22Oct
Why is the Counter-Culture so important to us?
"A counterculture is a group or movement with values and beliefs that oppose those of mainstream society. These movements often arise during periods of social change and seek to challenge the status quo through alternative lifestyles, ideologies, or political action. Examples include the 1960s hippie movement, which rejected materialism, and the punk movement of the 1970s, which opposed conformity." (Google AI Summary)
Why is the Counter Culture relevant to the West Wight CultureFest?
We think that the group of bohemian artists associated with the Freshwater Circle - and the related Holland Park Circle were seminal influences in the emergence of a bohemian, avant-garde counter culture in the UK, at Bloomsbury and at Charleston, and throughout the UK by the 1950s and 1960s.
And we also argue here that the idea for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - the CND - a very visible component of the counter-culture - was created in the West Wight, in the dialogue and publications of AJP Taylor at Yarmouth Mill and JB Priestley at Brooke Hill House - Priestley's article in the New Statesman in the mid-Fifties, and the conversations at the meetings of Peggy Duff and Canon Collins at Yarmouth Mill in the late Fifties and early Sixties.
We further argue that sustainable street fashion and aspects of modern lifestyle were both products of the counter-culture and the anti-consumerism in the post-war period - a period that saw the wave of Beatnik culture, British Blues and R&B, Pop Art, the Folk revival and Folk-Rock, and the Sixties creative explosion in Fashion, Film, Music and Theatre. We project that the current wave of radical changes in the UK Creative Industries, and in student-centred education will kick-start our Creative Culture in the next few years...
And we want West Wight CultureFest to help catalyse this change.
Comments