5 ways to get your culture on at home

Right now the vast majority of us are in self isolation and social distancing ourselves from others. But just because you can’t leave your house and visit a museum, gallery or class, doesn’t mean that you can’t get your culture on!

In fact, the cultural world is at your fingertips and you can access it all from your sofa. Learn a new skill, uncover archives and explore the worlds best museums. How? Well to get you started we’ve popped together 5 of the best ways to get your cultural fix right now

1.Build your own museum

Yes. You read that right. Your own museum.

Art Steps is a really easy to use app (it’s free for those wondering) that not only allows you to create your own museum but also to explore other self made galleries from around the world.

Example of an ArtSteps digital exhibition. Pot plants optional!

I stumbled across the app about a year ago when I used it to create an online museum of my work for a job interview (why yes I am that extra, thank you for asking) and I’ve been hooked ever since.

It’s kind of like if museum nerdom and sandbox gaming had a baby. What I’m saying is the possibilities are endless.

You can create anything you want. An exhibition you’ve always dreamt of, a retrospective you missed (or let’s be real, one you saw but kind of knew could be better). Hell, you could even create an online museum for a loved one. Stuffed full of their favourite artwork or goodies from a much thumbed through era, all for them to enjoy from the comfort of their sofa. The perfect pandemic gift.

Just to give you an idea of the ArtSteps interface – seriously it is stupidly easy to use

2.Google Arts and Culture 

Look I know it might seem obvious, but I swear, Google Arts and Culture is so severely underrated it is ridiculous.

From street view tours of the worlds most incredible museum galleries, to exploring endless retrospectives of different work and diving into high res art work. You could spend the whole isolation period on this site and still never get bored. Seriously there are over 500 art institutions to digitally walk around – and that’s just the art galleries!

Sure it might look like I’m sat on my broken sofa in London, but I’m actually on a private tour of the Musee Dorsay

But the real jewel in the Google Arts and Culture crown has to be it’s archives collections.

Many were created to tie in with a major anniversary of history week and contain the highlights of museum digitised archives and collections from across the world, along with specially made videos.

It’s an ideal way to really delve into a subject matter and not only read about it, but really get hands on (admittedly through a screen, but still, it’s bloody fantastic!)

Here are some of my favourite collections:

• Black Cultural Archives
• Road to Equality (100 years of suffrage)
• Commemorating Stonewall
• The fall of the Iron Curtain 
• Women in India, their unheard stories

3.Delve into the archives

Speaking of archives, one of the many (many) great things the internet has given us is access to archives from across the globe. Now admittedly you used to have to order most archive resources but that’s not the case now.

This is 2020 and you better bet your bottom dollar that top quality shit is digitised.

If you’ve never tried out accessing archive records, now is a great time to learn how. After you’ve used Google Arts and Culture to get a feel of how to use archived resources, check out The National Archives and start searching for whatever takes your fancy.

Study like a boss

They have over 32 million records from 1000 years of history, with some of that digitised (or described). 

You could test out archive digging by searching for your family history, an area of local history you’ve always been interested in or something more broad, like passenger lists from The Titanic or military records.

If you’re stuck, check out National Archive Discovery, which has some great archive collections, or their always fantastic blog, for inspiration.

4.Visit your local library at home 

Most libraries are now shut, but you can still borrow e-books, audio books and sometimes even magazines from the comfort of your sofa.

If you visit you’re local libraries website, then they’ll probably have a link to an online library like RBdigital, BorrowBox or Libby.

All you need to do is pop in your library card details and as if by magic you can download all the literary gems you might like to your phone or tablet.

Plus it’s all for free! 

Now, as with any library, there aren’t infinite amount of books, so there may be a waiting list for what you initially want, but it’s also a great chance to explore types of books that you might not normally read.

Because as the old adage goes:

5.Learn!

Everyday is school day, even when the schools are closed and even when you haven’t been to school in like…er, actually lets not get into how long it’s been since I graduated.

One of the best ways to spend isolation has got to be by learning a new skill or immersing yourself into an era of history you’ve always wanted to know more about.

My personal favourite place for online courses is Future Learn, which has some amazing free courses (as well as many that you need to pay for access to) 

They’re put together by leading academics and universities, so there can be no quibbles over their quality. I’ve done their  Tudor History course, which I can definitely recommend (it takes place over six weeks with five hours a weeks work). Oh and they even have a course on Covid-19, so you can become an expert and dispel all that BS you find on WhatsApp and Facebook.

Oh did I mention Suzanna Lipscombe teaches the Tudor History course?

The Open University also has over 1000 free courses that you can choose from. With a ton of amazing introductory history courses, as well as some for languages. Courses vary in length from one hour all the way up to thirty. So you can find something to fit whatever free time you have right now.

Plus the courses give you a certificate at the end, which is a handy way for you to show off all that new knowledge you’ve learnt. 

I don’t know about you but I’m really excited to put all this into action, escape my sofa and explore a world of knowledge. 

Me when isolation ends

How the Harlem Renaissance woke America

The Harlem Renaissance was a game changer. as a much a cultural awakening for the African American community as for the United States as a whole.

Thrusting black voices into pop culture, creating a new crop of black artists and cultural icons and most importantly; fostering a pride that hadn’t been allowed to exist before.

A 1928 copy of Negro American Magazine, fearing civil rights campaigner, Erma Seweatt

The first generation of people born free had a fight on their hands. Removed from the shackles of slavery, they were still oppressed and persecuted in their own country.

So, it shouldn’t come as a huge shock that throughout the 1920s and 30s many chose to leave the Southern states and instead head for Northern cities like Chicago and New York, where things were a whole lot more progressive.

Faced with these new bright lights, they didn’t back down. Forming communities and using art, literature, theatre and music to express themselves, their history and their future.

Strange Fruit

One of the most acclaimed artists to come from the Harlem Renaissance is the one and only Billie Holiday. 

Billie came up during the renaissance and it was here she grew her voice. Famed for touching upon subjects other singers shied away from; perhaps her most iconic song is Strange Fruit.

Recorded in the late 1930s, Strange Fruit deals with lynching. Blunt and unflinching it soon became a protest song.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze

Though Billie feared repercussions for performing the song, she felt compelled to continue singing. After all it was the the truth, not just for her, but for everyone in America.

Strange Fruit became a stalwart Billie Holiday number for her – yet her record company refused to print it.  

Remember this was the 1930s. The civil rights movement was just a seed. Such public protests were unheard of and tended to end with, well, lynching. But Strange Fruit couldn’t be contained, eventually being released as a single by Comodor.

Strange Fruit remains a protest strong and a vital reminder of this dark time in Americas history. But it’s still banned by some.

When English singer, Rebecca Fergerson, was asked to perform at Donald Trumps inauguration, she agreed…if she could sing Strange Fruit. You can guess what Trump said.

He said no (because he is a wanker)

Shuffle Along

In an era when ‘one black per bill’ was the theatrical norm, musical Shuffle Along high kicked in and smashed every existing idea of what African Americans could contribute to theatre to shittery and back.

The chorus of Shuffle Along taking a break from ass kicking

Now I know musical theatre doesn’t seem like the tool with which groundbreaking cultural change occurs

Much rainbow, such social change

But forget what you think you know. Shuffle Along contains absolutely no technicolor dreamcoats, no needy scarred blokes living below opera houses and no jazz hands (ok fine-maybe some jazz hands)

Produced and written by an all black team and starring a black cast, Shuffle Along shook shit up when it made its debut on the early 1920s, with many of the cast enjoying their Broadway debut (including the incredible Josephine Baker!)

The musical revolved around a mayoral election (of course!) but the politics wasn’t confined to the stage. 

Shuffle Along took off, engaging with theatre goers from all backgrounds. It proved to Theatre bigwigs that even with a cast and creative team who comprised of waaay more than ‘one black’-the public didn’t care; they wanted to pay to see the show. In fact they wanted to see more shows led by African American casts and creatives!

Bigger than that (and it’s a pretty big biggy) the huge popularity of Shuffle Along led to the 1920s desegregation of theatres. For the first time, black theatre goers didn’t have to watch from way up in the gods; at Shuffle Along they could sit up at the front.

See, isn’t musical theatre great!

The Cotton club

For all the groundbreaking being done uptown, racism still existed in Harlem as it did across America. One such hot bed was popular night club, The Cotton Club.

Ok it looks fun…but trust me its not!

As it’s name suggests, the cotton club wasn’t a haven for any form of equality, with the clubs owner, gangster Owen ‘the killer’ Madden wanting his club to ooze ‘stylish plantation’ and insisting on only playing ‘jungle music’ for his all white patrons.

Surprising that someone with the middle name ‘killer’ is also a cock

But there was light! For all the Cotton Clubs racism, it’s all African American workforce was tenacious and somehow managed to turn the clubs stage into one of modern jazz’s early breeding grounds.

Acclaimed musical pioneer, Duke Ellington, served as the Cotton Clubs band leader during the late twenties. There He formed one of history’s greatest jazz orchestras and soon their music took over Americas radio stations.

Duke Ellington

After Duke left for far greener (and less racist) pastures, a new bandleader was appointed-the equally groundbreaking, Cab Calloway. Cab brought drama and flair to the clubs music, in addition to call and repeat scatting that can be seen in still iconic tracks like Minnie the Moocher.

Now those…those are moves.

Yet despite the acclaimed music on stage, the Cotton Club remained determinedly segregated. So it’s perhaps no bad thing that it was forced to close during the Harlem race riots of 1935.

The seeds of civil rights

1935s Harlem race riot effectively ended the renaissance. Much like the Cotton Club, Harlem was a hive of contradictions. Whilst it’s art celebrated the community and was applauded at the highest levels, many of Harlem’s occupants were essentially living in slums.

Things were uneasy. And After rumours ran rife that a young Puerto Rican teen had been beaten to death for shoplifting, the riot was sparked.

Police arrest a man during the 1935 riot

The renaissance art left its impact though. It lay a groundwork of pride and built a clear community voice that would be developed when the civil rights movement started to emerge following WW2.

The music, theatre and talent of this era would become forever synonymous of black culture. Whilst WW2 waged on and civil rights waited, the renaissance artists work served as a lingering reminder of everything that could be and one day would be achieved