Is Sport Culture?

Aqua Kathak Balbir Singh Dance Company
Aqua Kathak Balbir Singh Dance Company

You know us at The Culture Vulture well enough by now don’t you? Or maybe this is your first time here?

Well we like a conversation, quite often over on Twitter, where we test the waters for new ideas.  Were  you aware of the Cultural Olympiad activities that are bridging or trying to bridge the gap between culture and sport? The programme in Yorkshire is called imove and it’s trying to do some pretty experimental stuff.  Regular Culture Vulture Blogger, Mike Wallis recently reviewed ‘Runs on The Board‘ at Headingley Cricket Club, a fantastic sounding combination of art, cricket, and glass cake… I Love West Leeds are taking a full orchestra to the midst of a swimming pool whilst people crawl or stroke…

Sometimes we get asked to look at sporty stuff and I tend to ignore the emails, but today something came in about diving, and I thought why not? Then I asked Twitter who told me that the following sports were acceptable; Cheese Rolling, Roller Derby, Tiddliwinks, Dominoes, Crown Green Bowling, Buckaroo, Hoola Hooping but not Football, Rugby or Cricket.

We try to cover stuff that makes life interesting and varied here,  we don’t assume people walk around just enjoying an art form to the exclusion of getting drunk and enjoying football. So how should we go about this? As we’re not a listings site, we are unlikely to post fixtures and results. But we’d be happy to review books about sport such as that by Yorkshire man Anthony Clavane on Leeds United ‘The Promised Land’

Let’s get this conversation started….Would we lose you as readers, but gain a new legion more? Where do we draw the line? Is there any point?

18 comments

  1. Hi Emma,

    I personally do not think sport is culture, but reading Culture Vultures lately you’ve covered a few topics that I tought were off-topic to the blog (this isn’t a critism tho) but then I am not the cultured type, and I suspect like ‘travel’, culture is a very generic term.

    That aside, the government does have a Culture and Sport minister, or at least we used to have, not sure if that is the case nowadays, so, maybe they could be part of the same?

  2. if people are doing interesting stuff with sport then it’s still interesting and would surely present the possibility of engaging/creative content – which is what you seem to aim for? and following on there is no reason why interesting things can’t happen in football just as they can in more esoteric activities.

  3. Some might not see sport as part of the cultural landscape, but there is certainly a culture around sports; if the fandom, clubs, events, storytelling, drama, tribalism and conflict aren’t ingredients in driving culture, then what is?

    With legendary institutions such as Leeds United and Headingley in the city, sports schools such as Carnegie and the powerhouses of Leeds Rhinos and Leeds Tykes, sport is an endless source of civic discourse and commentary.

    It’s impossible to separate the mythology of Manchester as a city from the mythology of Manchester United, or Barcelona FC’s glamourous heroes from the city’s chic culture.

    Leeds in particular has seen an intimate relationship between fashion and football culture with the Casuals (http://www.templeworksleeds.com/2011/01/27/casual-culture).

    Are we suggesting the Olympics will have nothing of cultural interest – in urban impact, architecture, or human drama. It’s no coincidence that we have a Ministry of Sport, Culture and Media! Leeds will be the home of the 2012 Chinese Olympic team – if their presence isn’t a driver of cultural content, stories, events and serendepity, then we have to reboot what we think a cultural landscape is about 🙂

    As Emma suggests, Culture Vulture isn’t about to start commentating or providing results, but there’re certainly stories of cthe culture around sport that readers here will be interested in.

  4. I think there is a false dichotomy between sport and culture which reflects the mind-body dualism as discussed by such great philosophers as Plato, Descartes and Stephen Patrick Morrissey.
    In my book Promised Land on Leeds, Leeds United and the writers who have emerged from Leeds – from Bennett to Phillips – in modern times (http://www.thesportsbookshelf.com/2011/06/promised-land-is-your-choice-as-sports.html) I try to show that sport and culture – far from being mutually exclusive – are inextricably linked.
    The problem, I think, lies in the separation.
    Thank you for initiating this debate. And yes I too would welcome reviews of ‘Promised Land’ – out in paperback next month. This kind of conversation is long overdue.
    With Ian McMillan – the fine poet and avid Barnsley fan – I will be discussing this very issue at Waterstones Leeds on July 7th.
    Please come along and have your say.
    http://www.list.co.uk/event/20125020-ian-mcmillan-anthony-clavane-book-launch/

  5. I think sport has its very own culture and can be collectively more rewarding than a lot of artistic acheivements too. I think sport helps build communities, brings people together and brings optimism in society which many artistic ‘cultures’ can’t even come close to.
    To ask whether sport is culture seems a little single minded to me.

  6. I think it depends on how you choose to define culture.

    If we go with ‘the totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns’ then yes sport fits the bill along with just about every other human endeavour.

    However if we choose to introduce some more subjective criteria and go with ‘The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively’ then we can make a case against sport on the grounds of it ‘not being sufficiently intellectual’.

    Personally I would go with the more inclusive definition.

  7. As a writer, press officer and gymnastics coach, arts people are quite often surprised by the gymnastics, and gymnastics people are quite often surprised by my career. But having done both for a long time, I reckon they are much more similar than they are different. Almost every sport I can think of is to some degree about shape and line and movement, about precision and about making something that is both pleasing to the trained eye and entertaining for mass spectators. I’m with Anthony – this divide between culture and sport is just weird. Surely sport is culture? Quick, Emma, embrace it – you never know which wonderful new places it might take you to!

  8. Don Revie is much maligned but he brought in a ballet teacher for his so-called Dirty Leeds players in the 1960s – as did Arsene Wenger at Arsenal in the noughties. I think it was Matt Busby who called football “working-class ballet”.

  9. Clavane y’flogging *******, bloody writers, shouldn’t be allowed on social networks…well not good ones anyway.

    For me sport absolutely is culture, more than that, it (and the material around it) is the most widespread and important cultural expression we have. It’s a social bridge and glue. I’d also argue that the counter argument is simply elitist and ignorant of sport – as in not knowledgeable.

    As for it’s place on Cult Vult, that’s more complicated. CV has built up a fine site concentrating on sometimes mainstream but more often quirky, spontaneous, ‘community’ events and expressions, almost counter culture.

    It’d alienate many people to have match reports or discussions of LUFC’s latest signing (if we ever sign anyone) and mass sport is over exposed anyway but I don’t think reflections around mainstream sports wouldn’t be a bad thing.

    I put an article in How Leeds Changed The World called I Am Leeds United. I shouldn’t have included it really but I didn’t want a dry list of facts, figures, records and with over 300 LUFC books thought that’d all been well covered.

    It was trying to explain why LUFC is so absolutely fundamental to my life – kinships, relationships with my Dad, Mother, children, friends and strangers. How footie puntuates my life bringing routine, regularity, stability, passion etc. How footie is a place where working class men can be seen ‘in touch with their emotions’. How it’s (rather than The Guardian, Rad 4 etc) the real ground where battles over racism, homophobia etc are fought and – to whatever extent – won.

    Anyway I think those kind of discussions around sport could enliven CV – not that ‘I Am’ article it’s way, way too long and couldn’t be chopped.

  10. There is a great deal of cross over although there is a the danger of merely adding a ‘report’ on a sporting events.

    Take a look at Lowry’s Football Match whilst hearing an audio book of JB Priestley’s Good companions and you can start to see why. [The book opens with a description of a football match for Bruddersford Town]

    I heard a very good argument in favour of Rugby League being cultural on the http://kulchadyet.wordpress.com/ blog.

    It’s easy to make a cultural comparison with things like gymnastics as they were bourne from cultural events historically.

    I’d argue that the way we watch snooker and darts has become a cultural element to society. Yet for it to be relevant to Culture Vultures, any such piece written should be done from that cultural standpoint rather than a sporting one. There will be many shades of grey, though.

    May be someone needs to start us off with an exploration of Henley Royal regatta where crews from Leeds and Bradford rowing clubs will be competing for the first time in an event that has inspired many an artist, from the likes of Jeorome K Jeorome to David Chipperfield to Arthur Melville.

  11. By the way, Promised Land is not just about sport. It’s about the city of Leeds, the Jewish community and the writers who came from Leeds. All these things are connected. Everything is, really.
    The question ‘Is Sport Culture?’ caught me by surprise really. Why shouldn’t it be. At the moment I am at Wimbledon reporting on tennis – hard work but someone’s got to do it – and you can’t separate Murray’s tennis from the cultural aspects of tennis. The idiots who chant ‘Come on Tim’, for example, are from a different culture to Murray. For them, Nice-but-Tim Henman was the Daily Mail in shorts. Wimbledon, and Murray’s progress at SW19, tells us a lot about where society is at the moment.

  12. I don’t particularly have a coherant view either way on this but I would say that sport is the only artform where creativity is fully embraced immediately by all. Moments of artistic beauty are discussed, debated and pored over forever.

    The counter argument I suppose is that there is almost a singular view of what can be classed as artistically beautiful in sport and perhaps it is this lack of debate that prevents it from being elevated to the realms of ‘higher’ culture. Sure there is a beauty in a perfectly crafted defensive performance but it is one that lingers in the memory in quite the same way.

    I would say that anyone who says that sport isn’t culture is being narrow minded but I do not necessarily see the need for the scope of this (or any similar) website to be changed to include something that is covered so in depth by all forms of media.

    Finally just to finish on an often quoted story but relevant here I suppose and one which echos the “ballet of the working classes” argument. According to Rudi van Dantzig who worked closely with him, Nureyev he was obsessed with Johann Cruyff. He was “intrigued by his movements, his virtuosity, the way he could suddenly switch direction and leave everyone behind, and to do it all with perfect control and balance and grace… his mind was so swift. You could see he was thinking so fast ahead. Like a Chess player”. van Dantzig continued “The performance of Cruyff is something that he [Nureyev] would have loved to be able to do. That Magnetism! And in a way, I think Cruyff was a better dancer than Nureyev. He was a better mover”

  13. Crown Green Bowling and Culture are only closely linked, if someone has failed to wash up a half drunk cup of tea, they’ve then left in the changing rooms.

  14. Here’s a contribution from poet Ian McMillan, the Bard of Barnsley:

    Yorkshire Post Friday July 1 2011
    Culture yorkshirepost.co.uk

    Literature and sport are perfect match: Anthony Clavane’s debut book has been named Sports Book of the Year. Ian McMillan on why he chose it as one of his personal favourites.

    As a reader and a sports fan,
    I’m always looking for good
    sports writing that I can get
    my intellectual teeth into.
    Of course, newspapers like
    the Yorkshire Post do a very
    good job of writing about a
    whole range of sport from
    the region but I’m keen on
    what they call these days
    “longform” sports writing,
    massive articles or whole
    books about sport and its
    relationship to the world
    around it.
    I remember with affection
    lost and forgotten magazines
    from the 1990’s like The New
    Ball, a big fat book-sized
    publication dedicated to good
    cricket writing, and Perfect
    Pitch, a magazine that tried to
    do the same for football.
    And maybe that’s why I
    chose Anthony Clavane’s
    book Promised Land as one
    of my books of the year when
    I was asked onto the Simon
    Mayo show on Radio 2 at the
    end of 2010.
    At the time I said that my
    wife, who’s not a huge football
    fan, was captivated by it – by
    the prose, by the sentences
    and by the emotion; and, in
    the end, maybe that’s all you
    want from a book: prose,
    sentences and emotion, in
    that order.
    I’d worked with Anthony
    on a project to get young
    people interested in writing
    about football at the Arvon
    Foundation’s centres in
    Devon and Yorkshire with
    schools from Plymouth and
    Barnsley and I knew that he
    was passionately committed
    to the idea of mixing literature
    and sport, as I am. After all,
    they’re both fine examples of
    human endeavour, although
    you might not always think so
    when you’re watching a dull
    nil-nil draw on a December
    Tuesday night at Oakwell.
    The hardback edition of
    Promised Land that I first
    read on endless train journeys
    across the country is subtitled
    “The Reinvention of Leeds
    United” and it’s a fan’s-eye
    view of the club’s journey over
    the last fifty years to the edge
    of the European Cup and the
    edge of bankruptcy. It’s also
    about growing up Jewish in
    a city that prided itself on its
    modernism at the same time
    as it celebrated its cultural and
    artistic heritage.
    Interestingly, the paperback
    edition is subtitled A Northern
    Love Song, and perhaps that’s
    nearer to the truth.
    I’ll be asking Anthony about
    the change of subtitles when
    we chat together about the
    book at Waterstone’s in
    Leeds next week. In the end,
    I reckon his book really is a
    love song to The North, and
    all the contradictions and little
    irritations about the region
    that make us love it even
    more. I’ll ask him to define
    that love, of course.
    Anthony’s also passionate
    about the literary heritage
    of Leeds, from well-known
    writers like Alan Bennett and
    Keith Waterhouse and David
    Peace to less-celebrated
    writers like Bernard Hare,
    whose book Urban Grimshaw
    and the Shed Crew was
    celebrated as a classic when it
    was published but which has
    since fallen below the radar.
    Anthony himself is now
    part of that heritage. He was
    born in Leeds and after going
    to university he became a
    journalist, originally on arts
    and culture but eventually
    moving to sport, which he
    writes about for the Sunday
    Mirror, covering World
    Cups and Olympics as well
    as endless, endless football
    matches. He’s strongly
    opinionated, which is a good
    thing. He believes that sport
    can be written about in the
    kind of sparkling prose that’s
    often devoted to nature
    writing or to fiction, and he’s
    sure that Leeds can become a
    centre of new writing in
    the same way as London or
    New York.
    I’ll be asking him about all
    these things when we meet
    next Thursday.
    I might slip in a cheeky
    question about what he wrote
    about that game last year
    when Barnsley beat Leeds 5-2.
    Mind you, perhaps I’d better
    not: next Wednesday’s an
    away match for me!
    *Anthony Clavane and Ian
    McMillan in Conversation,
    Leeds Waterstone’s, Albion
    Street, July 7, 7pm. 0113
    2444588.

    PREVIEW
    journey to
    promised land
    Anthony Clavane’s
    Promised Land tells the
    story of the ups and downs
    of Leeds United, but it also
    tells a much wider story.
    Clavane uses the changing
    fortunes of the city’s club
    to chart the similar rises
    and falls of the city itself.
    It looks at the fortunes of
    the city’s Jewish immigrant
    population.
    In May it was named as
    the Football book of the
    Year at the British Sports
    Books Awards, which put
    it in the running for Sports
    Book of the Year – which it
    won this month.
    As well as being about
    sport, Jewish immigration
    and Leeds, the book is also a
    paean to northern working
    class writers

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