Saturday 27th September 2025
Blog Page 301

The Bike Project: Giving wheels to refugees

Joshua Low
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The Bike Project: Giving wheels to refugees

Social enterprise The Bike Project is on a mission to get refugees cycling across the UK. It is doing so by collecting unwanted and abandoned bikes, fixing them up in their workshop, and donating them to refugees and asylum-seekers who do not have the means or money to travel.  

According to the Project’s 2020 Impact Report, the gift of wheels can make a difference to the lives of refugees and asylum-seekers as it helps them complete essential trips, build friendships in local areas, gain a sense of normalcy, improve their physical and emotional wellbeing, and save transportation costs.

A bike would also be a valuable assistance to asylum-seekers because they often have to endure a protracted wait for an asylum decision from the Home Office. During this period they are prohibited to work and only given £39.63 of asylum support per week, amounting to £5.66 a day for food, sanitation, and clothing.

“Right now, the waiting list of refugees who need a bike is growing,” Charlotte Hu, the charity’s Digital Marketing Manager, told Cherwell. “If you’ve received a new bike for Christmas, or are doing a spring clean, why not donate your old bike to a great cause?”

Oxford Direct Services, the City Council’s entity responsible for removing abandoned and un-roadworthy bikes, removes around 400 – 1000 bicycles from public cycle racks every year.

Founded by Jem Stein, a social entrepreneur and qualified bike mechanic who grew up in the city of Oxford, The Bike Project also runs Bike Buddies, a programme that links volunteer cyclists with refugee newcomers to go on social rides together to help improve refugees’ cycling confidence and familiarity of the locality. People can sign up to become a Bike Buddy here.

Prospective bike donors living in Oxford are invited to first register their bike at thebikeproject.co.uk/donate. The organisers will then provide the full address (OX1 4LG) of the drop-off location. The donation drive will run from January 4th – 18th in the new year.

Image: The Bike Project

Interview: Cut, Paste, Enter.//Paper Moon 

Katie Kirkpatrick
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Interview: Cut, Paste, Enter.//Paper Moon 

Paper Moon’s latest production, an immersive theatre experience called Cut, Paste, Enter. Took at Modern Art Oxford. Ahead of their opening, Cherwell spoke to Chloe Dootson-Graube (Creative Director), Georgie Dettmer (Director), Grace Olusola (Writer), and Hannah Gallardo-Parsons (Sound Designer) about putting together this exciting new project.

How did the idea for this project first come about?

Georgie: “Chloe and I had worked on Paper Moon’s previous project ‘Spoon River Anthology’ together and we began talking about different ways to bring visual art into performance. From then on we began discussing Chloe’s work, her ideas about TVs, rhinos, and how much we loved Grace Olusola’s writing. I had recently heard about binaural sound and had also recently bumped into the best sound designer (Hannah Gallardo-Parsons) and so it all came together. A few zoom calls later and ‘Cut, Paste, Enter.’ was born!”

Chloe: “As for me, I’ve always been interested in dystopia, and more and more, trying to set up any kind of design based projects in Oxford was beginning to feel more dystopic, so I really wanted to push the boundaries of what you can do in an Oxford theatre space, and give more of a voice to the design team in so doing.”

Grace: “In terms of the writing, the idea for the narrative came from conversations we had about the type of story that could do the experiential nature of the show the most justice. What gives enough room to really let us be creative with sound? Or gives enough for the artist to respond to? We started thinking about the theme of dystopia and I remembered studying documentary as part of my A levels film studies course. In those classes, we spoke about the role of the editor and I was baffled by how powerful, yet silent the editor is. It seemed to link well to the dystopian idea, and the rest kind of came from there!”

How did you find the collaboration of the project? 

Chloe: “I think the wonderful thing about collaboration is that everyone truly has a say in every decision made – Grace and I discussed the idea we had extensively before she started writing, and I would contribute what I thought would be good artistically and what she thought would make for dynamic writing.”

Grace: “It’s been really fruitful. Writing with both sound and visuals in mind gave me boundaries that in some ways actually expanded the realms of what I could imagine for the script. Writing with collaboration in mind meant that the script almost felt bigger than itself!”

Hannah: “Yeah, I found that clever collaboration process incredibly open. No one had any big egos, we’re on the same level. And that was that was a truly a truly lovely feeling.”

How did bringing in actors affect this project? 

Grace: “They are all so amazing! They have really brought the characters to life, in ways I didn’t even imagine or think about when writing them. At the audition stage, I recommended to Georgie, our wonderful director, that diversity in voices (pitch, accent, inflections) was quite important for the audio elements of the production, and it’s been so great to see how everyone has brought something quite special  to their character – especially as there are so many of them!”

Georgie: “Hearing the cast bring so many different interpretations to the script in such a short amount of time just proved (again and again) how talented people are here. Bringing actors into the room forces you to consider the script from new perspectives as well which is refreshing and challenging and exactly what you need when making a production.”

What was your favourite part of the process?

Chloe: “Working with such incredible people and having the space to do something that feels really fresh and free from an artistic standpoint.”

Grace: “It would probably be the first time I heard an early demo, during the recording process. It was the first time I had seen how the script had been interpreted, and there is no joy like knowing that your creativity has inspired creativity in others. This unique theatrical process especially has bred the loveliest ripple effect!”

Hannah: “Building this world together. It’s nice to have a truly collaborative project.”

Image: Chloe Dootson-Graube

Review: God of Carnage at the Blue Moon Theatre

Lucie de Gentile
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Review: God of Carnage at the Blue Moon Theatre

To know ourselves, we must know what we will fight for. All four characters in God of  Carnage fight against each other – and very rarely reflect upon their own failings. This is a play about how conflict with the outside world clarifies and sharpens our own character, through our opposition to others’ points of views.

Conflict in God of Carnage is created through two groups of parents‘ apparent desire to resolve a falling-out between their children. Alain and Annette’s child has hit and broken two teeth of Véronique and Michelle’s child. However, despite initial mature airs, the adults soon lose any sense of moderation, and themselves turn into quarrelling children. This play is therefore an intimate descent into savagery.

All the actors gave impressively dedicated performances of both polite respectability and of raw rage – not a mean feat! Michelle (Poddy Wilson) was particularly compelling to watch, showing an authentic range of emotions whilst remaining a grounded character. Her partner, Véronique (Imogen Front) provided the main source of energy, keeping the play buoyant. However, her movements were slightly exaggerated and there was a lack of palpable physical tension between her and Michelle – although if the intended effect was to intensify Véronique’s isolation and being stuck in her own space, then this was successfully conveyed. Alain (Michael Yates) and Annette (Bella Stock) were a much more unified couple, in the way they dressed, moved, and spoke. There was a real sense of uniformity in how they wished to be seen, and this level of subtle chemistry was noted. They also both had a great level of enunciation, which really brought the wit of the script to life. I did however find the transformation of Annette from rather meek to a prowling aggressor not to have been completely convincing, and it would have been satisfying to see Alain lose his temper more. Indeed, it was only Alan who did not become completely neurotic or depressed – and ironically, that was a shame.

The Frenchness of the play was very much emphasised – and understandably, because this is the work of the famous French playwright Yasmina Reza. Firstly, the actors’ efforts at French pronunciation should be applauded. However, I must say that the very accurate translation of French expressions, which tend to be very dramatic, did not quite come off as natural in English. Being desperate in French is a much more common expression than when an English person says it – therefore, an already dramatic play was probably over intensified through its translation. The choice of music “Tout plane pour moi” at the start of the play was very good, creating a sense of electricity and movement in the air. However, I did find the choice of “Aux Champs-Elysee” to finish the play to be rather confusing. I do however feel that this sensitivity is completely due to the fact that I am French – and that if one is not looking for accuracy, it is a completely charming depiction.

Director Alison Hall has successfully brought to life a play with primal animalistic emotion, witty dialogue and charismatic actors.So, if you fancy seeing people’s true disgust of each other, some witty insults and a general sense of civilised chaos, then I would whole-heartedly recommend God of Carnage!

Image Credit: Matt Coleclough

St Benet’s Hall has ‘credible financing’ to secure buildings and future

Isaac Ettinghausen
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St Benet’s Hall has ‘credible financing’ to secure buildings and future

St Benet’s Hall has “credible financing in place” to secure its two buildings from the Ampleforth Abbey Trust, an email to the Hall’s alumni which has been seen by Cherwell reveals. 

Last week students were informed that St Benet’s, which currently houses around 80 undergraduate students, would temporarily halt admissions following an assessment by the University that “the Hall’s financial prospects are so uncertain that the University cannot be confident that the Hall can support a new undergraduate cohort”.

Earlier this month, Cherwell saw communications detailing the planned legal separation of the Hall with the Ampleforth Abbey Trust, who founded St Benet’s and own the two buildings that make up its premises. The Hall has been governed by the St Benet’s Trust, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ampleforth Abbey Trust.

In the email sent to students on Thursday evening, the Hall’s master Prof Richard Cooper, wrote: “As an independent entity without the underwriting of a parent organisation, we do also need to be able to demonstrate to the University and others that we have a) security of tenure on our properties, b) medium term financial resilience and c) an endowment that can provide a long-term underpinning of the institution.

“In connection with the first aspect, I am delighted to be able to tell you that St Benet’s now has credible financing in place in order to secure both 11 Norham Gardens and 38 St Giles’ from AAT and is working to complete these transactions imminently.” 

This will be a step towards financial security, as the University had previously asked the Hall to demonstrate ownership of its building as a condition for accepting new students next year.

The email revealed that the Hall has an “agreement in progress” with the Westminster College Trust, whose trustees have agreed “in principle” to acquire the Hall’s premises at 38 St Giles”. The Trust will provide St Benet’s with an initial lease of 99 years, at a cost of £1 per year. The agreement would also allow the Hall to buy the premises in the future.

Professor Cooper described the news as a “tremendous boost”. He added it was unfortunate that the College had not finalised these arrangements before the University decided to pause undergraduate admissions, but that the news was a “crucial step on the journey to reinstatement [of undergraduate admissions] for future years”.

The Westminster College Trust has also pledged to underwrite any of the Hall’s losses up to £300,000 a year for “at least the next three years”.

Image: Janet McKnight/CC BY 2.0 via flickr.com

Oxford University received £70,000 from controversial mining company Rio Tinto

Isaac Ettinghausen
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Oxford University received £70,000 from controversial mining company Rio Tinto

Oxford University received at least £70,000 from trans-national mining company Rio Tinto since 2013, Oxford Climate Justice Campaign have revealed. 

A press release from the climate justice group asserted that in 2013 the Blavatnik School of Government (which offers a course on oil, gas, and mining governance) received at least £25,000 from the conglomerate. Between 2014 and 2019, the Anglo-Australian corporation also made three donations to the Saïd Business School’s centre for Business Taxation totaling 45,000. 

Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest metals and mining corporation, has faced accusations of corruption, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses. These include the demolition of two sacred Aboriginal sites in Western Australia despite opposition from their traditional owners, and the pollution of the Kawerong-Jaba river in Papua New Guinea, which has led to ongoing health problems on the island of Bougainville. The Human Rights Law Centre reported that the same mine left people on the island with poisoned water, polluted fields, and a ruined river valley. In 2017, it was fined £27.3 million for breaching the UK’s disclosure and transparency rules. 

Benny Wenda, Chair of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua said: “Institutions like the University of Oxford, revered around the globe as a beacon of reason and justice, cannot continue to perpetuate and gain from this pillaging of our land. When genocide is taking place, everyone has a moral responsibility to cease their participation in it.” Wenda has alleged that Rio Tinto has “close relations with the military to protect their mining interests in my people’s lands – the very same military that is estimated to have killed more than 100,000 of my people.”

OCJC has previously highlighted companies “greenwashing” their reputations through University funding; in January 2021 Cherwell reported on a £100 million donation from petrochemical giant INEOS, which OCJC described as “parad[ing] an ethical donation front”. 

Matilda Gettins, an OCJC member, said that “It is disgraceful, although totally unsurprising, that the University of Oxford continues to take money from Rio Tinto, one of the dirtiest mining companies around. The university is laundering the reputation of Rio Tinto, funneling graduates into its careers, and helping the company with research; the losers are frontline communities, primarily across the Global South, who are fighting for their lives against extraction and climate breakdown.”

When approached for comment, a spokesperson from the University of Oxford said: “Throughout its history, Oxford University has benefited from the generosity and foresight of philanthropic donations. The funds we raise help discover cures for debilitating disease, offer solutions to the worlds most pressing problems and assist worthy students, from diverse backgrounds, to obtain an Oxford education.

“The University is aware of its position within, and responsibility to, the wider community in which we operate, and has robust and rigorous guidelines regarding the acceptance of donations and research funding. 

“All significant gifts and donations are reviewed by Oxford University ‘Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding’. This committee includes independent, external representatives and has a rigorous due diligence process for donations and gifts. 

“We have a very clear position on academic independence from donations. Our donors have no say in setting the research and teaching programmes of the posts or infrastructure they fund, nor do they have any access to the results of research, other than publicly available material.”

A representative from the Blavatnik School of Government said “The Blavatnik School of Government received donations in 2013 and 2014 from Rio Tinto to fund student scholarships. We have not received any donations from Rio Tinto since 2014. Donations from a wide range of organisations help ensure that the vast majority of our students come to us on financial support.”

The Saïd Business School and Rio Tinto have been approached for comment.

Image: Ray Harrington

Review: Please Clap // 00Productions

Anna Stephen
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Review: Please Clap // 00Productions

Please Clap is a play about revelation. The premise: a talk show becomes increasingly tense when it is revealed that its histrionic host knows more than he should about his sarcastic, tipsy-on-arrival celebrity guest. The script, written by George Rushton (who also directed the play) is sensitive to when, and how, information is revealed. Lily Lefkow-Green shines as Ariana, delivering a complex and nuanced performance that shows what can be revealed in a single gesture or a change of tone. But the whole cast, completed by Alfie Dry as the host and Leah Aspden as the stock superfan (or so it seems), clearly understand the extent of their own character’s knowledge. They use this to hold back, to let slip, to betray something that contributes to the spiralling chaos of the interview.

The format of the show (technically the ‘show-within-the-show’) is inventive. We are the live audience at the Burton Taylor Studio, but we are also the live audience of Dougie’s show, The Lights with Dougie Harrison. Rushton comes on at the start, stepping onto a purple velvet-draped set, and addresses us in a way that allows us to understand our function as a dual audience. Then on leaps Dougie, his sparkling charisma the perfect material for a seamless façade, before settling himself behind the safety of his desk. He welcomes his guest Ariana, a former sitcom child star who is here to promote her new project: a film about her life on set.

The play is well-paced: we are drip-fed revelations throughout the conversation. Dry and Lefkow-Green play off each other well, each of his questions battering her down in some unique way. Dougie’s recurring references to Ariana’s relationships with ‘Joel’ and ‘Henry’ – just names at this point in the play – do much to intrigue. There are many deliciously uncomfortable moments of tension when a question goes too far. Ariana certainly reaches for the wine more than once throughout, an action that punctuates the emotional stages of the interview. Lefkow-Green’s body language is integral to the character and how we perceive her: her movements range from the subtle to the pronounced as she gears Ariana’s responses to the increasingly probing questions. She plays the typical seen-it-all, been-there-done-that celebrity, a role that quickly could have become stale if not for Lefkow-Green’s performance. As the interview goes on, Ariana’s persona slowly crumbles. Through a twist of a ring or a bounce of the leg, a shrugs or a shift of position, I became more and more interested in the person beyond the actress. Although she claims to have “tied off being a teen with a neat knot”, it’s a knot that seems to be coming undone.

The conflict between truth and performance is a particularly well-executed theme throughout. In the first ‘ad break’, the lights go down and the forced physical distance between Dougie and Ariana breaks down. He sits beside her on the sofa in an intimate, deliberately strained scene. “Talk to me,” he urges. “It’s much better to tell the truth here than on a stage.” This got a laugh, but it was one tinged with uncertainty. What is the truth, and why is Ariana not telling it? I certainly wanted to know.

All is eventually revealed thanks to the arrival of Serafina, Ariana’s biggest fan. Her entry comes at the right moment to re-energise the atmosphere: Leah Aspden adopts a breathy, puppyish adoration that is endearing in its familiarity (after all, what would anyone do if we were sharing a sofa with our idol?). However, like everything in the play, Serafina’s character is not without its darker undercurrent. She has the destructive knowledge we know is going to ruin Ariana’s reputation. It’s a trope, but it works. Serafina knows about the mysterious ‘backstage’ (something constantly alluded to), having heard Ariana and her boyfriend Henry arguing on the set of the biopic. The script and the actors cleverly handle the shift in the dynamic of the interview, when it becomes clear that Serafina is the authority figure, telling Ariana’s story and actually getting more out of her than Dougie. Ariana’s simultaneous distaste for Serafina and tangible fear of what she might reveal is a notable strength in this part of the show, which felt a little slower than the first half. “I want people to believe me when I say things,” says Ariana. It’s a quotable line – and we don’t believe her. “If people can see the film, they’ll understand what I think,” she insists.

Ironically, the part where a clip from the film is actually shown is where things falter a little. Albeit a delightfully ambitious choice (a lighting change indicates that we are now being shown a clip that Ariana, Dougie, and Serafina are all watching), it wasn’t completely clear from the clip what Ariana thinks. Aspden now plays ‘Marissa’, Ariana’s character. The actor-character shift had me a little lost, and I was relieved when the scene reverted to the golden light and forced cheer of the talk show.

This is when the emotion reaches its climax. Serafina blames Ariana for arguing with Henry and betraying him. In a moment of shock that didn’t quite come through, Serafina reveals that Ariana is (in fact, she was) pregnant, and she is a hypocrite for not being honest. Perhaps the long build-up had me thinking something much darker had happened. However, the darkness is reliably delivered soon afterwards. Ariana stands and confesses, revealing that on the set of the sitcom, co-star Joel watched her while she changed. We see her at her most broken. But we are spared (both disappointingly and fittingly) any further explanation. As all talk show hosts must, Dougie ‘rescues’ the mood, compressing the entire story, the entire show and all its emotions, into a line I especially liked: a syrupy “Isn’t she brave.”

It’s a well-paced script with a clear trajectory, and the revelations are fed to the hungry audience. Perhaps the ‘ultimate’ reveal wasn’t quite as shocking as I had supposed. However, I must note a couple of great ad libs from the cast. When an audience member dropped a phone, Lefkow-Green was straight there with “that’s quite rude” (in character and mid-line); when Dry stumbled over a consonant, he saved it with “that’s enough wine for me.”

Overall, I very much enjoyed Please Clap. Experimental, and at the same time digging into the solemn secrets of celebrity and humanity, the fakery of the media and the forgery of façades, this was a show to be applauded. Please clap for Please Clap!

Image Credit: Eloise Fabre

Review: Songs of the Silenced // Musketeer Productions

Clementine Scott
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Review: Songs of the Silenced // Musketeer Productions

Upon reading the premise for Sav Sood and Alex Rawnsley’s new BT Studio musical Songs of the Silenced, one could be forgiven for thinking that this ground was slightly too well-trodden. In this cabaret-style series of solo performances by eleven well-known women from Greek mythology, the influence of historical revisionism musicals such as Hamilton and especially Six is never far from view, nor are the echoes of similar recent cultural attempts to ‘give voice’ to the women of antiquity (including Madeline Miller’s Circe, which the show namedrops).

However, in the maelstrom of reinterpretations of misunderstood Homeric women and Greek tragedy revivals, the show’s lyrics stand out for consistently centring the core themes and questions asked by the ancient texts themselves — perhaps the most striking engagement with antiquity is the choice to include a Muse (Rawnsley), an ambiguous piano-playing figure who is variably a suitor, therapist, or mere musical accompanist to our heroines.

In the songs themselves, there is the Iliad’s central question of whether a glorious death is preferable to a long and uneventful life, captured by Thetis (Eliza Niblett), belting in anguish as she resigns herself to her son Achilles’ death; later, a comic duet between the Oresteia’s dysfunctional mother and daughter Clytemnestra and Electra (Lara Bulloch) explores to what extent revenge can be justified (the cast and crew also deserve praise for their adaptability — Rawnsley stepped in as Clytemnestra due to the original actor’s illness, which occasioned a nifty comic device implying Electra’s matricide had already occurred). Furthermore, given how often this particular genre resorts to exploring how women have been oppressed historically, it was refreshing to see Sood and Rawnsley write about mythological women who achieved happiness — Atalanta (Sood) enters a loving marriage with a man who is her equal, and Eurydice (Bulloch) sings poignantly yet not regretfully of the ‘golden times’ she had with Orpheus, in a folk-influenced number which laudably differentiates itself from the music of Hadestown.

In the uninspiring space of the BT Studio, set designers Alfie Carter and Ellie Moriuchi excel at creating the ambience of a cabaret show, through an abundance of red velvet and a distressed dressing table poised in the corner as though about to be used by a singer before her grand performance. This effort is mirrored both by Catherine Allport’s costumes (lots of flowing, jewel-hued maxi dresses which manage to evoke both Classical Greece and the Prohibition era), and by Sood and Rawnsley’s compositions. The score makes room for the brash belting we’ve come to expect from contemporary musical theatre, but also for Circe (Leah O’Grady) as a sultry jazz alto, and for an unexpected, unhinged comic soprano take on Medea’s (Eleanor Bogie) regrets about killing her children.

In light of the laudable decision to write female roles both with a wide range of stories and for a variety of voice types, it is regrettable that there are rare moments where Sood and Rawnsley forget the uniqueness of their subjects in favour of writing a certain ‘type’ of song. Perhaps the most meaningful line in Penelope’s (Sood) number (‘faithfulness in women is just pragmatism’) only comes in her spoken dialogue with the Muse after a generic loneliness ballad, while Helen’s (Niblett) lyrics focus excessively on her role as a pawn of the goddess Aphrodite, without ever really questioning if Helen actually had any agency in leaving her home and marriage with Paris. However, while there are minor concerns about potentially simplistic interpretations of mythology, the show on the whole provides an excellent and varied musical introduction to some central questions surrounding women in ancient literature.

Image Credit: Neily Raymond.

Tradition in innovation: Fluminense’s mosaico

Maurício Alencar
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Tradition in innovation: Fluminense’s mosaico

The Ancient Greeks created the mosaic, using pebbles. The Romans imitated them, using smaller and more colourful pebbles. Fluminense FC animated the mosaic, using people and placards.

Fluminense FC are one of Rio de Janeiro’s 4 biggest clubs. They are a club of innovation. Some of the best players to have risen through the youth ranks at Fluminense’s Xerém academy include Richarlison, Thiago Silva, and Marcelo. Kayky, another one of their youth products, has recently joined Manchester City. 

Fluminense’s success in innovation may be more prolific off the pitch- or rather, just off its side.

Among its various self-professed invention is the coinage of the Brazilian-Portuguese word for fan. The poet Coelho Netto referred to the Fluminense’s early 1900s female supporters, who would dress overly fashionably, as torcedoras because the women anxiously “torciam” (would twist and pull) their gloves from their hands as they watched the men play football. “While the men play, the women twist,” he wrote.

Yet, the mosaic, in the form of a tifo fan display, is probably Fluminense FC’s greatest creation. Mosaico displays involve coloured placards being placed on every seat for supporters to lift over their heads, so as to create a large image or message that covers a whole stand. As the revered writer and journalist Mario Filho wrote in his 1947 book “O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro” (The Black Man in Brazilian Football), this tradition was born at the Maracanã in a Fla-Flu match between Fluminense and Flamengo: 

“The Fluminense fans wanted to be better than the Flamengo fans using confetti, streamers, balloons, and coloured inflatables. Each Fluminense fan would find on their seat a small bag of confetti, a packet of streamers, and a balloon, which were either green, white or red. Everything was well organised, with the stands split into three sections: red balloons were set down on the right side, white balloons down the middle, and green balloons on the left side. 

(…)

“Each Fluminense fan would blow up their respective balloons, hold their confetti, and grab their streamers, waiting for their cue. There would be one prompt to throw the confetti, another to throw the streamers, and another to lift their balloons at head height. Very beautiful: it looked like a huge Fluminense flag, made out of several balloons.”

Like during Carnival, where various Escolas de Samba (Samba Schools) compete against each other for the best display of music and dance, the various Torcidas Organizadas (fan groups) contest in a tussle of pyrotechnics, songs and crowd tifos, complementing the competitive fixture occurring on the pitch. As Mario Filho tells it, Fluminense’s fan-mosaic meant that Fluminense had easily beaten Flamengo off the pitch, thanks to their miraculous mosaico display. A spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor, one of Fluminense’s Torcidas Organizadas (fan groups) who have taken charge of organising the club’s crowd displays at the Maracanã, told me that each “festa” they create today “justifies the greatness of our tradition”. 

‘Festa’ directly translates as ‘party’ or ‘celebration’, but the word more specifically captures the image of a thousand colourful people dancing together to the sounds of surdo drums and cuícas. So, underneath the surface of floating pieces of coloured paper are multitudes of fans dancing, chanting and jumping in a relentless attempt to mute the opposition fans’ voices. Each is partaking in a ritual that has survived generations. 

The ambition of the fan group is to “maintain symbolic traditions” and, at the same time, to “always look to innovate”. If this balance is struck, Mobilização Tricolor produce crowd displays that “are always spectacular, magical, as if the football being played on the pitch and the festas in the stands merge into one”. 

Since the beginning of the century Fluminense has become the first Brazilian club to create a “3D mosaico”, which happened before Ronaldinho’s first game for the club in 2015, and the first club in the world to create a pyrotechnics-mosaico, which occurred when they spelt out “FLUMINENSE” in the 2008 Libertadores final against LDU.

 The spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor told me how they go about coming up with new ideas: “We think as a group on what we are going to do, with the focus always being on creating an event which would be unprecedented. We struggle with the restrictions imposed on us, such as the Maracanã’s rules, the financial restrictions, bureaucratic restrictions or the weather conditions, which end up affecting some of our plans which then do not go ahead.”

Mobilizacao Tricolor’s long list demonstrates just how difficult it is for them to organise mosaics. Yet, above all, the declining number of supporters since the turn of the century has made the challenge of creating mosaics all the more challenging for Mobilização Tricolor. Brazil has the world’s worst ticket price to wage level ratios, making it the most expensive place in the world for fans to watch football. Brazilian clubs’ recent financial turmoil is just an earmark of the country’s failing economy, with Fluminense’s debt piling up to RS$649 million. There has also been serial negligence by the league’s main broadcasters. TV Globo, the country’s free-to-air television network, often chooses to push back kick off times to as late as 10pm, protecting the viewing times of its ever-popular novelas (soap operas).

There is now some mention of clubs forming a breakaway league, given the series of administrative and financial errors in the last 20 years. It could be a detrimental prospect for traditional Brazilian football fans looking for cheap match tickets- not to mention the moderately recent modernisation of the Maracanã, which has also emphatically repelled some other traditional supporters from attending fixtures. 

There’s also the fact that Fluminense have under-performed since their last Brasileirão win in 2012. Winning less, inevitably, means smaller attendances, as the spokesperson explained to me. The spokesperson explained to me how the group looks to mobilise the club’s fanbase and encourage attendance: “Whenever we organise these actions,” he added, “we look to pick games which have some appeal- the festa we create in the stands can be the extra fuel for our players. Or, [it might be the case that] the advert we put out for some organised action will spread among fans in such a way that they will come down to the stadium in order to get behind it.” 

The most recent blow to Fluminense’s low attendances has inevitably been the pandemic. Upon the return of domestic Brazilian football in the first leg of the state championship final between Fluminense and Flamengo, albeit behind closed doors, Mobilizacao Tricolor produced another historic mosaico. By covering the seats with green, white and garnet-red flags to spell out #ÉPeloFlu, they relocated the festa one would normally find beneath the surface of the mosaico to the online world. 

There are fewer and fewer signs of optimism for fans in Brazil, and also for fans across the world. The mosaico display is arguably but one symbol for football’s international gentrification. Nowadays, it would not be uncommon for club owners and event organisers to create inauthentic, tone-deaf crowd mosaics as a method to enhance the overall corporate spectator experience. While Brazilian football has fallen well behind in financial terms, and thus struggled to retain the traditions of a genuinely authentic match experience, the hypothetical possibility of catching up with Europe is just as unappealing. The current political and economic climate in Brazil will unquestionably test the durability of Fluminense’s traditions of festivity and celebration, of its mosaico.

Regardless, Mobilização Tricolor constantly plans ahead to the future. The group is hopeful that Fluminense’s innovative mosaico traditions will survive. when I asked what it would be like to have all fans back in the stadium, without any capacity limits, the spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor promised me one thing: that it would be “enormous, like Fluminense is”. 

Image courtesy of Mobilizaçao Tricolor. / Translations my own.

Let’s talk about friendship

Flora Dyson
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Let’s talk about friendship

Netflix’s popular and influential show Sex Education has received great acclaim for its honest portrayal of sexual interactions between secondary school teens. However, its depiction of friendship, though not the focal point of the show, should be investigated.

Sex Education shows a wide range of platonic relationships from the constance, hilarity and comfort of Otis and Eric to the stoic, lack of emotion in the Mean Girls-esque group, the Untouchables. Though the programme’s characters and their friendships are loveable, Sex Education’s portrayal of platonicism often lacks the realism with which they present sex and realtionships.

The drama’s most enduring friendship, between Otis and Eric, is vivacious and greatly energises the show. The combination of Otis’ relaxed and mellow demeanor with Eric’s brightness and warmth makes for a heartwarming and comic duo. However, its narrative lacks complexity: the friends do not argue, and any tension is resolved quickly. Such lack of conflict arguably presents Otis and Eric’s friendship as an ideal platonic model, rather than a reflection of real life. Yet even the finest of friendships include disagreements, which Otis and Eric seem to lack in the show’s third season.

On the other hand, the friendship of Cal and Jackson demonstrates complexity and unresolved tension in Sex Education. Romantic feeling is intertwined with friendship which blurs boundaries and represents the murky waters between romantic and platonic love, echoed by Jackson: “I don’t really have friends that I’ve been with like that”. Sex Education uses these characters to present relationships as a complex spectrum between romance and friendship which results in miscommunication and discomfort: not all friendships are pristine and devoid of awkwardness, a feeling which Cal and Jackson’s relationship captures accurately. 

The unresolved tension and overriding sense of awkwardness between Cal and Jackson is unalike to Sex Education’s other friendships. Tension in Sex Education is resolved in a model sense with conversations often resembling Maeve and Aimee’s at the close of the third season:

Maeve: “I’ve been an absolute arse”

Aimee: “Me too. Steve, hold the cakes”

Maeve: “I’m so sorry. You’re right”

The resolution of tension in this style is replicated throughout the season. Characters are written to give each other space, show understanding and a willing to improve their behaviour: it is almost as if spats between the characters have been written and resolved by a psychotherapist. Though this may seem to be a model way of resolving tension, it is unlike real life and not on par to the realistic depictions of sex in the show. Though Sex Education focuses heavily on the real life benefits of therapy and communication, communication between its characters are distant from real life.

Image Credit: Sex Education/ Netflix Facebook

The cacophony of crisis

Flora Dyson
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The cacophony of crisis

COP26 has brought forth a multitude of images which embody the climate crisis: koalas clinging to rescue workers in Australian forest fires, polar bears stranded and solitary on drifting icebergs, the intrepid youth of today bearing placards whilst throwing scorn at inactive governments. We are surrounded by these images in the press, so much so that we become passive to nature’s plea for help. We partake in a kind of environmentally destructive voyeurism as these images become part out our everyday, inducing inertia and inducing global warming above the critical 1.5 degrees to a matter of inevitability. Jolly, I know.

The omnipresence of warning images represents what the climate crisis looks like, but I ask, what does the climate crisis sound like? Would the presence of sound to describe the climate crisis reduce the emotional distance between us and the increasingly critical issues we face? Would sound remind us that, unlike images, the climate crisis is ongoing and not frozen in time in faraway nations?

Does the climate crisis sound like abstractly associated protest music expressing concern about the state of the world? The cover art to Weyes Blood’s album, Titanic Rising, depicts the artist submerged in a bedroom, a subtle reminder of indiscriminately rising sea levels. “Something to Believe” reflects a nihilistic hopelessness and a need to care for larger, more existential worldly issues – “Give me something I can see/ Something bigger and louder than the voices in me”. Weyes Blood demonstrates a well-known sense of resignment to pressing issues in the lyrics of “Something to Believe”: ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising but we are looking on, uncaring.

Childish Gambino’s “Feels like Summer” and The 1975’s “Love It If We Made It” both express climate concern through a masked naivety. Gambino begins with a classic tone of summer nostalgia which is soon subverted by creeping anxieties around “Men who made machines that want what they decide/ Parents tryna tell their children please slow down/ Slow down”. The 1975 similarly put their popular, happy-go-lucky style to use – it becomes paradoxical with their lyrics which go on to address xenophobia, Trumpism and climate change.  

Surely the climate crisis is not expressed by implicit lyrics which appeal to listener subjectivities and interpretation? One would point to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” as a classic and explicit message which foreshadows a climate catastrophe. Mitchell expresses a similar nihilism to her modern counterparts: upbeat guitar riffs are compounded with her heady vocal quality which work to create a raw dialectic between artificial capitalism and the natural world, reflected in the song’s lyrics. “Big Yellow Taxi” is the sound of a woman who has given up, resigned to the fates of the future; “Oh, it always seems to go/ You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”.

Whilst artists seem resigned to oncoming threat, the need for action is best vocalised by its leaders. Greta Thunberg, the face of the Friday’s for Future movement, expresses her anxieties over music in The 1975’s nominal track which opens their two most recent albums. The speech, in which Thunberg encourages her listeners to rebel, is sampled over the band’s archetypical, synthetic piano textures. Compelling as Thunberg’s speech is, it is out of place in an album: in an age of shuffling and skipping music, along with a decrease in album popularity, the speech goes underappreciated. Compared with the album’s more popular tracks, it has received a third of Spotify streams. It seems listeners do not wish to be preached to – for many, music offers an escape from existential worries rather than an embodiment of them.

Whilst music is a powerful expression of climate anxieties, sound can be harnessed to show the truly worrying realities of human impact on the planet. David Attenborough’s interaction with the Australian lyre bird depicts the terrifyingly real dominance of humankind in all aspects of the natural world. The lyre bird can mimic the sound of other bird calls and forest noises to attract a mate – yet exposure to camera shutters and chainsaws means it replicates these sounds which have predominated its environment with a shocking accuracy. The creeping presence of artificiality in the lyre bird’s call demonstrates the defilement of the natural world – delightful melodies turn to the sinister sound of human destruction in an unpleasant paradox. However, as shocking and disturbing as the changing call of the lyre bird is, it does not induce or persuade action against deforestation. It merely acts as a depressing reminder of human detriment of natural environments. Perhaps if the lyre bird yelled “write to your MP!” repeatedly we may have some hope of change.

The call of the lyre bird is an explicitly depressing depiction of humankind’s impact on the planet, yet much media representing the climate crisis uses sound in a more optimistic fashion. Cosmo Sheldrake’s album, Wake Up Calls, uses samples from endangered British birds, interwoven with synthesised sounds to raise awareness for the threat they face. He creates rich soundscapes of nature which celebrates the potential diversity of British woodlands, whilst also acting as a poignant reminder of local endangerments: Sheldrakes demonstrates that, just as the ice caps are melting and coral reefs are dying, so are our local ecosystems.

Just as the climate crisis cannot be defined by one image, it cannot be defined by one sound. Rather, we hear a polyphonic cry for help from local and global ecosystems and environments, which is voiced by concerned cultural figureheads. All we need to do is listen and act. 

Image credit: Callum Shaw/Unsplash

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