Originally Published in The Cambridge News

(First published in The Cambridge News on February 13, 2010).

Click on the link to read the article or click on the image above.

I finally got round to uploading a few features I wrote for The Cambridge News; a year late is better than never I suppose.

Originally published in The Cambridge News on January 27, 2011, Holocaust Memorial Day.

Read the piece here or click on the picture above.

Page  1 can be found here (or click on the image above) and page 2 here.

Originally published in The Cambridge News and Journal Magazine on January 22, 2011.

Cambridge street artists from Blight Society talk to Alice Hutton about an art form that lives on the edge of the law

It’s a classic image of urban crime: a hooded yoof, spray can in grubby paw, maliciously defacing a priceless monument before urinating on a bus stop.

“Oh please,” sniffs 32 year old local street artist, OBE1, as he eye balls a fluorescent blue can, “that kind of gangland culture in Cambridge is as rare as rocking horse poo.”

In the bright crisp Sunday sunshine, street and graffiti artists from all around Cambridgeshire have gathered under Mill Road Bridge for a paint off. The toxic aroma of a dozen multi coloured spray cans is heady and the ground is littered with gigantic intricate stencils as familiar names start shuffling in to set up, introducing themselves under monikers like Snik, Maya, and Irony.

Brought together by local graffiti group, Blight Society, they are the anti yobs: friendly, talented local artists, teachers and graphic designers identifiable only by their paint stained fingers, seizing an unusual opportunity to work together en masse, in daylight.

John founded graffiti group, Blight Society four years ago

Jon, who like many here feels safer on a first name only basis, founded Blight Society four years ago to help foster inner-city artistic talent. Today they are the most prolific graffiti community in Cambridge, running art shows, working with disadvantaged children, rejuvenating run down shops for the city council and helping dozens of talented daubers establish a reputation- and possibly even make a buck.

“The important thing is to differentiate between street art and graffiti,” explains Jon. “Graffiti is about writing your name really big, it’s about fame and reputation and respect. But street art is about taking a project or image you have worked on and putting it out on the street where people can appreciate it. It’s a bit more art and a little less fame.”

Street artist Maya works on his stencil

Modern graffiti started in the late 1970s in New York where crews with names like the Master Blasters began to ‘tag’ cars, walls and most importantly, trains, on an industrial scale. The aim of the game was notoriety, developing its association with vandalism and reckless drug users. Street art, however, is an evolution of the art form where people swap canvases for walls to bring pictorial pieces to the streets that engage with the community.

Cambridge City Council doesn’t make a distinction and operates a zero tolerance policy prosecuting over 50 people between 2006 and 2009 for 1,000 acts of vandalism. Their ability to find and destroy images within 12 hours is unparalleled, allowing only the briefest of glimpses before it disappears under a lick of its trademark whitewash. “It’s weird,” sighs Jon, tugging on a black Nike jumper spattered in paint. “Street art is not really on the street anymore, it’s photos on the internet, and you’re actually quite lucky if you see anything on a wall.”

'Meditations on the Muse' by Cambridge street artist, Maya

Josh Peacock, who paints under the name OBE1, and works part time teaching graffiti at charity Momentum Arts, puts the final touches to his piece showing a spray can with jaws. “Virtually every graffiti artist has been in trouble at some point,” he admits, “but in Cambridge there’s a good conduct of respect amongst street artists. You wouldn’t catch any of us graffitiing King’s Chapel or someone’s car, we’re not vandals.”

Ironically, the world’s most famous vandal, British street artist, opportunist and public space defacer, Banksy, is revered as an invisible graffiti god.  But who says he’s any different from the average can toting hooligan? “Well, he’s not,” says 25 year old graphic designer, Nick Ellis (aka Snik) thoughtfully. His immense 9ft by 6ft woman reclines sensuously across the brick wall in a flowing dress that took two people, six stencils and shades of grey to create. “If Banksy goes and paints on someone’s house they cover it in protective plastic because it is now worth a lot of money, if someone else does it they don’t like it. I don’t get the difference to be honest. He didn’t do it first and he still doesn’t do it best. He’s just as illegal as us he’s just worth a lot more cash.”

treet artist, Josh Peacock, in background, teaches graffiti at Cambridge charity Momentum Arts

Nevertheless, none of them deny the japester’s important role in legitimizing graffiti as an art form that interacts with the environment and the public around you. “Who wants a city that is medically clean and dead?,” asks Jon incredulously as people start to pack up, leaving a once dull brick wall injected with electrifying colours. “Canvases are detached, aimless pieces that have no roots. They sit in one person’s living room where only a finite number of people can enjoy them. What we do is become a legitimate part of the city. Well,” he pauses and grins cheerfully, “I like to keep reminding myself it’s actually still crime.”

Originally published in the Cambridge News

Amy, 25, proudly displaying our handiwork

The anonymous person who left a Christmas card on the tube addressed to ‘The Driver’, which I found at 12am when I boarded the Piccadilly line at Russell Square three days before Christmas after a raucous hen night, had left it blank; presumably for us late night commuters to prove how grateful we were that TFL staff spend at least 50% of their working lives undergound. So we did! Together with my fellow traveller, Amy No Last Name, we persuaded the entire contents of our carriage to pen their thanks- we hope you all had a merry Christmas.

where we left the card

“Thankyou for taking me home!”

“Have a Happy Christmas from an appreciative customer”

“All the very best to you sir!”

“Have a wonderful Christmas, thanks for the lift!”

Preparations for the most important anniversary in China in the twentieth century are stretching further than polishing nuclear weapons and strapping sharp implements to the necks of soldiers with bad posture.

By the time 30,000 politicians and persons of indisputable guanxi gather in Tiananmen Square tomorrow to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, innumerable sexual health and HIV websites will already have been shut down. During a summer of race riots and mass organised ‘forgetting’ the Great Fire Wall went into over drive in an effort to clean up their online presence in time for the scrutiny of the world’s media.

On 1st July the Chinese ministry of health issued a decree to systematically start banning public access to websites with sexual health content—unless you are a medical professional or scientific researcher. The rules appear intentionally vague. What exactly is covered by “scientific research” is ambiguous. The penalties, however, are crystal clear: a fine of up to 30,000 RMB (£2,772), or in some cases prison.

In the same month, the government also announced plans to introduce Green Dam onto all new computers: a software which automatically filters out any sex-related content in an internet search. This includes medical and HIV websites, chat rooms on health channels, and the highly-publicised pornography which China Daily, that bastion of truth, claims is poisoning the minds of China’s children.

In light of the violent riots between Han Chinese and Uighurs in Xinjiang province in June, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Fanfou (the Chinese version of Twitter) and sites like Chinasmack.com have been blocked. But closing access to the few sources of reliable sexual health information risks severing an information lifeline for millions of people.

Although Green Dam was put on hold when the government came up against the World Trade Organisation, Google and angry netizens who refused to have their web usage tamed, it has not been abandoned and looms shadow like on the horizon.

Sex is taboo in China

“Sex is still a taboo subject and there remains very low levels of knowledge,” says Carl Wang, an employee of the NGO Prevention Through Education. In August their website, HIVzx, which offers online sexual counselling and medical advice was shut down without warning. “Sites like ours are very important, because in China people won’t talk about sex in public. We get emails asking if HIV can be left on bed sheets. Because it is associated with needles we hear from people refusing to go to hospital out of fear. The lack of knowledge is sometimes terrifying.”

However, Professor Pan Suiming, director of the Institute of Sexuality and Gender at Renmin University in Beijing, is unsurprised by the sudden rash of closures. “From the moment you are born in China you are controlled. By your parents, then your teachers, then your university and sitting above all of them is the government. This is not an accident. No one in China has any privacy regarding their private or sex lives. The government doesn’t trust us to make our own decisions and there is an expectation that they have the right to know what we’re up to, especially on the internet.”

The government don’t trust us to make our own decisions

What is staggering, however, is how anyone goes about policing the way 1.3bn people use the web. Two years ago China Daily reported that the government had issued a call for “comrades of good ideological and political character, high capability and familiarity with the internet to form teams of web commentators who can employ methods to actively guide online public opinion.” They call them the wu mao dang, the 50 cent army: hundreds of thousands of faceless propagandist bloggers whose occupation is to infiltrate and manipulate internet forums which criticise party policy on Tibet, the suppression of statistics on bird flu, the jailing of protesters, the lack of laws protecting homosexuals and, of course, sex education.

With the manpower at the wu mao dang’s command (an estimated 300,000), the potential damage they could inflict by targeting sites like Wikipedia, Digg, Google News and YouTube is cause for concern. Their ability to popularise certain stories and to shout down others is incalculable. One incentive, which also explains their name, is clear: every very time they post a comment or alter a thread the individual is paid the equivalent of 50 Chinese cents (£0.046).

On the eve of the anniversary, the atmosphere in Beijing is dark. Every single hotel room with a view of Tiananmen has been booked out by the government- not for them the same mistake twice. And the only way the public will get to see the parade is on television. Tourists are being forced to carry their visas on them and there has been a sudden mass exodus of expat residents to Hong Kong “for a holiday.” But for HIVzx and thousands of other websites, the countdown is on to see if they will be reinstated after the event, or if this was the start of something far more sinister.

[previously published on Prospectmagazine.co.uk]

UPDATE:

Listen below to the Guardian’s Beijing correspondant, Tania Branigan, on today’s anniversary:

The Chinese news organisation, Danwei, put together a collage of how China's media celebrated the anniversary

Photo: Georgia Graham

After painful deliberation between me and my credit card I have decided to flee this jobless country and write my MA journalism portfolio in Beijing. I leave in six days. Although I previously spent over six months working in Shanghai the ‘Jing is a whole different pot of dumplings and I hope I survive. Here is what I remember of it since I was last there- keep your fingers crossed I don’t get lost behind the great fire wall of China and tell any of your friends out there that I like beer and I’m a cheap date.

Beijing is full of posers. 

People's Statue in Tiananmen Square. Photo: Alice Hutton.

Regent’s whatty? They have the most incredible lakes instead of parks. 

Ho Hai lake in central Beijing. Photo: Tom Coulson.

Temple by Ho Hai lake. Photo: Alice Hutton.

Everyone has this amazing ability to take a nap- anywhere. 

Photo: Alice Hutton.

Food shopping is infinitely more fun. And more dangerous.

Yes, its real. Someone even took the time to paint eyes on. Photo: Alice Hutton.

The drinks are pretty strong…

Photo: Who knows at that point.

But the views can’t be beaten.

The Great Wall of China. Photo: Alice Hutton.

zài jiàn!

Clair Cooper will represent England in Miss Universe 2009

This is Miss England for the global beauties competition Miss Universe 2009, to be held this summer in the Bahamas and broadcast live on NBC to one billion viewers.

I sat next to her on the train to Cardiff last weekend.

It was 7:30am on a Saturday and I had dragged my poorly rested body out of bed to schlep down to Cardiff and watch the City journos slog out a football battle of mythic proportions and then lose 2-0 to the Welsh. Of course I didn’t know that then, all I saw through bleary eyes was a tall red head in platform heels, white jeans and a shit load of makeup plonk herself down at my table and whip out her mobile. “I fucking resent being up this early” she giggled into her phone, “so I thought I’d call you.”

Up until the moment that National Rail’s Helen of Troy walked in I had been feeling sorry for myself. (I don’t have a job and the only thing in my future is a 15,000 word MA dissertation and the prospect that I might have to learn Mandarin, like, really fast.)

Now I was trapped on a train with a walking time bomb of an interviewee without a dictaphone and no plausible way to start writing in shorthand without her noticing. I was going to have to remember this.

Of course I hadn’t actually discovered that Clair Cooper was Miss England until I spilled my instant coffee down my dress and she leapt gazelle like to the rescue and handed me a wad of napkins from her bag. “So”, I dabbed fruitlessly at the boiling hot stain, “why are you heading to Wales?”

“Im going to pick out the official gowns to wear when I represent England at the Miss Universe competition in the Bahamas this summer.”

Excuse me, whatty? That, is a brilliant sentence.

For the next hour I grilled what turned out to be a very intelligent 26 year old with a degree in music management and a job at Live Nation, one of the UK’s largest music promotors, who are running T in the Park this year.

Her string of pageantry titles, including Miss London 2006, is a hobby to earn extra cash and travel and it will all end this year when Clair reaches the ripe age of 27 and is banned from applying to anymore competitions and “being a princess.”

Sport is cruel.

I ended up feeling about Clair the way I feel about Cheryl Cole. A little bit wrong. Just kidding, in reality their beauty blinds you to the point where Cole’s arrest for a racially aggravated assault is forgotten by me in the blink of some really good hair extensions and pretty frocks.

In the case of Clair we hadn’t even reached Cardiff before I decided to stop trying to con the pageant queen into saying something about the good people of Wales that I could then sell to the South Wales Echo. She was just too goddam nice. And smart. And, and, I really liked her bag. I was had.

Thankfully the currency of the story still upset a few of the City boys who took the Mega Bus. “You what?” gawped a crest fallen Patrick Galey mid cigarette roll, “I sat next to Faaez.”

And yes I googled all these photos and put as many as possible in this post, because I think she is pretty, and nice, and well, I fucking want world peace.

Miss Universe takes place live in the Bahamas on NBC from 23rd August.

UPDATE:

The day after the competition went live I started to realise why I loved tags on blog posts so much. Thank you Clair Cooper you earned me over 120 hits that day.

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Alex Graham 1978

You could smoke in the news room, there was no such thing as different courses for newspaper, magazine and broadcast and the degree was only in its second year, but Alex Graham went on to become the Chief Executive of Wall to Wall Media, one of the UK’s most respected independent production companies.

Catherine Bennett 1979

Columnist for The Guardian and former writer for The Times and The Sunday Telegraph.

Dermot Murnaghan 1984

Well known presenter for Sky News, and previously for ITV and BBC News (watch the video below to catch a glimpse of him vox popping a passer by  with Barry McIIhneney for an assignment at City twenty five years ago).

Stuart Jeffries 1985 

The scooper of my barista story last month graduated the year before I was born (yikes) and is now a feature writer for The Guardian and deputy literary editor for The Observer

Ben Preston 1987            

 

The former deputy editor of The Times left after he was passed over for the top job in favour of young City upstart James Harding (below). 

Will Lewis 1991

According to Simon Neville, who used his work experience at The Telegraph to ask the editor in chief, Will Lewis, about his time at City, he didn’t actually finish the course. This clearly didn’t hinder him. (Listen to Emeritus fellow, Robert Jones, who has been at City since 1979, talk about teaching Lewis in the video below).  

James Harding 1995

The youngest ever editor of The Times James Harding beat Ben Preston (above) to the job at the age of 38. He speaks five languages, including Mandarin. Its just not fair.

Decca Aitkenhead 1995

1995 was obviously a talented year because it also churned out Decca Aitkenhead- winner of Interviewer of the Year 2009 at the British Press Awards. Freelancer for The Guardian, Evening Standard, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph

Other notable names include:

Ian Birrell ( 1982) deputy editor of The Independent.

Tony Gallagher (1986) deputy editor of The Telegraph.

Rebecca Allison (1997) assistant editor of The Guardian.

Alice Fisher (1995) commissioning editor of The Observer Magazine. 

John Mullin The Independent on Sunday

Salam Pax the Baghdad Blogger (follow him on Twitter)

Caroline Faraj Head of CNN Arabic

Perhaps there is hope for the rest of us. Or maybe I just wish it.

Last week I attended Alan Rusbridger’s lecture, Newspapers Without Walls, at QMUL on the future of journalism as a collaborative effort between reporters and  citizens. (Listen to the lecture above).

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian. Photo: The Guardian.

Sadly, the excellent (and refreshingly positive) lecture was watched by only a handful of people, showing perhaps that QMUL could learn something from the Guardian about publicising their lectures on the web more effectively.

As editor of the Guardian, Rusbridger has made a very successful career out of calculative guesses on where the industry will be in five years time, and demonstrated last night how the paper, and website, is putting that skill to use in a very gloomy environment.

“For the first time since the Enlightenment,” he began, “there is a chance you will have no source of news. It is a catastrophe and on a par with losing the police force or fire brigade. It is a crisis in journalism.”

According to Rusbridger the new model for the ailing regional newspapers involves harnessing the scope and information possessed by local bloggers, charities, campaigners and websites like Fix My Street that can feed stories to the paper like a local news wire. But the first step involves breaking down the ‘wall’ between reporter and reader that prioritises the journalist’s ability to find news and accept that:

Readers know more than we do.

Well, of course they do sillies. Thank god or we would all be in trouble.  But, as Rusbridger pointed out, when the blogger Dan Gillmor made that statement in 2004, it was controversial and terrifying because the vast majority of reporters were still labouring under the old 1.0 delusion that journalists are the only authoritative source of news.

The debunking of that myth is not new, but its practical application in the UK media has been slow. Giving credibility to the use of social networking sites to find stories has led to things like  Stephen Fry stuck in a lift. But the examples outlined by Rusbridger are enough to remind any world weary journalism student why they chose a low paid profession that specialised in scepticism in the first place.

1. Their Tax Gap series on Barclays which, Rusbridger said proudly, had a direct knock on effect on G20 and the Budget which closed down certain tax loopholes in the UK:

“This was the perfect combination of mainstream journalists doing dogged stuff. There are bloggers out there who have been writing about tax for ages but with no effect at all. This is something a large news organisation can do in amplifying a story and having an effect. It’s the model of us and them combining to do something really interesting – a new alchemy at work.”

2. The footage of Ian Tomlinson whose death was recorded by “thousands of reporters -the crowds. And should therefore not have come as a surprise to the police.”

3. Breaking news on Twitter. Something that The Telegraph had a few brilliant hitches with using Twitterfall.

Jemima Kiss. Photo: The Guardian.

Interestingly, Rusbridger confessed he didn’t undersand Twitter (although you can follow him here). But, showing his five jumps ahead policy in action, he said it was important to listen to the technology journalists, like whizz kid Jemima Kiss, whose engagement with trends invariably end up being significant for the development of the media.

“Twitter is not about Twitter” a very pregnant Kiss told me after the lecture. “It is about what people use it for. It is a technical brains trust, a research tool to harness people’s expertise, a social organisation and your target audience.” It is, essentially, a human filtered news feed and the way I found case studies for several stories at the Manchester Evening News. (Read Kiss’ piece on the talk here.)

The trouble with citizen journalism for me is that I shelled out £8, 000 I can’t afford to start training as a journalist, haven’t got a job yet and I’m so convinced by this model I’m wondering just how long I can expect to be poor and jobless for exactly. On the other hand, the possibilities of combining old fashioned nose to the ground reporting with the knowledge of thousands of people who are, as Jeff Jarvis puts it, “committing acts of journalism” every day, is mind blowing and something to feel electrified by, not scared of.

(With thanks to QMUL for the audio)