I’m hopelessly fond of birthdays. My mum put a lot of effort into them when I was younger (she did a scavenger hunt for my 10th and I still have the clue cards). However, Covid-19 changed the way we celebrate birthdays. Not being able to celebrate with family and friends was a real anticlimax for those reaching milestone ages. Imagine turning 18 and not being able to toast it with your mates in an overcrowded club with cheap shots.
Covid-related restrictions ended last month, but will birthdays ever feel special again? My 30th was on Easter Sunday of 2020, at the height of restrictions, and the day that Dominic Cummings went to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.
But I made the conscious choice to savour the little details: the flowers I received, the music playing while I cooked dinner, the fact it was 18C out.
The pandemic alleviated a lot of the stress that used to come with birthdays, given that everything was out of our control. Still, I am looking forward to the return of unregulated and (safe and responsible) hedonistic birthdays, because I will have an even deeper appreciation of what we’re celebrating – life.
Pity the poor students
Last month, the government unveiled plans to change student loan repayments, lowering the salary threshold, extending the repayment period and threatening to enforce minimum GCSE and A-level entry requirements.
Many variables can affect a young person’s performance and treating maths and English as the sole markers of intelligence devalues other skills needed in higher education, such as creative thinking.
More than half of young people from disadvantaged households fail to achieve GCSE grade 4; now they will be penalised for life for marks they didn’t get as teenagers.
Those who do achieve the required grades will still suffer long term. An equality analysis said the proposals would most affect younger and female graduates as well as those from disadvantaged backgrounds or the north of England, Midlands or the south-west.
These reforms aren’t about young people’s futures, they’re about saving money, and it’s people from backgrounds like mine who will take the blow.
I went to university aged 18 in 2008, moving from Leeds to London and from a low-income household.
I never imagined I’d idealise my university debt, but payment plan 1 (lower interest rates and debt written off after 25 years) now seems like a sweet deal.
After his own art
Someone who is taking education into his own hands is the British artist Yinka Shonibare, renowned for his brightly coloured Dutch wax fabric sculptures. He has launched an artist residency programme in Nigeria (where he was brought up) to help foster “exchange between artists of different cultures and career paths” across two sites in Lagos and on a working farm in Ijebu.
Shonibare curated last year’s Royal Academy summer exhibition, to critical acclaim. I interviewed him then and what was clear is his commitment to community, collaboration and fostering talent among those who come from marginalised backgrounds or lack formal training.
His programme joins similar efforts by artists such as Amoako Boafo, Ibrahim Mahama and Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi in Ghana and Kehinde Wiley in Senegal. Artists of the African diaspora, from Lubaina Himid to Wangechi Mutu, are starting to shift the canon, and Shonibare’s project couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
