Chris's Forester Column: June 2010

I've chosen two examples from my own experience this month, which I hope illustrate my point. I could have commented on so many other activities - cooking, sport, gardening, - but I've picked music because that's what happens to interest me. In Gloucester Cathedral 200 singers from Newent, Ross and Tewkesbury choral groups joined a Cheltenham-based orchestra and four soloists to give a faultless performance of Verdi's Requiem. At another event, this time in Newent, its orchestra celebrated its 70^th anniversary in great style. I know how much pleasure I felt during the performances, over and above what I would gain from listening to a CD, but the singers and musicians who practice week after week in their communities gain extra special pleasures through making friends, developing skills and building community-based social networks.

These networks will sustain people when times get hard, not only during the current financial crisis - a creation of unregulated market greed - but the potentially more serious threats from climate change and peak oil. So how do we get from where we are to where we could be? For a start, perhaps we should try harder to enjoy what on the surface appear less sophisticated and cheaper pleasures but when experienced reveal far more satisfying and enduring cultural encounters.

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