Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 21

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
GRAHAM SHEFFIELD: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
T
he essay above records my reflections on the power of theatre from the perspective
of the British Council. I work for the British Council—I’ve been there seven years,
after several decades spent in radio and the arts, mostly running multi-arts centres,
like the Southbank and the Barbican in London. This short reflective piece collects a few
formative experiences that inform my thinking.
In 2016, I was in Liverpool in the north west of England—an old port city, now much
revived through investment into the arts, in terms of both its infrastructure and its art-
ists. It’s a very cosmopolitan city—birthplace of the Beatles, home to artistic institutions
including Tate Liverpool, FACT arts centre, the International Slavery Museum, the Ev-
eryman Theatre, as well as Paul McCartney’s school for the performing arts. It has a large
and diverse population, home to the oldest black and Chinese communities in England,
and known historically for its large Irish and Welsh populations. I was there, with most
of my arts colleagues from the British Council’s East Asia region, for a strategic meeting
of the kind we try to hold every year, usually in region, but this time (for the first time)
in the UK. The region covers territory from Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
down through South East Asia, including Burma, through Indonesia to Australia and
New Zealand. This week-long exposure of overseas colleagues to the arts scene in a par-
ticular English location, I know, has given them new insight into the power of the arts in
urban regeneration in an important city outside of London.
As part of the programme, we invited Professor Geoff Crossick (from the Arts and Hu-
manities Research Council) to talk to us about the value of the arts and his views on eval-
uation and how we measure it. In his talk to us, one phrase (of many) stuck in my mind:
“an impact always starts in the arts with an individual personal experience”. It certainly
rang true to me, since experiences in the arts—particularly music and theatre—have (I
believe) shaped who I am as a human being, who I am as a professional, and my whole
persona and emotional make-up over the entirety of my life. It’s my artistic “daily bread”
as it were, akin to a bowl of rice in the daily diets of most Asian cultures—meals are un-
thinkable without it! My daily diet for life is unthinkable without some art!
My chosen subject even tually turned out to be Music—I am a trained western classi-
cal musician—but I have encountered theatre ever since I was about nine years old, at-
tempting the part of Ariel in Shakespeare’s Tempest, dressed in a very fetching mini skirt,
which must be one of the earliest theatrical photos of “cross-dressing”.
At my senior school, I studied Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek) before switching to
Music as a discipline, and in the course of this read, translated and experienced many
of the ancient Greek dramas of Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, as well as the come-
dies—both in English and in an amazing traditional Greek theatre, built at Bradfield
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