight at colour and shape shows what they’d have liked to go on living for – they indicate something of the joy we all feel about the life which we all fear departing one day.  

    Perhaps all this is encapsulated in his great late cut-out The Snail, which he worked on after his stroke from 1952-3. It is an exercise in chromatic colour but it is the title which might strike us: since there is no sense in which this a realistic depiction of a snail we are liberated into feeling that Matisse is here showing us something of the feeling he gets from looking at one of nature’s humbler creatures.  

    Henri Matisse, The Snail, 1953, Gouache on Paper 

    In 2021, we should hope for just such an arrival in ourselves. Locked down in our homes we have seen the world at a slower pace, with more centredness, than we had been used to doing during our frenetic pre-pandemic lives. Matisse reminds us that we must retain what we might call the joy of the sedentary.  

    Like this, the art of the past has its messages. We must never forget what happened to Schiele, and to Klimt – and pay it appropriate respect and remembrance. But we must realise how superior a life of activity is, as shown by the advent of the Art Deco, while not forgetting that an abundance of energy, especially if it is misdirected, can lead to the horrors that Picasso depicted in La Guernica. 

    And if we look at Edith Schiele again, it is possible to look at her eyes and imagine that all this is somehow contained in those nearly hooded eyes. She sees us and doesn’t see us – just as we see and do not always recognise ourselves. But this is the help art gives us, as there is one sitting across from her – an artist who happens to be her husband – who gauges her with unusual intensity.  

    This is the privilege of art – to come from us, and yet somehow to know more than we do. When the art galleries open again post-pandemic there shall be wonderful things to see.  

  • 2021 highlights: How will Biden affect jobs in the UK?

    2021 highlights: How will Biden affect jobs in the UK?

    Young people and experts on climate change, diversity and arms sales reveal the significance of the new Biden administration for the UK

    Georgia Heneage

    There has been much hype around what the new Biden administration signifies for a politically divided country infected with issues of social inequality, racial injustice and a deadly virus which has killed over a million of its people.

    In his first month in office, Biden seems to have already conducted (or at least promised) a systemic upheaval of many of the unpopular and controversial policies in place during the Trump administration, such as its sceptical approach to climate change, immigration and foreign policy. With Kamala Harris as the first female vice president of colour, there is a new mood around questions of diversity and inequality which were largely ignored under the Republican regime.

    But the impact this seismic shift for America will have on the UK is yet to be seen: will it really be that seismic? And, if it is, will the effects be negative or positive?

    The view of those working in these key areas in the UK is that the large scale shake-up which Biden is promising should urge us to follow suit, but the likelihood that it will is less than certain.

    ‘We want to fight for change’: the view of the young

    For 21 year-old Connor Brady, Staffordshire University’s Labour Student’s society manager, the “tone” and “conversation” in the UK changed immediately following Biden’s inauguration.

    Though he is unsure that “policy-wise” much will change in America for young people, Brady believes that Biden’s environmental policies will play a large part in emphasising the UK’s thin approach to climate: “His new policies highlight the fact that we’re not really having that discussion in the UK. I don’t think that we are going to make the changes necessary to save the planet, whereas in America the thought process is at least there”.

    The fault, says Brady, lies with a media system in the UK much less attuned to climate worries than across the pond, and a political culture “defined by indecision”.

    “I’d love it to be the sort of example that we’d follow,” says Brady, “and say that we need to take it seriously because they are. But I don’t think we really have a political class that are ever going to really take notice of the way other countries are doing better: we’ve seen it with Covid.”

    Staffordshire’s society’s communications officer Jagdeep Jhamat, 20, said Biden and Harris’ appointment was “a sigh of relief; the moment we found out the results we realised that a saga had just ended in American politics, and it was not a good one”.

    For Jhamat, though, the appointment of Kamala Harris does not signal a substantial benefit for people of colour in America or the UK. “Just because she has credentials of being the first woman of colour doesn’t excuse the fact that she was a judge who sentenced people of colour to prison with insufficient evidence. It’s not the best representation of minorities in America.”

    And Jhamat sees a parallel in this respect with UK politics: “I have nothing in common with ethnically ‘diverse’ MPs like Rishi Sunak or Priti Patel: all I see is them selling out to the interests of a ruling white international capitalist class.”

    Despite this, Connor Brady says the Black Lives Matter protests which started in America last year had a hugely positive affect on young people in the UK who are increasingly “politically disenfranchised”.

    “The movements that we’ve seen over the past year have shown that young people are ready for change, and they are going to fight for change,” says Brady. “They aren’t going to wait five or ten years. They are willing to stand up and say no: we need change now, and we’re going to take it. That’s what I’m really excited about.”

    His worry, though, is that “if Biden and Kamala don’t follow through on their promises, or if their policies aren’t radical enough, then it’s going to increase the disenfranchisement of young people in the UK who look up to them”.

     

    ‘Embarrassment is a useful tool’: Natalie Bennett on environmental policy

    One of the areas most transformed by the Biden administration to date is his climate policies. After years of climate denialism and environmental destruction under Trump, the White House has now recognised global warming as an “emergency”: they’ve rejoined the Paris accord, promised new opportunities for clean energies and green technologies, and signed an executive order to freeze new oil and gas leases on public lands and double offshore wind production by 2030.

    These are just a few of hundreds of ambitious executive decisions established in an effort to position climate change as an essential part of all American foreign and domestic policy going forward.

    Biden’s extensive environmental policies show his awareness that beating climate change requires systemic change; a scooping out and refilling of the American economical and political systems rather than a sprinkling on top.

    So where does this all leave the UK?

    For Natalie Bennett, former leader of the Green Party from 2012-2016, Biden’s appointment signals a golden age for the global fight against climate change.

    More importantly, she says it puts a huge amount of pressure on the UK as the chair of COP and highlights what a mess the UK is in. “Embarrassment can be a very useful tool”, says Bennet. “If a country like the USA, which has so many similar problems to us like poverty, inequality and the dominance of giant multinational companies, are doing better than we are, that makes us look really bad.”

    Bennett says the US’ Green New Deal is far more sophisticated than the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution announced by the UK government in November last year.

    “The Biden administration has come in with a very clear plan of action on whole areas of key policy, whereas our plan looks like something written down on the back of an envelope then hastily sketched up into something. It’s not long-term thinking,” she said.

    Bennett sees these issues with making long-term executive decisions in the UK as part and parcel of a binary, first-past-the-post electoral system which means that “we are terrible at decision-making”, and the “last significant change in Westminster was women getting the vote 100 years ago”.

    It’s also down to our deeply centralised political system, where power and resources are concentrated in Westminster and local government’s ability to make independent decisions has been “slashed to ribbons, to the point where most local governments have their hands tied”. Bennett says the rhetoric of the Green New Deal is, by its natural structure, locally based: it’s about doing things in communities, whereas “our industrial strategy is about what the top level decides and what companies invest in.”

    Despite the UK government’s promise to create 250,000 jobs in the green sector, Bennett says Biden’s new policies are far more rooted in a recognition that climate change should be rooted in the labour movement, technological progress and job creation. His “just transition” policy “suggests change everywhere”, whereas in the UK there’s a sense that everything needs to level up to the status quo set in London.

    “What we are talking about here is business as usual with added technology. Biden is talking about transformation,” says Bennett.

     

    Lee Pinkerton on Kamala Harris and diversity

    One of the most predominant issues brought to the international stage last year was racial injustice: these were voiced in mass Black Lives Matter protests which started in America, a country for whom racial discrimination is a daily reality for millions and is deeply embedded in the political and justice system.

    Biden’s appointment signals a shift in this area, partly because of his pledge to tackle social and racial inequality in America, partly because of the sheer weight lifted by expelling a president who many deem openly racist, and partly because America is now enjoying the first woman of colour as its vice president.

    Though some see Kamala Harris as an exciting new change in political black representation for women, Lee Pinkerton, communications officer for ROTA (Race on the Agenda), a leading social mobility think tank, agrees with student Jagdeep Jhamat that Kamala Harris’ appointment will “in truth have very little real effect on people of colour around the world”.

    “They had a short feel-good moment, but it will have very little real impact on the quality of black people’s lives in America in terms of things like employment or criminal justice”, says Pinkerton, “especially because Harris wasn’t all that popular among black communities when she was a judge”.

    In the UK a similar kind of “superficial” diverse representation can be seen in government. “The Tories are boasting of the most racially diverse cabinet in UK history- which is factually true- but it hasn’t improved things for black people at all. If you look at the back story of MPs like Home Secretary Priti Patel or Chancellor Rishi Sunak, they come from the same privileged, privately-educated backgrounds as their white peers. They are cut from the same cloth, and in terms of diversity of thought- there’s little to none”.

     

    ‘Our blind spot’: arms sales to Saudi Arabia

    The ethical, political and economic impact of the UKs involvement in the war in Yemen, in part a result of us being the second largest exporter of weapons to Saudi Arabia, has long been a source of controversy.

    This week tensions intensified as the new Biden administration announced its intention to freeze all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and work towards a lasting peace agreement to end the war that has now killed around a quarter of a million people and placed at least 4 million on the brink of famine.

    When asked its response the day after Biden’s move was announced, the UK government were clear on one thing: they are not going to alter their approach towards selling weapons to Saudis, many of which reportedly end up killing innocent civilians.

    The UK’s arms export licensing information reports that licenses worth £5.4 billion for sales to Saudi Arabia have been issued since March 2015, though they also consider this an underestimate. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, since 2015 Saudi has been the largest importer of arms in the world, with the UK accounting for about 15% of these exports, and the US around 75%. Saudi Arabia represented 40% of the volume of UK arms exports between 2010 and 2019.

     

    So will America’s decision to roll back from its heavy involvement in Yemen have any impact on the UK?

    For Dr David Blagden, senior lecturer in International Security and Strategy at the University of Exeter, Biden’s decision will “potentially leave the UKs tacit support in Yemen even less tenable”.

    But Blagden says following suit may be unlikely, since the key difference between the UKs involvement and the US’ is that, whilst America “is less and less dependent on gulf hydrocarbons and it doesn’t really need gulf oil anymore,” in the UK we still rely on Middle-Eastern oil and gas and have in fact been “doubling down on gulf commitment over the last few years with the new base in Bahrain and Oman.”

    Blagden says the UK previously used the US’ involvement in the Gulf as “cover” and because America was so involved the UK didn’t really stand out. “But the US revising its position on that will, I think, produce some even starker tensions for the UK.”

    Blagden suggests that our continued support may be rooted in the fact that the arms sales contributes to so many “highly paid and highly trained jobs” in manufacturing and munitions sales. But according to Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s Military, Security and Police Programme Director “the jobs argument is overstated in terms of the impact. Yes of course big contracts would suffer, but in the overall scale of things, Saudi is only one of many destinations we sell to and we’re not talking about stopping every sale of equipment to the Gulf.”

    Feeley-Sprague also doubts the validity of the argument that arms sales contributes so much to our economy: “If you look at the economies of scale, the UK is the second largest arms supplier after the United States. But the US is by far the largest: 75% of all weaponry over last 5 years that Saudi has imported in terms of monetary value has come from the USA.

    “Yes we are the second, but the US is by far the largest, so if we flip that argument on its head it’s a much more valuable market for the US than for the UK. If the US have said they’ll stop, that puts the UK in a very isolated position”.

    Feeley-Sprague says the biggest impact of the US’ decision for the UK will be felt on individual companies: “In a globalised market the arms trade is intrinsically linked to international supply chains. US restrictions will have practical implications on companies reliant on US defense companies for their own sales.”

    This should never be a reason not to take the ethical path, though. “We always say you should never allow strategic, economic, political factors to override the pure principles of international law which is the protection of innocent civilians in armed conflict,” says Feeley-Sprague.

    For Paul Tippell, Constituency Coordinator for UNA-UK Yemen, the UKs leading source of analysis on the UN, the biggest issue in the UKs position with regards to Yemen is not arms sales but it’s failure to play a part in the ceasefire of a war which has been called the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time.

    “Our job is to set the agenda and come up with resolutions; we have a big responsibility and there’s a real opportunity to work with the new administration in the US to try and secure peace. The UK has been singularly lacking in this respect.”

    So why have we been so ‘singularly lacking’? Feeley-Sprague says the UK has had a “blind spot” for Saudi Arabia for decades, and are prepared to tolerate more issues than almost any other “customer”, because they are seen as “a key market for money and a strategic partner in the UK’s foothold into the wider region”.  

    But Brexit has placed the UK in a precarious position on the international world stage, and we must be careful: “If ever there was a way of announcing on the world stage that we were a major power who considered human rights and the rule of law to be important, now is the time.

    “Because the UK hasn’t done that, I think it puts a question mark in the post-Brexit role that the UK wants to play in the world,” says Feeley-Sprague.

    Brexit and an indecisive government may place the UK in an isolated or precarious position on the international stage, but the entrance of Biden means the return of America as a neoliberal international economy with one eye always turned outwards. It signals a golden dawn, full of hope, for young people.

    Gone are the days of protectionism and reckless international policies which governed America under Trump; the age which a new Biden administration ushers in appears to be one of global consensus, free trade and rigorous attention to the key issues. Let’s hope he achieves what he promises to.

  • Opinion: Government action on skills should never be enough

    Stuart Thomson

    The Chancellor’s recent Budget provided a very welcome boost for skills and training.  But whatever Government does, it doesn’t replace the personal responsibility we all have as well.

    As the Chancellor stated in his speech, the announcements were designed to deliver an “economy of higher wages, higher skills, and rising productivity”.  All Chancellors and Budgets take skills seriously but for this Government they are not just part of its economic agenda but also fundamental to the success of levelling up.  Skills development is a valuable tool to ensure that economically the whole can grow.

    The Chancellor said that the Budget “invests in the most wide-ranging skills agenda this country has seen in decades” including an increase in skills spending, by £3.8 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament (an increase of 42 per cent), expanded T Levels, building Institutes of Technology, rollout of the lifetime skills guarantee, an upgraded FE college estate, a quadrupling of the number of places on our skills bootcamps, and increased funding for apprenticeships.  Whilst this is all important, others have criticised the paucity of catch-up funding across education.

    But regardless of the work done by Government, the measures introduced, and the level of priority given to skills development, there remains an onus on the individual to consider their own issues as well.

    That is particularly the case for those in work and those entering the workplace.  It can sometimes feel that you are left to flounder or need to work out a path all by yourself.  But help is out there.  Many membership bodies offer advice on continuous professional development (CPD) and often run their own schemes as well.  This means that they have done much of the identification of relevant courses, reading, events etc.

    For those in work or entering work, we must remember that skills development is not just about opportunities in the workplace and training courses.  Skills development come in a whole range of different guises; we don’t just have to think about taught courses even if they too play a valuable role.

    The membership bodies will doubtless run courses, but they will have specialist groups, networking opportunities, and run webinars.  All can help in delivering improved skills.

    Many employers too will run in-house training or support external training.  Again, there it is too easy to be put off by the perception that external training costs lots of money which some employers may be reticent to pay.  There are though free options around as well, especially in these days of ever greater online resources.  So be prepared to do your homework and look around for the opportunities.  Training doesn’t always have to incur costs.

    Be prepared to take advice as well.  Ask colleagues what training they have done and found useful.  Also, ask friends and contacts in similar roles elsewhere. You don’t always have to be a pioneer. 

    There is also a lot to be said for thinking not just about your immediate role but expanding your horizons and thinking about where you want to go as well.  Do you need to know more about leadership, finance, strategy, reputation etc.?

    Training and skills can also be about being seconded as well.  Have a think about exploring those potential options with your employers as well.

    The opportunities are out there but they need to be grasped.

    The writer is the Head of Public Affairs at BDB Pitmans

  • Review: Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

    Emily Prescott

    Dr Catherine Green was queueing for pizza during her holiday in Snowdonia  when she overheard a woman saying the people behind the COVID jabs couldn’t be trusted. Dr Green couldn’t let this slide so she introduced herself to  the skeptic: “My name is Cath Green and I might not look like it in my bare feet and this dress – I might not sound like it either, believe me I know – but I am “them”. You couldn’t have known this, but I’m the best person in the world to tell you what’s in the vaccine. I work with the people who invented it. It’s me and my team, in my lab, who physically made it.” 

    Overhearing this vaccine scepticism was the catalyst for the book. Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green felt it was their duty to come out of their labs and put the truth into print.  “I would like people to know how we really got here and what happens next,” Green writes. 

    This is the most extraordinary story which focuses on the often surprisingly ordinary lives of the women behind the Oxford AstraZenecavaccine. Although it was ghost written,  the chapters alternate between being authored  between Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green. 

    It’s hard to work out how these women found the time for this book. Not only are they working parents – Professor Gilbert is a mum of triplets.- they are having to deal with issues such as not being able to buy toilet roll, worrying about vulnerable family members, they are also busy  saving the future of humanity. At one point Green seems to lean into the working mum stereotype as she employs a baking analogy to explain how the vaccine works.  She says making a vaccine for a new disease is a bit like making a specialist birthday cake. You can get everything ready and then when the order arrives you just add the icing with the message or indeed, the spike protein. 

    Green in particular talks about the pressure of getting the messaging and explanations right and making sure the public understands what is going on. “I woke up feeling really nervous. Not because it was the day we were going to put the first shot of our vaccine into the arm of our first volunteer in our first trial: I had every confidence that would go smoothly. But because I was due to do a radio interview with LBC’s James O’Brien… I didn’t want to let anyone down by saying anything wrong.”  

    At the beginning of the book is a quote from an anonymous source: “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. This epitomises their message, this book is their solution to the anti-vaxxer movement. So forget your comic books, if you’re looking for superheroes you’ll find them standing among us, perhaps even in the queue of a takeaway. 

  • Diary: Henry Blofeld on his new book, not retiring and how to pursue a career in cricket

    The legendary commentator on not retiring, his Eton education, and why the BBC wouldn’t look at him today

    My new book Ten to Win…And the Last Man In isn’t so much a reflective pandemic book, as a book which has to do with the importance of Test Match cricket. If Test Match cricket were to stop, the game would pall alarmingly. The fact that it’s still there, to some extent keeps T20 and the Hundred honest in a funny way. The game which bores me is the 50 over format, particularly when play sags a bit in the middle. T20 and The Hundred are both fine – provided you don’t make the mistake of calling them cricket. It’s showbiz.

    I write my books on my iPad on my knee – the last eight books have been done like that and I must say I find it very easy. When I write a long paragraph on the iPad I might correct the prose there and then – but when I really have corrections to do, I print it out and make my alterations from the hard copy. I find if I sit with a computer or iPad, it has a nasty habit of cutting it and disappearing, meaning I must spend 25 minutes typing it again.

    Right into my eighties now, I’ve worked very hard. I suppose I’m driven by the fear of boredom and the fear of waking up and not doing anything. Fortunately, I have a fantastic Italian wife, and we prefer to be on the road. Besides, you hear of lots of people who retire at 60, and by 65 they’ve become not only the worst bores you’ve ever met, but alcoholic bores. I have a brother who was a High Court judge for 35 years, and though he might try to deny it, he hasn’t really done anything since he was about 75 and he’s now 89: he still champs at the bit rather as if he’s in the High Court. They force them to retire, and in one or two cases it’s a good thing, but it probably wastes quite a bit of good brain power, because experience is important.

    I grew up in a farming family – the Hoveton Estate has been ours since about 1520. My father wasn’t interested in cricket, it was something I picked up at Sunningdale, where I was in the first XI for four years. I was completely nuts about cricket from the age of seven. When I arrived at Eton, I was quite a good cricketer. I loved my five years there, and all my ten years at boarding school. It gave you the confidence to look the world in the face.

    During my last year at Eton, I had a terrible accident and I felt I had the whole of my life taken away: for a long while, life and cricket wasn’t what they’d been before. It took me a while to reinstate the confidence which I might have had had I left Eton unscathed. I have no idea if I would have played Test match cricket had I not had that accident.

    If I arrived today at the BBC and asked for trial commentary, they wouldn’t look at me. For a start, my voice would be a grave handicap. And the way I did it – with the assumption that the whole scene needed to be described, and the picture should be painted – they wouldn’t want that now. I don’t think John Arlott or Brian Johnston would get a look in either, any more than Neville Cardus would get a look in at a newspaper today.

    The ex-players aren’t commentators in radio; they’re summarisers. But of course, commentators on television are the equivalents of summarisers on the radio, because the commentator on television is the camera. Whereas the commentator on the radio is the equivalent of the camera on the television. On the radio you say, “He comes in and he bowls”. You don’t say that on television because you see it.

    If a young person came to me and said they wanted to commentate, I’d recall the advice of Johnny Woodcock, who was the reason I became a journalist in 1971. I said, “I want to write about cricket,” and he said, “I wouldn’t advise that”. But if they persisted, what l’d do is ring up Henry Moeran who’s the assistant producer at TMS and I’d say, “Over to you.” And from there it’s anyone’s guess what he’d say.

  • Review: Barack Obama’s The Promised Land

    Iris Spark asks what the 46th President of the United States can learn from the 44th –  and what can we all learn from the greatest of all presidential memoirs

    With the arrival around a year of ago of Joe Biden in the White House, there have now been 46 people who have risen to become President of the United States during America’s 250 year history. It’s only rarely that someone with the sensibility of a writer assumes the highest office in the land.

    It’s easy to see why this might be so. On the face of it, the pressure and flux of the job would appear to argue against anyone with a penchant for the sedentary life taking it on. Barack Obama did. It is one of the central facts of his life that he felt the need to. That means that in The Promised Land, the 768-page memoir we have a unique document, which has much to teach us about politics – and about Biden’s America.

    But the value of the memoir is still greater than that. In reality, things happen so quickly in the Oval Office, and with such drama, that we find in the pages of Obama’s book a condensed primer on human nature; it is a book so good it has much to teach us all.

    The former president’s eye for detail means that the reader is given a unique sense of the White House as a working environment. Here, for instance, is the man charged with a thousand problems, taking time to notice the gardeners at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

    They were men of few words; even with one another they made their points with a gesture or a nod, each of them focused on his individual task but all of them moving with synchronised grace.

    So the man of many words notes straightaway the men of few. This is a book about many kinds of work – it is about the job of being president – and therefore being a leader, and it is also about preserving the dignity of work for as many Americans as possible in the face of the 2008 financial crisis. But every word reminds of you of his writer’s vocation: in bearing witness to his experience, he hopes to redeem his presidency of its faults, and to comprehend – even compensate for – his errors.

    It might be that he has less to redeem, in the wake of Biden’s win, than if we were now inhabiting the first months of Donald Trump’s second term. Biden is a different kind of president to Obama, but he campaigned on the back of Obama nostalgia, and at the policy level, though he is sometimes tugged to the left of the 44th president, Biden is pledged to a kind of Obama-ism.

    But what American president doesn’t have regrets, if only because it is a position of such power that any ugliness in the planet is sometimes held to be their fault. And so this is a redemptive book, even if Obama can hardly think of anything he could have done differently.

    But Obama, to risk stating the obvious, is more than a writer. In The Promised Land, even as he is observing with the writer half of his brain, we watch him operating in the real world. It is a rare skill. What can we learn from it?

    Obama’s book begins with a potted description of his early life, and it’s distinct from the sweep of his early masterpiece Dreams from My Father. It is always interesting to read of the early lives of presidents, or figures who we know shall prove historic, since we can see how in retrospect so much of what happened was to their advantage.

    Interestingly, Obama’s story is also marked by a strong counter-intuitive streak. At one point, having described his ascent to be the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review (‘enthusiasm makes up for a whole host of deficiencies’), we discover his contrarian spirit, which may be more marked in a man who has become famous as a consensus politician than we might realise:

    Job offers arrived from around the country, and it was assumed that my path was now charted, just as it had been for my predecessors at the Law Review: I’d clerk for a Supreme Court justice, work for a top law firm or the Office of the United States Attorney…It was heady stuff. The only person who questioned this smooth path of ascent seemed to be me.

    It’s a fascinating career progression: as the world now knows, there was a brief accommodation with corporate America when he trained at Sidley Austin a big Chicago law firm where he met Michelle Robinson. While working as a civil rights attorney, he saw an opening in local politics and rose through the state legislature – via a book deal – to Congress and then the presidency.

    What comes across is that it’s not enough to know what you want to do – you have to be on the lookout for opportunity, to react to the contingencies of the world. With Obama, we can see that he retained throughout crucial flexibility; that the urge to grow was correctly traversed alongside a need to navigate the world. Obama sought experience, but never tied himself to it, and always allowed life to teach him what to do.

    What is remarkable about Obama’s rise to the presidency is how frictionless it seems – how, once he had chosen politics, and made that ground secure, he was able to move upwards with very little acting against his ascent. The reader who knows about Obama’s story might wince at one point, when he writes of his wedding to Michelle on October 3rd, 1992: ‘The service was officiated by the church’s pastor, Reverent Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’ That association would not turn out well for Obama, when on March 13th 2008, Obama woke to find videos of Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric playing on repeat across the live media. Some choice excerpts included him calling America, ‘the USA of KKK’, and his saying, ‘Not God bless America. God damn America.’

    It was the only moment when, the reader feels, Obama might really have lost the 2008 election; it was possible that with poor handling, he might either have found himself defeated by Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination, or perhaps that he might have held on but found the Reverent Wright’s remarks a millstone around his neck in the subsequent general election battle against John McCain. ‘It felt as if a torpedo had blown through our hull.’

    Obama did two things from there which are worth noting. In the first place, he shouldered responsibility: ‘I may not have been in church for any of the sermons in question or heard Reverend Wright use such explosive language. But I knew all too well the occasional spasms of anger within the Black community – my community – that Reverend Wright was channelling.’ It might be too simplistic to state that Obama strikes one as an honest person – and in fact, his time in office was marked by an almost total absence of scandal. But perhaps more important was his realisation of the importance of the moment: ‘Anyway it was too late. And while there are moments in politics, as in life, when avoidance, if not retreat, is the better part of valour, there are other times when the only option is to steel yourself and go for broke.’

    But all this was heading, as we know towards the presidency, and of course the book pivots there, just as his life altered. Obama is soon in receipt of his daily briefing and problems rush his way, anxious to be solved: there is the fact of the global economy crashing; the healthcare system he has promised to fix; the immigration system which needs absolute overhaul – and perhaps above all, a climate which needed fixing. Obama took a number of decisions. The first was to prioritise the economy; the second was to pursue sweeping healthcare legislation.

    The book is remarkable for the detailed but enjoyable way in which he describes each of these problems. Soon a pattern emerges. We repeatedly find Obama making sure he makes some progress (Obamacare, the size of the rescue package following the 2007-8 financial crisis), sometimes irritating those would desire bigger or more progressive legislation.

    His time in the White House shows a classic case of a toxic work environment and how we react to toxicity in our midst. The Republicans refused to work with him throughout his two terms, but Obama rose above it rarely stooping to their level. This approach was encapsulated by Michelle Obama’s dictum: ‘When they go low, we go high.’

    It is an excellent book, but we shall find out if it’s a great one when the next volume is published. That’s because in that volume he will have to write the words he never wanted nor expected to write: Enter Donald Trump…

  • New balls, please: how tennis could be the sport for 2022

    Christopher Jackson

    A while ago I wrote a book about Roger Federer. During my researches, I recalled a story of a friend of my father’s. This was Mike Eaton, who had been a formidable tennis player in his day, playing Junior Wimbledon. He subsequently fathered a son, Chris Eaton.

    Chris, as some readers might remember, had an impressive run to the second round of Wimbledon in 2008. Chris was one of those players, a sort of early male prototype of Emma Raducanu, who relished the big occasion. He didn’t win his second round match that year against Dmitri Tursonov, the then 25th seed, but it was close for a while: “the Eaton rifle” as he had once been known at school lost 6-7, 2-6, 4-6.

    Chris reached a career high singles ranking of 317. Thinking back to 2008, in retrospect Eaton was never likely to take a set off Tursonov. But if Tursonov had any temptation to gloat about it, it was swiftly removed: he lost in the next round to Janko Tipsarević. And Tipsarević at that time, as he would now admit, wasn’t realistically in the position of taking a set off any of the likely winners – then, as now, one of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

    The Raducanu rise means that tennis continues to be a pretty reliable bet for any young person thinking of entering sport

    Why do I bring this up? It’s because of a simple fact that Eaton’s father once relaid to me. Namely, that he had never once managed to return a single serve of his son’s. Let’s remember that Mike was a brilliant player in his own right. And let’s remember how easily Chris was dispatched from Wimbledon.

    In a story like this we begin to gauge the sheer level which the best players are at. Most of us don’t need a reason to feel more admiration for the so-called Big Three: we feel it already. But it is sometimes difficult to know quite how good they are. The story of the Eaton family tells us.

    The continued popularity of tennis seems assured, even though there must soon come a time when Federer and Nadal must retire, their bodies finally succumbing to decades on the tour. Djokovic will likely following suit in time, and surely will be the most gilded player of them all when he does so.

    The success of the game hasn’t always seemed as certain as all that. I am old enough to remember the big serving nadir of men’s tennis in the early 1990s when people like Michael Stich and Richard Krajicek could win Wimbledon seemingly while possessing one shot. I remember the 1991 final, between Stich and an ageing Boris Becker, as an unwatchable fiesta of boredom, where one wondered whether equipment had begun to chip away at skill: the battle went to the biggest serving, which really meant it kept going to the tallest.

    It was part of the magnitude of Federer’s achievement to change that, more or less on his own. People forget that in 2003, we felt excitement at the brilliance of his play – but also relief that we were now allowed to watch rallies again. And though Nadal and Djokovic both brought different styles to the game, they eventually learned to beat Federer on terms of Federer’s own making. It’s probably this which makes Federer fans so ardent: they remember what went before.

    Looking ahead, there is a natural trepidation about any era where Federer, Nadal and Djokovic aren’t playing anymore. But if anyone had any doubts about the future of tennis: enter Emma Raducanu.

    Raducanu’s success remains the most extraordinary story – and may even have been made more so by her subsequent decline in form, which I’m willing to bet, has nothing to do with core motivation, but all to do with her inherent instinct for the big occasion. The real test of Raducanu won’t be how she does in Transylvania but how she does in Melbourne in early 2022. After the dizzying heights of her US Open victory, it may take Wimbledon to get her fully motivated again.

    The Raducanu rise means that tennis continues to be a pretty reliable bet for any young person looking to enter sport. Of course, nowadays, with prize money as it is, you can earn a decent living as a player even without lifting many trophies. To take a random example, the current world number 99 Henri Laaksonen – not a player I had heard of until Google turfed him up – has career earnings in prize money alone of $1,849,304. That approaches financial security. To put this into perspective, it surpasses the earnings of one of the true greats of the game Rod Laver, who is estimated to have earned around $1,500,000 in the 1960s.

    So the money keeps pouring into this most gladiatorial of sports:  and some of it trickles down into other career options. Some of these are advertised on the Lawn Tennis Association website which has a helpful Live Vacancies tab. A Tennis Relations and Events Manager at the National Tennis Centre can command £45,000 pa plus, although the ads also stipulate that you need to be at the office in Roehampton three days a week. The job is seeking candidates who will “provide and implement strategic event development opportunities across our Events business and support with the delivery of our Athlete Plan.”

    Other jobs abound on the web. There is an ad for a seasonal gardener at Wimbledon – an idyllic-sounding job if, like me, you feel that Wimbledon fortnight is somehow elevated above all the other fortnights the calendar year has to offer. This is advertised as a “flexible role across the whole Horticultural Department’ and in the ad at least sounds like a great opportunity to see how those lawns look so immaculate year in, year out – and join a dedicated team to boot.

    Sometimes, there are also marketing initiatives which need staffing. The LTA’s current project is called “Tennis Opened Up” and its mission is to make tennis Relevant, Accessible, Welcoming and Enjoyable.”

    There is just a hint here that tennis has fallen behind other sports – most notably football – in terms of appealing to those outside the fee-paying school system. But it also means that more and more, having taken part in Wimbledon fortnight isn’t necessary in order to have a fulfilling career in the sport.

    Of course, as with every sport today there are a range of careers which touch on tennis: from sports agent to sports journalist and sports PR and sports charity, the major sports now touch every area of life. At Finito we have mentors with sports specialty and welcome all candidates seeking a career in the sector.

    And Eaton? That’s easy, he now works as a tennis coach. He joined the Wake Forest men’s tennis staff as an assistant coach during the 2016-17 season before being elevated to associate head coach prior to the 2018-19 season. When I last saw his father, he still hadn’t returned one of his son’s serves.

  • Interview: Violin teacher Georgina Leach on engaging students, new teaching methods

    Patrick Crowder sat down with violin teacher Georgina Leach to discuss the value of musical education, the industry, and new ways of teaching music.

    Georgina Leach teaches violin to secondary school children at All Saints Catholic College and to primary school kids at John Ruskin School. A fiddle player herself, Leach makes every effort to engage all of her students through diverse repertoire, opportunities to play for the class, and a new style of teaching notation which she developed. 

    “For me, it’s about the children who don’t really excel in other areas, and music class can be a place where they really get something from it which helps them find their own voice and meet set goals,” Leach says.

    Music education is often sold as a way to help children excel in other areas in school, and while there are studies which suggest that link, Leach prefers to focus on music as a means of expression and confidence-building.

    “There’s a lot of focus on the STEM subjects, which in some ways I understand, but it’s incredibly sad I think if they’ve never been exposed to the arts and had a go to see if they have a flare for it,” Leach says, also emphasising that music can also help increase confidence. “One kid may not feel comfortable to speak in front of the whole class, but they’re comfortable playing in front of the whole class,” Leach adds.

    Traditionally, music education focuses on Classical music, but many children feel more connected to other genres and familiar songs. That is not to say that Classical music has no place in the classroom, and much work is being done to introduce Classical to a wider, younger audience. Wigmore Hall, for example, offers £5 tickets at selected concerts for anyone under the age of 35. Additionally ,the Youtube comedy duo TwoSet Violin produces funny, light-hearted videos based on their love on Classical music which draws in viewers who might not have experienced the genre before. Leach explains how, in today’s music industry, money often comes from non-Classical sources.

    “I have friends who are in string quartets who are amazing players, and I know that they face the same struggles that my friends in bands face,” Leach says, “Their top-paid gigs may end up being the weddings they play rather than their concert venue performances.”

    An excerpt from “Dynamite Strings” showing Leach’s teaching style

    There are a variety of opportunities for practiced musicians to find employment, but Leach’s job is to foster a love for music in the first place. Children can be put off by complicated notation and unfamiliar songs, so Leach has written a book entitled “Dynamite Strings” which is designed to be accessible, fun, and engaging for her students.

    “Generally when I start them off I try and do lots of simple tunes, because the violin is a really technically hard instrument for beginners to master and you have to drill a lot,” Leach says.

    Her new book is designed to make the often-repetitive learning process more digestible and engaging for her students through the use of colour-coding, modified notation, professionally recorded backing tracks, and illustrations by children of the same age group which the book is intended for.

    Another variation of Leach’s new method, associating names of notes with the finger used to play them

     

    “I’ve gotten my friends to record the backing tracks for all of the songs,” Leach says, “This illustration was done by my friend’s son,” she says, pointing to a colourful drawing, “and these ones were done by kids at school.” Turning to her form of modified music notation, she says, “The younger ones that I teach can be put off by notation, so this method which I call ‘colour tab’ is really helpful to get them playing with musicality as early as possible.”

    Leach’s colour tab uses a colour code system which links a music note to its corresponding letter, then finally to which finger is used to fret that note on the violin. This is similar to the way that guitar players can avoid traditional notation by using tablature, which replaces notes on a staff with fret numbers placed on a representation of the guitar’s strings. The difference is that, with Leach’s system, her students are learning traditional notation as well by making a connection between a note, its name, its sound, and the action required to produce that sound.

    “I’m hoping to cause a little revolution,” Leach says, “I really wanted it to be diverse and fun, so we have everything from reggae to grunge rock, and my friends have smashed the backing tracks.”

    Teachers like Leach keep the love of music alive in students across the world, and the confidence children foster from musical performance can stay with them for a lifetime, even if the music itself fades away with the years. Georgina Leach’s new book “Dynamite Strings” released on December 1st, 2021, and is available for purchase on Amazon here: 

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamite-Strings-Violin-Book-Violinists/dp/1838309004/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1QI4EOG66TGJV&keywords=dynamite+strings+violin+book+1&qid=1638528313&sprefix=dynamite+strin%2Caps%2C326&sr=8-1

    www.dynamitestringsmusic.com

  • Meet Jan Willem Poot, the founder of Yes We Can Clinic

    Finito World  meets the remarkable founder of the brilliant Netherlands treatment centre – and also discovers directly the positive impact it has had on young people

    Kindness is an underrated trait in business. I blame Gordon Gecko. Since Wall Street came out in 1987, it posited the notion that to be successful you need to be ruthless. I never thought this needed to be true, and I especially don’t think it’s true after having Zoomed with Jan Willem Poot, the founder of Yes We Can Clinic in Holland.

    Zoom journalism can be a tricky business; to gauge the person you’re talking with in 2D is sometimes impossible. The screen throws up too much distance. But with true kindness, the difficulty falls away: that’s because it dissolves all barriers. Generosity of spirit is essentially transparent, because what does it have to hide?

    Poot is like this: engaging, thoughtful, eager to tell you his story. He is the polar opposite of arrogant.

    But I’ve also noticed that true empathy often has its origins in hard experiences. This is also the case with Poot. He tells me: “To give you the story of the why of Yes We Can, I have to go back a little to my own story. My parents got divorced back when I was four or five. My Dad was happiest when he was around the world; and my mum raised me and I soon realised she was a little different to other mums: she was a heavy drinker – an alcoholic. She also took medication and never learned how to deal with her emotions without it.”

    If that sounds hard, it was just the beginning. “My stepfather came to live with us, and he was also an alcoholic. From the age of 12-13, my home was an unsafe environment – a toxic place.”

    Poot began spending less time at home, and more time on the street, hanging out with people in similar situations. “We had an unspoken bond. I found marijuana and gambling and became quickly addicted. I realised if I was stoned all day, or at a slot machine, I didn’t have to think or feel. By the age of 18, I was using cocaine and alcohol; by 19, I was using five grams of cocaine and a bottle of vodka just to feel alive.”

    Luckily, one day a careworker found him in the street and picked him up and took him to an institution in the Hague. From 19 to 27, Poot moved around and didn’t find the right psychologist during that time. “They were saying the right things theoretically but they couldn’t get into my heart,” he recalls.

    At 27, Poot went to Scotland to Castle Craig Hospital in Blyth Bridge, Scotland. “It was a beautiful clinic in the hills of Scotland. They took my hand and said they wouldn’t let me go until I had changed and was in recovery. Somehow, I trusted them.”

    Poot is now 17 years without drugs or alcohol: “I am having the most beautiful life I could have.” That’s because he has purpose – perhaps more purpose than I’ve ever encountered in anyone.

    Back in the Netherlands, Poot began apologising (“I had 200 people I had to say sorry too”) and also paying back clinics to whom he owed money. He finally made the last payments two years ago. He then joined a sports company, which helped young people and Poot began to feel a burgeoning sense of vocation; he would give back, and help those people similar to the person he had been. “By seeing those kids and working with the kids – and seeing the beauty of that programme – I was fascinated and I could also see the group dynamics and how positive and beautiful it can be,” Poot recalls.

    Poot had been there for two years when his boss came to him and asked for him to be his partner. The company grew over the next years, but during that time Poot began to realise that he craved more connection with the children, which formed a smaller part of his role than he felt he needed. These feelings were compounded by the national situation in the Netherlands. “At that moment there were 200,000 kids getting a form of youthcare. They weren’t really getting better – they were just in the system. 20,000 children had been in the system for multiple years. I knew I could start something small to see if I could change, or help. It was a dream I had.”

    Poot sold the sports company and started Yes We Can in 2011; almost immediately, he began achieving real results with children. “After two years, the Dutch government, the insurance companies, the councils, they were all coming to us and saying: “Please, grow and make this bigger because we have thousands of kids dying because there isn’t any right care.” In 2011, there were 25 beds; in 2013, they moved to a place with 85 beds; and four or five years ago they moved to a clinic with 160 beds. That means that every year they now treat a thousand young people. It hardly needs saying that this is an astonishing achievement.

    Yes We Can is now an international clinic, which makes a real difference to people’s lives all over the world, but I am keen to know more about what that impact looks like in real terms. With this in mind, I Zoom with a fellow of Yes We Can, who understandably asks to remain anonymous. For the purposes of this article, I shall call her Eve.

    When I meet Eve, I know I am going to like her, and warm immediately to her candour, gentleness, and intelligence. What I don’t expect is that I will spend a portion of the next hour fighting back tears as I get to know her story.

    Eve’s is – at least to some extent – a pandemic story. “In February 2020, I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa,” she tells me. “I have struggled for my whole life with eating, and my behaviour around eating, but nothing was working. I was very, very stubborn and verbally abusive towards my family and not wanting to change. I became this selfish person completely compelled by my eating disorder.”

    Eve entered something like a parallel universe where the good in life seemed to her a thing almost impossible to access; her only reality was her eating disorder. “I would shout that I wanted to die, that I didn’t want to be here, and all that stuff. I completely ruled the house; I was being just disgraceful and making my family cry.”

    Curiously, COVID-19 gave her a trigger. “I was so afraid because nobody knew what it was like and I knew I was frail and what COVID could do to people. I didn’t want to die that way.”

    This shows, as only a casual remark can, a shocking fact: for Eve, death was very much in the equation at this point. Fortunately, Eve’s mother had heard about Yes We Can. She checked Eve in on 19th May 2020.

    I take a moment to imagine how this might have been for Eve’s mother, who joins her daughter on the call. She has one of those kind faces which have also known suffering – but there is also something else written there, the perennial strength of a mother’s duty. It is the look of someone proud to be a mother, and proud to have suffered for love of her daughter, and who would do it again a thousand times. It is in itself, to use one of Poot’s favourite words, ‘beautiful’ to see.  

    There is always in the stories I have heard of addiction this almost unspoken toll on the nearest and dearest. And as Eve continues her story, my mind reverts back to Jan Willem Poot, who didn’t have a mother like this. Later, I also find myself contemplating the way in which the world gropes its way to good. It seems as if for all the pain that percolates in the world, we sometimes discover a secret remedy being administered. But this too is often an offshoot of suffering. The world has contained many people who hit rock bottom and didn’t survive. But others find that their nadir is the essential ingredient of the spiritual power they will appropriate in life. Yes We Can is an emblem of this.

    And so it would prove for Eve. But she is at pains to point out that her life didn’t change rightaway. Slowly, as the weeks passed she began to reconnect with that other self which had seemed to have gone to sleep: the one capable of being happy and taking pleasure in the simple things the world has to offer. In fact, these things had been there, now and then, all along, even during the hardest parts of her struggle. “What I realised when I was actually in my active addiction, and in the clinic – and since I’ve left – is that nature is a massive thing for me – that I love the stars. I love going on walks.”

    Even during the low point of her addiction, there were these little signs of another life – a life beyond her current predicament. “One of the things that I did during addiction was to look at the stars. That was one of the things that I did love: before bed, I’d go outside and look up to the stars with my dad. It would be really magical, but then as soon as I went back inside, everything would be rubbish again. When I went to the clinic, it was one of the things that I would do to remember my parents and say goodnight to them. Dad would always say: “If you see the moon, and I see it, we’re looking at each other. To me, that puts everything into perspective and I say it’s part of my higher power which is something that we discover in the clinic.”

    So what was it like going into the clinic? “I was just in my own self-pity, crying and constantly homesick,” Eve recalls. “It felt very, very scary. There were people who were in their later weeks and who were in recovery. I was afraid of judgements. But it was different to places I’d been in before. The clinic is there to confront you, but it also has a feeling that this is the right place to be and I knew instinctively it was going to help me.”

    Eve’s biggest changes didn’t occur until around Week 5. “I was still in my old behaviour. At other places it would be, “Just eat”. At Yes We Can no one made me eat. I was put on a meal plan, but the clinic understands that you’ve got to want it. I knew before I went that I wanted to change, but it was scary to take that step away from the safety of my addiction into something else. In a way, my anorexia was still a little high which would distract me from my relationships. But at the clinic, I began to understand why I was behaving in the way I did.”

    One important moment was when Eve, who was used to being weighed blind, was weighed and showed her weight. “When I saw the results, I swore and cried. I was confused as I felt a hundred times better, but I had lost weight. Then I went to my therapist and cried and then said: “Right, I’m going to do it.” My first meal was unbelievable. I thought: “Wow, this is incredible. How have I been missing this?”

    Eve continues to stay in touch with other fellows from Yes We Can, and is now set for a future which is immeasurably brighter than what she faced a year and a half ago. But what does she think would have happened had she not gone to the clinic? “That’s easy,” she says. “I would have died.”

    We have heard a lot these past years about mental health, and I have sometimes begun to wonder if it’s an unhelpful buzzword. One reason for this is that our current conversation seems to skim over the life and death aspect of real struggle; it can elevate difficulty to the realm of real suffering which in turn may make us turn a blind eye to those who are really in danger.

    Willem simplifies the whole thing for me: “We follow the same mission for all the kids who come here, and say to us: “I’m dying.” The end result is so beautiful. You can change behaviour. You can change thinking. Young people can start to believe in life again. That gets you motivated. This is the thing I want to do for the rest of my life.”

    And you can see that he will – that he will never forget the motivation which his own redemptive story has given him. He wants that redemption for other people – and perhaps with a passion so heartfelt and true that one half-suspects him of saintliness – even over Zoom.

    Saint of not, it strikes me that the scale of Willem’s achievement is to make his story not just his own – it is also Eve’s story and thousands of others we won’t be able to hear about in this article. But take a moment now to consider all the others, and try to imagine all the good that a person can do if they have the determination and the vision. If the pandemic teaches us nothing else, let it teach us this.

    Christopher Jackson is News Director at Finito World

  • Meet Jan Willem Poot, the founder of Yes We Can Clinics

    Finito World  meets the remarkable founder of the brilliant international mental health treatment centre in the Netherlands– and also discovers directly the positive impact it has had on young people

    Kindness is an underrated trait in business. I blame Gordon Gecko. Since Wall Street came out in 1987, it posited the notion that to be successful you need to be ruthless. I never thought this needed to be true, and I especially don’t think it’s true after having Zoomed with Jan Willem Poot, the founder of Yes We Can Clinics and the international Yes We Can Youth Clinics in Holland.

    Zoom journalism can be a tricky business; to gauge the person you’re talking with in 2D is sometimes impossible. The screen throws up too much distance. But with true kindness, the difficulty falls away: that’s because it dissolves all barriers. Generosity of spirit is essentially transparent, because what does it have to hide?

    Jan Willem is like this: engaging, thoughtful, eager to tell you his story. He is the polar opposite of arrogant.

    But I’ve also noticed that true empathy often has its origins in hard experiences. This is also the case with Jan Willem. He tells me: “To give you the story of the why of Yes We Can, I have to go back a little to my own story. My parents got divorced back when I was four or five. My Dad was happiest when he was around the world; and my mum raised me and I soon realised she was a little different to other mums: she was a heavy drinker – an alcoholic. She also took medication and never learned how to deal with her emotions without it.”

    If that sounds hard, it was just the beginning. “My stepfather came to live with us, and he was also an alcoholic. From the age of 12-13, my home was an unsafe environment – a toxic place.”

    Jan Willem began spending less time at home, and more time on the street, hanging out with people in similar situations. “We had an unspoken bond. I found marijuana and gambling to numb myself and became quickly addicted. I realised if I was stoned all day, or at a slot machine, I didn’t have to think or feel. By the age of 18, I was using cocaine and alcohol; by 19, I was using five grams of cocaine and a bottle of vodka just to feel alive.”

    Luckily, one day a careworker found him in the street and picked him up and took him to an institution in the Hague. From 19 to 27, Jan Willem moved around and didn’t find the right mental healthcare  during that time. “They were saying the right things theoretically but they couldn’t get into my heart,” he recalls.

    At 27, Poot went to Scotland to Castle Craig Hospital in Blyth Bridge, Scotland. “It was a beautiful clinic in the hills of Scotland. They took my hand and said they wouldn’t let me go until I had changed and was in recovery. Somehow, I trusted them because these people were real.”

    Jan Willem is now 17 years without drugs or alcohol: “I am having the most beautiful life I could have.” That’s because he has purpose – perhaps more purpose than I’ve ever encountered in anyone.

    Back in the Netherlands, Jan Willem began apologising (“I had 200 people I had to say sorry too”) and also paying back  people to whom he owed money. He finally made the last payments two years ago. 15 years ago he  joined a sports company, which helped young people and Poot began to feel a burgeoning sense of vocation; he would give back, and help those people similar to the person he had been. “By seeing those kids and working with the kids – and seeing the beauty of that programme – I was fascinated and I could also see the group dynamics and how positive and beautiful it can be,” Jan Willem recalls.

    Jan Willem had been there for one year when his boss came to him and asked for him to be his partner. The company grew over the next years, but during that time Poot began to realise that he craved more connection with the children, which formed a smaller part of his role than he felt he needed. These feelings were compounded by the national situation in the Netherlands. “At that moment there were 200,000 kids getting a form of youthcare. They weren’t really getting better – they were just in the system. 20,000 children had been in the system for multiple years. I knew I could start something small to see if I could change, or help. It was a dream I had.”

    Poot sold the sports company and started Yes We Can Clinics in 2011; almost immediately, he began achieving real results with children. “After two years, the Dutch government, some insurance companies, the councils, they were  coming to us and saying: “Please, grow and make this bigger because we have thousands of kids suffering because there isn’t any really effective  care.” In 2011, there were 25 beds; in 2013, they moved to a place with 85 beds; and four years ago they moved to a clinic with 160 beds. That means that every year they now treat a thousand young people who stay for 10 weeks of residential care. It hardly needs saying that this is an astonishing achievement.

    Yes We Can is now an international clinic, which makes a real difference to people’s lives all over the world, but I am keen to know more about what that impact looks like in real terms. With this in mind, I Zoom with a fellow of Yes We Can, who understandably asks to remain anonymous. For the purposes of this article, I shall call her Eve.

    When I meet Eve, I know I am going to like her, and warm immediately to her candour, gentleness, and intelligence. What I don’t expect is that I will spend a portion of the next hour fighting back tears as I get to know her story.

    Eve’s is – at least to some extent – a pandemic story. “In February 2020, I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa,” she tells me. “I have struggled for my whole life with eating, and my behaviour around eating, but nothing was working. I was very, very stubborn and verbally abusive towards my family and not wanting to change. I became this selfish person completely compelled by my eating disorder.”

    Eve entered something like a parallel universe where the good in life seemed to her a thing almost impossible to access; her only reality was her eating disorder. “I would shout that I wanted to die, that I didn’t want to be here, and all that stuff. I completely ruled the house; I was being just disgraceful and making my family cry.”

    Curiously, COVID-19 gave her a trigger to seek recovery. “I was so afraid because nobody knew what it was like and I knew I was frail and what COVID could do to people. I didn’t want to die that way.”

    This shows, as only a casual remark can, a shocking fact: for Eve, death was very much in the equation at this point. Fortunately, Eve’s mother had heard about Yes We Can Youth Clinics. She checked Eve in on 19th May 2020.

    I take a moment to imagine how this might have been for Eve’s mother, who joins her daughter on the call. She has one of those kind faces which have also known suffering – but there is also something else written there, the perennial strength of a mother’s duty. It is the look of someone proud to be a mother, and proud to have suffered for love of her daughter, and who would do it again a thousand times. It is in itself, to use one of Poot’s favourite words, ‘beautiful’ to see.  

    There is always in the stories I have heard of addiction this almost unspoken toll on the nearest and dearest. And as Eve continues her story, my mind reverts back to Jan Willem Poot, who didn’t have a mother like this. Later, I also find myself contemplating the way in which the world gropes its way to good. It seems as if for all the pain that percolates in the world, we sometimes discover a secret remedy being administered. But this too is often an offshoot of suffering. The world has contained many people who hit rock bottom and didn’t survive. But others find that their nadir is the essential ingredient of the spiritual power they will appropriate in life. Yes We Can is an emblem of this.

    And so it would prove for Eve. But she is at pains to point out that her life didn’t change rightaway. Slowly, as the weeks passed she began to reconnect with that other self which had seemed to have gone to sleep: the one capable of being happy and taking pleasure in the simple things the world has to offer. In fact, these things had been there, now and then, all along, even during the hardest parts of her struggle. “What I realised when I was actually in my active addiction, and in the clinic – and since I’ve left – is that nature is a massive thing for me – that I love the stars. I love going on walks.”

    Even during the low point of her addiction, there were these little signs of another life – a life beyond her current predicament. “One of the things that I did during addiction was to look at the stars. That was something that I did love: before bed, I’d go outside and look up to the stars with my dad. It would be really magical, but then as soon as I went back inside, everything would be rubbish again. When I went to the clinic, it was one of the things that I would do to remember my parents and say goodnight to them. Dad would always say: “If you see the moon, and I see it, we’re looking at each other. To me, that puts everything into perspective and I say it’s part of my higher power which is something that we discover in the clinic.”

    So what was it like going into the clinic? “I was just in my own self-pity, crying and constantly homesick,” Eve recalls. “It felt very, very scary. There were people who were in their later weeks and who were in recovery. I was afraid of judgements. But it was different to places I’d been in before. The clinic is there to confront you, but it also has a feeling that this is the right place to be and I knew instinctively it was going to help me.”

    Eve’s biggest changes didn’t occur until around Week 6. “I was still in my old behaviour. Before it would be, “Just eat”. At Yes We Can no one made me eat. I was put on a meal plan, but the clinic understands that you’ve got to want it. I knew before I went that I wanted to change, but it was scary to take that step away from the safety of my addiction into something else. In a way, my anorexia was still a little high which would distract me from my relationships. But at the clinic, I began to understand why I was behaving in the way I did.”

    One important moment was when Eve, who was used to being weighed blind, was weighed and showed her weight. “When I saw the results, I swore and cried. I was confused as I felt a hundred times better, but I had lost weight. Then I went to my therapist and cried and then said: “Right, I’m going to do it.” My first meal was unbelievable. I thought: “Wow, this is incredible. How have I been missing this?”

    Eve continues to stay in touch with other fellows from Yes We Can, and is now set for a future which is immeasurably brighter than what she faced a year and a half ago. But what does she think would have happened had she not gone to the clinic? “That’s easy,” she says. “I would have died.”

    We have heard a lot these past years about mental health, and I have sometimes begun to wonder if it’s an unhelpful buzzword. One reason for this is that our current conversation seems to skim over the life and death aspect of real struggle; it can elevate difficulty to the realm of real suffering which in turn may make us turn a blind eye to those who are really in danger.

    Jan Willem simplifies the whole thing for me: “We follow the same mission for all the kids who come here, and say to us: “I’m dying.” The end result is so beautiful. You can change behaviour. You can change thinking. Young people can start to believe in life again. That gets you motivated. This is the thing I want to do for the rest of my life.”

    And you can see that he will – that he will never forget the motivation which his own redemptive story has given him. He wants that redemption for other people – and perhaps with a passion so heartfelt and true that one half-suspects him of saintliness – even over Zoom.

    Saint of not, it strikes me that the scale of Jan Willem’s achievement is to make his story not just his own – it is also Eve’s story and thousands of others we won’t be able to hear about in this article. But take a moment now to consider all the others, and try to imagine all the good that a person can do if they have the determination and the vision. If the pandemic teaches us nothing else, let it teach us this. Christopher Jackson is News Director at Finit