The Art Britain Ignored

One of the things we’ll do on this blog is shed a little more light on, or otherwise discuss further, some of the ideas, people, and places, that we mention in our book “Museums and Well-being“. We thought we’d kick this off with a post about one of the people who we mention in the book and who we think is an important, interesting, and inspiring person: Naseem Khan.

Naseem Fatima Khan OBE [dharma name: Myoji] (11 August 1939 – 8 June 2017) was a British journalist, activist, Muslim, Zen Buddhist, cultural historian and educator who was a significant influence in effecting policy change concerning cultural diversity in the arts and culture sector in Britain. Naseem Khan’s work is an importance voice in the canon of British Arts; and her ideas are ones that resonate with us.

In many respects Khan’s work begins in the wider consciousness with an important book she wrote in 1976 entitled The Arts Britain Ignores: The Arts of Ethnic Minorities in Britain. This was really the first major study highlighting the integral part played in UK culture by black and Asian artists. That same year Khan also founded the Minority Arts Advisory Service (MAAS).

“They add variety and colour to the texture of life, as well as stretching knowledge and understanding.”

Naseem Khan – The Arts Britain Ignores

Naseem Khan read English at Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall, and then worked as a journalist and theatre editor, at Time Out. It was this job she jumped ship from the work on her seminal work “The Arts Britain Ignores” for the Commission for Racial Equality. Her work is a mark of a serious intellectual, activist stance in the Arts that should be championed, remembered, and built upon. Something conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer, and curator Rasheed Areen does in a chapter entitled “The Art Britain Really Ignores” in his 1984 book “Making Myself Visible”; which is a useful critique of the original book.

More recently, in 2016, Khan built upon this work herself. She undertook a project, What Difference Does Difference Make? Which explored how cultural policy and practice responded to the changing ethnic diversity of Britain. Its aim was to understand the evolution of cultural practice since ‘The Arts Britain Ignores’, and whether it was becoming more or less inclusive and multicultural, as well as set agendas for the future of arts policy and practice in the UK. More on this can be read here.

For her own part Naseem Khan had a lifelong interest in dance, which saw her taking lessons from Pandit Ram Gopal, the person credited with bringing Indian dance to Britain, Khan is said to have appeared in a few films as a dancer. Later training in Bharatanatyam from Professor US Krishna Rao, and UK Chandrabhaga Devi. She also acted as co-director of the Academy of Indian Dance, now known as Akademi. In 1982, Khan organised the Alternative Festival of India, in Holland Park, which highlighted the British Asian artists ignored by the official Festival of India which was only showing artists from India and was focused on past Indian heritage.

She wrote for the Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesman. As well as working as a freelance arts consultant, and was for a time the Head of Diversity at the Arts Council of England (1996-2003).

One of the things that is so fascinating about Naseem Khan is the way she was able to bridge areas of seeming difference in her own life, something she explored in relation to her religiosity and her identification throughout her life as a Muslim, and her practice as a Zen Buddhist. In an article entitled “Muslim, Zen, and Proud“.

What’s more Khan didn’t simply dabble in Buddhism, but she took her lay vows, and she clearly had a deep reverence and experience with the practice, one she also explored in print. We particularly enjoyed the way Khan expresses one of the great points of conflict in Western Buddhist circles between those who’ve concentrated on building beautiful serene retreat centres, and those who have focussed on a more urban street approach:

“If William Blake could find heaven in a grain of sand, then shouldn’t we look for it in a thrown-away tube ticket and a MacDonald hamburger? Is it really necessary to retreat to settings of unimaginable tranquillity in order to attain tranquillity? And even if you got it, how long would it last?”

Naseem Khan – Where Can a Buddhist Escape Herself?

If you’d like to see how we incorporate Naseem Khan into our book, well you could buy a copy here: https://routledge.pub/Museums-and-Well-being