How the arts can bring people together, says Anthony Clavane

It was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.

This was strange for two reasons. Firstly, the series is a heartbreaking, and often harrowing, depiction of domestic abuse, poverty and the precariousness of American socio-economic life – so the sudden appearance of a British writer’s tender, and very funny, poem seemed a tad incongruous.

The only other time I can remember a similar thing happening was when John Cooper Clarke’s Evidently Chickentown was played over the closing scenes of a Sopranos episode.

Clarke, like Rosen, is a 
British poet and his inimitably-nasal references to flat beer, cold chips and other Northern inner-city privations appeared to be out of place in the celebrated American 
mobster drama.

The other reason Qualley’s recital of Bear Hunt (to her young daughter in the woods) was strange is that it coincided with me buying a copy of Rosen’s On the Move, Poems About Migration.

The 75-year-old author spent around 40 years writing the verses in this wonderful collection – which earlier this month, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, won the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education Poetry Award.

I have loved Rosen’s work ever since I saw him perform at various events back in the 1980s. He once spent three hours entertaining a group of teachers and their offspring at a weekend literature conference I attended; the kids were absolutely spellbound by his hilarious renditions of such classics as Chocolate Cake, No Breathing In Class and The Car Trip.

When my own kids were young they would laugh uncontrollably at the myriad poems and stories compiled on various audio cassettes.

Lately, quite rightly, he 
has become a national 
treasure. Perhaps, with 
Bear Hunt featuring in one of Netflix’s biggest hits of 2021, he will now become an international treasure. I do
hope so.

Last year Rosen spent two months in a medically induced coma, after becoming ill with Covid-19, and On the Move was published, to great acclaim, just as he was just beginning his recovery.

It is a tribute to the great man that he is equally adept at portraying silly family arguments about chocolate cake as he is at highlighting the experiences of refugees.

He believes it is very important for his readers – and listeners – to hear the voices of refugees. Young readers in particular, he argues, should be encouraged to understand, and indeed value, cultural differences.

This seems to me to be the theme of a refugee arts festival currently taking place in God’s Own County. Platforma 6, which features 25 events taking place across Yorkshire, is bringing together artists, organisations and funders to showcase work, develop networks and, above all, to learn about other people’s experiences.

As Tom Green, the festival’s producer, puts it: “We also want to celebrate the culture of welcome that so many people in Yorkshire have expressed to new arrivals from all over the world.”

I like this idea of a culture of welcome.

The Home Office has been criticised for its painstakingly slow progress in the Afghan resettlement scheme. MPs from all parties were outraged when the government recently revealed 11,000 refugees remained in hotels.

There has already been a tragic accident: the death of a five-year-old boy who fell out of a window in a Sheffield hotel two months ago.

We should be proud of the fact that all 15 local authorities in Yorkshire have agreed to house Afghans on a roughly proportional per capita basis. And hope that the posting 
of anti-refugee leaflets 
in a Scarborough 
hotel was a vile 
one-off: the exception that proves the rule.

Today, a giant puppet called Little Amal will stop in Sheffield, part of 
the closing stages 
of an intercontinental trek from the Syria-Turkey border to Manchester.

This show of solidarity with asylum seekers is another reminder of 
how the arts, as Rosen’s poetry has demonstrated, can bring people together to celebrate cultural diversity.