Interview with Martin Fryer, Director of British Council in Korea

Reporter Cho Doo Won(CHO)   Could you give us brief introduction of the British Council Korea?

Interviewee Martin Fryer (Fryer)   The British Council is a cultural relations organization. So we are working with Korean partners such as yourselves, the cultural foundations but also with other partners, We are working to create a better friendship, particularly in the area of English, the arts and society. We pursue closer relations between the UK and South Korea through cultural exchange programs that bring professionals together, but also through putting individuals who are learning English, or who are being tested for their English standards through language assessment, in the contact with British methodology, British ideas, and very importantly, British culture. We do that face to face with five thousand people here in Seoul through our six centers.

Key to it is the concept of ‘friendly understanding.’ It has to be at a human level where people feel connected in some way to things British and British people feel connected in some way to things Korean. For example, professional developer for English teachers is an important area of what we do. And although there are lots of professional development opportunities for educators in Korea, what we offer is something specially related to the UK; The experience of UK methodology but also visiting the UK to see how our education system works for visitors to learn about the culture and experience it for themselves.

CHO   We are wondering whether there is something you know about GyeongGi Cultural Foundation? Or how was your first impression about GyeongGi Cultural Foundation?

Fryer  As I said, We work with partners here in Korea. For example, Nam June Paik Art Center belongs to the GyeongGi Cultural Foundation. The exchange of culture and cultural products between the two countries is a very important way of learning what’s happening in our society, since contemporary culture in the UK is changing rapidly. Nam June Paik Art Center has its Nam June Paik prize, which is a very prestigious, valuable prize for any group that wins it. As you know, on two occasions, groups of artist from the UK have won the prize. They put on their exhibitions at Nam June Paik Art Center and they learned a lot from that experience. Not just because they can see a lot for works of Nam June Paik but they are also plugging into the way in which that museum operates in GyeongGi-do Province, the way it does its education program and the response of an audience thousands of miles away to your work can have quite a big influence on future works that you do. Cultural relations have to be seen as something that covers quite a wide spectrum of relationships in education, language, the arts and society in general.

CHO   The British Council and GyeongGi Cultural Foundation are co-delivering Active Citizens which is a social leadership training program. Since the program started in 2009, we heard that British Council has been working with public organizations in 46 countries. Could you explain what’s behind the success of Active Citizens? And do you have any best example from Active Citizens projects in London or the UK?

Fryer   We’ve signed an MOU with GyeongGi Cultural Foundation specifically on Active Citizens earlier this year, which is a good example where we work with a partner. We use an existing global program where individuals share an approach to social action projects and get capacity building, but social action projects are very local, trying to make changes in local communities but it links them with quite a large network of others who have done social action projects. There have been about 200,000 people around the world trained in the Active Citizens methodology and about 8,000 projects that have been produced as a result of the Active Citizens program. The maker’s library project is a good example. As you know, the maker’s movement is quite closely linked in with regeneration. Everywhere that has some history has seen the original fabric of a community having to change over time. Just as you men-tioned, the focus in Korea was on agriculture. It’s moved through manufacturing and now it’s moving to high-tech. And you have a movement where artists and social activists are very interested in the way that you bring the community who’ve had to go through all this change. You bring them back into society by acknowledging their contribution. So if their contribution was using old technology, for example with textiles, with traditional craft, and these no longer are relevant because things may not be achieved somewhere else.

CHO   The World is becoming increasingly connected online but as long as I know, the British Council is still focused on offline activities. On the other hand, cultural industry and creative industry are also attracting people’s attention. In this situation, I would like to ask you about the reason why we still need international exchanges, particularly offline exchanges besides creating economic profit.

Fryer   That is appealing particularly to the new generation for whom their lives are very linked in with new technologies. They can learn a lot from looking at how people used their hands in the past. The maker’s movement acknowledges the fact that making things with your hands or designing things with your imagination, with your own creativity is something that is universal. And of course it’s missing in a lot of aspects of modern life.

But with 3D printers, with collaboration spaces where an animator can come with a storyteller, with a teacher, you can create a new approach using some old approaches, old craft and skills. That's why the British Council has done things like the Maker’s Library as a project in a number of countries. It’s exactly what you are talking about, which is looking at ways in which the community that’s undergoing a really rapid change, can rediscover, and be very inclusive about the skills that existed in that community. And of course, often there’s a generation gap. So it’s finding somebody who was used to making something by hand and seeing how you can make that relevant to young people today.

And often that’s done by finding new uses for old techniques. So it might be more artistic or decorative or design. So a lot of regeneration projects in the UK are now looking back the maker’s movement. For example, the UK city of culture this year is Hull, which is a former shipbuilding and fishing community, in the north of England, where those industries, of course, have changed completely so there is almost no commercial shipbuilding anymore and the fishing industry is very slow. But within that community, there are skills that still exist. The projects they are doing as a city of culture are not to say. ‘We are trying to keep this alive as a commercial one, to compete with China or wherever.’ It’s to say ‘We are seeing how others can learn from the heritage right here.’ And it’s quite hard to describe. It’s making people aware of those skills and then finding you’re not going through the apprentice model. The apprentice model would be you pass on that skill and then the apprentice will carry on the business after you. You’re teaching that skill to others who then adapt it for a modern purpose which may be more artistic or very niche and specialized.

CHO   In the UK, what are roles of culture and arts in society? Especially, compared to Korea, what are the differences of social roles of culture and arts?

Fryer   In recent years, I’ve seen a really strong appr-oach to acknowledging that creativity exists in every community, and for it to thrive, there’s lots of value in artists and people from the arts. Acknowledging these as arts and craft skills and finding ways of celebrating those in front of the community, and I see a parallel with the way Korea is doing that with its intangible assets. It’s the same approach. And I think we’ve now got to the stage where the criticism that you’re doing this and it has no purpose, it’s not relevant to the modern world. It’s a very weak criticism. When you think of how learning to do something with your hands has also benefits for your health, for your well-being and particularly in a digital age. Even though garments made using traditional methods will not be something that everybody can afford to keep employment in a community. But it may provide leisure and hobby-benefits to a community.

It can be relevant to the new technologies because what the new technologies are doing is they’re sharing this very quickly. So if somebody is interested in learning a technique from the other side of the world and incorporating them into what they do, for instance in design or in a story through illustration or animation, they can do that because that maker sitting in one place can connect with a maker sitting in another place and they can create something new together. And I think that’s very powerful. Of course, there’s power of things like Instagram and Facebook and of course, YouTube. Although there’s lots of pretty mindless, unproductive, rather addictive material in social media, there’s also a lot of very niche, very valuable material there. I think the role of the museum, the role of organizations such as yours, is to link up these various movements in a way.

Somebody making ceramics in Icheon, in Gwangju in GyeongGi province, their designs and the way they make things can be shared very easily thanks to social media. That can influence a maker somewhere else. Plus, of course, link them up so that one day, they may have face-to-face contacts and then they collaborate.

CHO   GyeongGi Cultural Foundation has been carrying out various international exchange projects. I would like to ask you if you have any suggestions for effective mutual exchange through your experience.

Fryer   We’re doing quite a lot in both with the makers’ library but also with what we call Connected Cities. When we use the phrase “connected cities”, we’re thinking in terms of connections between British cities and Korean cities but also the fact that technology, the connection. With 5G, you’ve got one of the fastest connections in the world. It can be harnessed in a very positive way because if you want to learn a traditional craft from Jeju and you’re sitting in Seoul, you can link up very easily and cheaply through that technology and connect yourself with a maker somewhere else or a designer.

And then the other way Connected Cities works is of course through the audience because the connectivity that you have through digital communication, as you know, already inside the museum, means that people have access to a lot of background information through their smartphone as they tour an exhibition. They can be interactive. They can comment. But it also means they can actually create as they go around. So if you have a musician who’s downloaded music onto something which is accessible through your smartphone as you tour around the district. And you can curate your own mix as you go around. It’s creating all sorts of new experiences. That’s on the cultural front. I think, for instance, your instant regeneration because I think part of regeneration is to get people onto the museum, into the community but learn about the story of that community in a way that is relevant to the lives now. And most young people find that relevant through social media because as I said, they are very interactive and commenting a lot.

CHO   The UK developed technology and also philosophy for regeneration project areas. I mean, our GyeongGi Sangsang Campus, actually, that is a historical inheritance of modern architecture that was built in the 1970’s and 80’s. And also that was a center for research of agriculture at that time. Nowadays, it is a building that should be reused and rehabilitated for the community. Programs like of Active Citizens should train many community leaders and teach them how to be involved in the community for the future. Any lessons from the UK?

Fryer   In London, there are some places that were previously craftworks and now are transferred to a museum. And this impact is not only domestic but also international; it is very famous. It has a positive impact, I think. Because they use a past station that used to generate power, it saved a building which is part of London’s story. So rather than always commission a new building, an architect, that kind of impacts of using an old building for a new purpose, for a cultural purpose creates a lot of benefit to that community around it because it makes a more cosmopolitan, attractive place to live. You get an influx of visitors from all over the world. Of course, it provides access to a piece of industrial history which otherwise either could have been knocked down or used for commercial use into apartments or shopping center or something. I think what works successfully in the UK is you have a mix of this so that regeneration projects in places like Liverpool, and in Hull, this year’s city of culture in the UK, and Bristol. Bristol used old industrial buildings as cultural museums, cultural centers, galleries, as a good mixed use. It preserves the look of the city. Another example is Newcastle. The Baltic Museum in Newcastle is created out of old silos where they stored the grain before it goes on the ships. And I see they’ve done the same with the new museum in South Africa.

So it’s a good model. Now, Bilbao, they used a different model which is to put a completely new building in a district that was in danger of becoming very depressed because it was an industrial area but the industries all moved but you have a space and you can draw people to that museum because of its fantastic architecture. So there are various different ways of doing it.

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Of course Korea’s got exactly that. Here, you have two examples very close by; Seoul Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art. You’ve got old buildings that have been repurposed as museums. The Seoul Museum of Art uses the building of old supreme. And the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art in Seoul uses old intelligence service buildings. And buildings that are on a footprint of the buildings linked to the palace and to the government. In the case of the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art, they have a bit of a dark past because these were interrogation centers from the past and some people may well have liked them to be knocked down. But in fact, they turned into something which is open to everybody, more inclusive, and has to do with culture and the arts. A lot of people want to go there. And then you’ve got the Bill Bauer model with the Dongdaemoon Design Plaza(DDP). Because the Zaha Hadid building with the DDP, you removed the stadium and you put a completely new building which is very high-tech, Interestingly, however, one of the things I like about the DDP is in removing the baseball stadium, they uncovered archaeological sites which are exposed as an open air museum and the structure of the Zaha Hadid building almost flows around those. So you are constantly reminded of the history on which you stand literally and the modernity which is represented by the Zaha Hadid building.

I think what is also important is international competition. So sometimes Korean architects such as the National Museum of Modern Contemporary Art, Korea(MMCA) and Seoul Museum of Art and an international architect in the case of Nam June Paik, I think it’s a German artist. And in the case of DDP, a British architect.

CHO   I would like to ask you the last question. The UK is well-known for football, the Premier League.

Football is a kind of culture because people want to see and to enjoy in their daily life. Football is also a philosophy. Every game is different according to the trainer’s aims, tactics and strategies. Does the British Council have any program that shares the UK’s football philosophy with other countries?

Fryer   The program we run globally with the Premier League is called Premier Skills. Premier Skills is a program we’ve taken to many countries, including Korea. It is primarily aimed at young people, because it’s a way of exposing them to issues about teamwork and leadership. Because as you say, football is a source of philosophy in the sense that each game is different and it depends on the tactics and the strategy of the trainer. But it also depends of course on the way in which the team comes together. Premier Skills with schools has two purposes. One is it uses English. It helps with some very basic English language tools. The second thing about it is that it looks at how a successful football team uses leadership skills, uses teamwork not just to win but to have a satisfying game. And it tries to teach life skills through the metaphor of football. Cooperation collaboration; somebody has to lead, everybody plays a part. The person who scores the goal acknowledges the role of everybody else in leading to them being the goal scorer.

And particularly in communities with disadvantages, football is a very accessible game. You don’t need a lot of equipment; you just need a ball and a piece of flatland. So Premier Skills works very well in countries where you’ve got big disadvantages to communities. For example in Brazil and South Africa, you found that Premiere Skills brings the brand, the propaganda about Britain is a home of football, Britain has the Premier League, which one of the most popular leagues, if not the most popular league in the world.

So that attracts young people and then when they work with the Premier Skills trainers, they get exposed to, the values that lie at the heart of gamesmanship, of games playing which are relevant whether you are an amateur or a professional. Concepts of fair play, concepts of respect for everybody regardless of whether they have a difference race, they have a different color, different gender. Nowadays women’s football and men’s football are both international sports. So attracting more young girls and women to participate, get after their health. It’s good for your health. But it’s not just health but also these team building, collaboration · cooperation skills and leadership skills that are really important for life anyway.

And you said football is a culture. Definitely it is a culture. And at its best of course, it’s about people identifying with a community and it’s grown from being very local, as you know, so these were local teams which drew on local talent to coming international so they draw on talent from all over the world now. But they build up an identity which makes people feel that they belong to something and they celebrate with each other, which is, particularly with live games, going to see it live, is a good community experience even if it has become very international.

CHO   Mr. Fryer! Many thanks for your interview today.

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