We don’t know where we’re going

I've appreciated Gary Younge's recent reflections on the Election result in The Guardian (click here and here). The following quotes align with my reflections following the result:

The Brexit vote revealed a fundamental division within our nation and the Election result shows that we remain a divided nation and don't know how to address that reality - 'When Big Ben called time on Thursday night, we saw clear evidence of a political realignment that the media and the political establishment had dismissed with hostility, and now regarded with confusion. We saw a polity that has lost touch with its people; a political culture unmoored from the electorate, and a mainstream media that drifted along with it. The election did not create that dislocation; it was merely the clearest and least deniable manifestation of it so far. We are in new territory. And we don’t know where we’re going.'

Brexit unleashed a wave of self-centred isolationism which is not representative of the majority within our nation and the Election result indicated a corrective to this - 'During the EU referendum, much of what was wrong with Britain was blamed on foreigners – either the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels who took our money at the expense of the NHS, or immigrants, who, it was claimed, took our jobs and plundered our benefits. But this time round, there was no one else to blame. There was a concern in that room in Wembley that Britain had become too harsh and unforgiving. One woman said she thought things had swung too far the wrong way, and that it was time to “make things fairer”. Another agreed. “We need to show people we care about them,” she said.'

'For far too long, cynicism has been the dominant force in British electoral politics, willing failure at every turn. When they saw large, engaged crowds, the political class and its stenographers in the media dismissed them. They did not appeal to people’s better nature because they assumed people did not have one. Mistaking morality for naivety, they presumed that people were motivated solely by self-interest – in the narrowest and most venal sense – and could not be moved by principle.'

'One of the most important lessons, and one that goes beyond our borders, from this result is that there is a response to the multiple pathologies of xenophobia, racism and rabid nationalism, bequeathed by globalisation, that does not demand pandering to bigotry.'

We are seeing a backlash to the unfairness of austerity cuts which have targeted those already poor whilst allowing those already rich to continue to make money - 'After the 2010 election, the Conservatives insisted on a period of austerity, claiming that it was necessary to repair public finances in the wake of the global banking crisis. The poor and the public sector have borne the brunt of these cuts – but after seven years, the pain of austerity has spread well beyond the very poorest ... As this sense of precariousness broadened to touch those who had never felt it before, and the desperation felt by an ever-widening cross-section of society deepened even further, we should not be surprised that there was an electoral backlash.'

'The print media are losing their influence in part because people receive much more information online nowadays but also because the right-wing press stopped try to report news objectively and began reporting news polemically (and, as a result, can no longer be trusted as an accurate source of news) - 'But while it was possible to see how most voters had formed their first impressions of Corbyn and May from the image presented by the media, what became clear to me while I was covering the campaign was that the impact of Fleet Street was not decisive. Thanks to the proliferation of online media sources, the decline in newspaper readership and weakening loyalties to established brands, the press does not have the same electoral clout it once did.'

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Deacon Blue - The Believers.

Can these dry bones live?

Here is the sermon that I preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields during the 10.00am Eucharist:

‘April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.’ Those are the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s iconic poem entitled ‘The Waste Land'. April was the cruellest month for the protagonist of ‘The Waste Land’ because the new life of Spring mocked the lack of the life - the depth of death-like despair - that he felt in relation to his life and his society.

The spirit of the Lord set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones ... and they were very dry. Today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures (Ezekiel37:1-14) begins in a similar place to ‘The Waste Land’. The valley of dry bones that Ezekiel enters in his vision equates to Eliot’s poem because it is a place with all the life sucked out of it, a place of dryness, desert and death. In his poem Eliot was articulating ‘the disillusionment of a younger post–World War I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era’, while for Ezekiel the Valley of Dry Bones equated to Israel’s exile from the Promised Land and the sense of helplessness and hopelessness felt by the whole house of Israel and summed up in what was a common saying of their time, "Our bones are dried up."

During Lent we actively choose to go into the dryness of the wilderness and be cut off, together with Jesus, in order to pray but there are also times and seasons in our lives and in our society when we think and feel that we are in a Valley of Dry Bones. Meg Warner draws on her personal experience in our Lent book to explain how this feels when it affects us personally. She writes, ‘It may be that you are stuck in the depths of Lent, perhaps facing an impossible choice, or perhaps feeling that there are no choices open to you at all … You may simply be carrying the weight of an unfulfilled longing for something that appears to be quite impossible … Your longing may be for work, for home, for intimacy, for a child, or for a number of other things which you lack and without which life feels unpalatable or pointless.’

In ‘The Waste Land’ and Ezekiel’s Vision, the sense of hopelessness is political as well as personal. Similarly, there is much that we may wish to lament as we look at life on Planet Earth today. We are witnessing the death of environments and species around our world. ‘More than 700 mammals and birds currently threatened with extinction already appear to have been adversely affected by climate change, according to a major review of scientific studies’; a situation not helped by Donald Trump’s most recent Executive Order. Climate change, poverty and conflict are forcing mass movements of people across our world and we are, perhaps, witnessing the death of compassion in response to those who are migrants; as hostile environments are being created for immigrants and travel bans or walls used to keep people out.

Austerity measures are increasingly causing crises in education, healthcare, prisons, and social care. In their powerful book, The Body Economic, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu show that austerity is having a "devastating effect" on public health in Europe and North America. Thousands of additional suicides and millions of extra cases of depression have been recorded across the two continents since governments started introducing austerity programmes. ”Recessions can hurt,” Stuckler and Basu write, “But austerity kills." 

To give just one example of the impact that austerity cuts are having in he UK, Lady Jane Campbell wrote recently in The Guardian that while the UK has been a world leader on disability rights, now ‘current and future generations of disabled people face the slow, inexorable slide back towards social death once again.’ This is because ‘Disabled people are confronting the spectre of re-institutionalisation as councils and clinical commissioning groups limit the amount they spend on individual packages of support.’ The Care Act, she argues, ‘fails to ensure disabled people’s right to independent living, and swingeing cuts in health, social care and benefits are eroding the availability of support and people’s right to exercise choice and control.’

Eliot’s poem provides only a hint of hope for those who find themselves in their own Waste Land but Ezekiel’s response in his vision is significantly different from that of The Waste Land’s protagonist. Ezekiel spoke prophetically about the situation of sterility and death in which he found himself. We might expect the prophetic voice in that situation to be the voice of Eliot’s protagonist, a lament for all that has been lost and a keening cry for all that has died. Instead, Ezekiel’s prophecy was a word of life. Ezekiel’s prophecy was that the Lord God would cause breath to enter the dry bones so they would live.

As a result, Ezekiel’s prophecy shows us God working with what is there. There is no replacement of the dry bones and no moving of Ezekiel to a better valley. Ezekiel’s vision promises that it is precisely in the place where hope seems to have died that resurrection will occur. This means that God starts with what is already there, the dry bones; so this prophecy is about recognising, valuing and using what we already have. It is about beginning with our assets, not our deficits, and recognising that addressing, instead of avoiding, the problem is actually the way to life and change and resolution.

In their book The Abundant Community John McKnight and Peter Block argue that, by contrast, our consumer society constantly tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside of our immediate resources and community. They suggest that when we outsource health care, child care, recreation, safety and satisfaction, we are actually being trained to become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbours. It is, therefore, arguable that our social fabric – our sense of real community - has been unravelled by consumerism and its belief that however much we have, it is not enough. To recognise that in ourselves and in our communities we already have the capacity to address our human needs, in ways that systems never can, is to challenge the mantra of consumerism.

In the Membership Pack for HeartEdge, the new network of churches St Martin’s is initiating, we argue that this is equally true for churches, their congregations and communities. That we can do unbelievable things by starting with our assets, not our deficits; that we all have gifts to offer, even the most seemingly marginal among us. Using our particular assets (our skills, experience, insights and ideas) we have the God-given power to create a hope-filled life and can become architects of a future where we want to live.

Following Ezekiel’s prophecy further we can then see that the individual dry bones are joined together to form skeletons on which sinews and skin grow to fashion living bodies. St Paul also used this same illustration of a body with each part in its right place playing its rightful role, in his case to create a picture of the Church as the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). Again, this suggests that we can do unbelievable things, but this time the focus is on our doing them together; starting with each another’s assets, not our deficits. Sharing our particular assets with others and receiving those of others fosters a wider understanding and models the practice of hospitality. McKnight and Block suggest we can nurture voluntary, self-organizing structures in our communities that will reveal our gifts and allow them to be shared to the greatest mutual benefit. By doing this we will find our way to becoming abundant communities that open space for generosity and cooperation.

Similarly, in HeartEdge, we are saying to the Church that rather than beginning with our hurts and our stereotypes, as happens in a community of fear, and finding a hundred reasons why we can’t do things or certain kinds of people don’t belong, if we take off labels like disabled or wealthy or migrant or evangelical or single and instead see qualities like passion or commitment or generosity or enthusiasm or humility, then there’s no limit to what a community of hope can do.

Starting with our assets and those of others around us provides the structure or skeleton that God can then animate with his Spirit – his qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – to truly bring renewed life, change and growth. That is the journey of Lent, because it is the journey of Christ’s Passion; through the experience of crucifixion and death to resurrection and renewal, and beyond.

We may well, in some senses, inhabit a Valley of Dry Bones or a Waste Land personally or socially. All is not lost, however, as in Ezekiel’s vision by starting where we are with our assets and by coming together to release and share our gifts we find the power to create a hope-filled life and become the architects of a future where we want to live. It may even be that we need to experience the scarcity of the Waste Land in order to then see, appreciate and value the new life of God’s kingdom. As one song says ‘… sometimes, you need the darkness / In order to ever see the light.’ (Michael McDermott, I Know A Place)

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Michael McDermott - I Know A Place.

Sermon: Homelessness Sunday

Here is the sermon I preached today for Homelessness Sunday at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. This passage from Isaiah (9. 1 - 4) which we have heard throughout Advent and Christmas provides a paradigm through which we can consider our current experience of homelessness. It enables us to reflect on the journey that those leaving the streets make from darkness to light and to consider what the breaking of the yoke of oppression in a nation in order that all people experience abundance and joy might mean today for those who are homeless.

To be homeless is in a very real sense to walk in darkness. Those who are rough sleeping are exposed and vulnerable in the darkness of the night. It is difficult to avoid slipping into hopelessness and despair. In the dark you are invisible and that cloak of invisibility is what seems to cover people who embarrass society (us) with their need, their lack of a place to be, their unbelonging. Our Christmas Appeal told the story of Richard, whose story shows how quickly and easily people can move from relative stability and security into the dark place that is homelessness. Two and a half years ago Richard was a stay at home dad living in a nice apartment, in a nice complex in a very nice part of town. His relationship with his wife broke down and he started sleeping rough over the road from where he had been living so he could look after his children and take them to school. From that point onwards, he says, “Things started going downhill.”

When people are in this dark place it is very hard to then move back into the light. It has taken Richard over two to get to the point where he is leaving the support of The Connection at St Martin’s in order to stand on his own two feet. With the help of staff at The Connection, Richard is now living in Building Prospects, affordable housing managed by The Connection in Westminster, where he sees his children regularly. He has also worked hard to gain skills, completing the Build a Bike course, passing the European Computer Driving Licence and completing a year-long course in massage therapy – all to be able support himself in the future, as his eyesight declines. He has also sought solace by working in the Art Room, alongside Mark, Art Tutor at The Connection. “I do a lot of art,” he said, because “you have to do something which takes things out of your head… I now do it four mornings a week and it helps. It really does.” Richard’s next step is to work as a trainee in a hostel for homeless women, putting into practice some of the skills he’s learnt while at The Connection.

Richard’s story is of a slow but steady return from the darkness but the experience of trying to leave the darkness is not always so consistent. I recently talked and prayed with another homeless man who has had support from The Connection and from our church. He has had periods of getting clean from drugs and as a result being able to find accommodation and hold down jobs, as well as periods where he has relapsed and lost the positive progress he had earlier achieved. This man was very aware of how easy it is to relapse and of the extent to which he was in a situation where the temptation to relapse was very strong and surrounded him constantly. It was for that reason he had sought prayer and the support of a regular worshipping community.

Our reading from Isaiah promises the light of hope, the lifting of burdens and the smashing of oppression. Homeless individuals can be supported into new homes, as we have heard, and vulnerable people prevented from becoming homeless. That is a message which has been part of our history here at St Martin’s as well as being part of our ongoing ministry. Our worship on Homeless Sunday is an opportunity to celebrate work that tackles the problem of homelessness and the stories of people who are no longer struggling with their housing. Here, at St Martin’s, we particularly celebrate the work of The Connection, the Vicar’s Relief Fund and the Sunday International Group which is differing ways bring the light of hope into the lives of those who are their users and guests. The Connection helps by providing a range of specialist services, all under one roof, which enable people to address their homelessness and make the necessary steps away from the streets so they can re-enter society and live ‘normally’ again. The Vicar’s Relief Fund provides a rapid response service by awarding small but essential grants to help alleviate housing difficulties for vulnerable people in their time of need helping prevent homelessness happening in the first place and our Sunday International Group provides hospitality to those who have no recourse to public funds.

This means that our engagement here with homelessness is extensive and significant, but the paradigm provided by our passage from Isaiah suggests that by themselves these organisations and services are not enough to prevent homelessness occurring. For that to happen, our society and our social and political structures need to be transformed in ways that prevent homelessness happening in the first place. The passage says that before a sense of abundance and joy in which all can share can be seen and felt within the nation, a yoke or rod of oppression has to be broken. That yoke or rod of oppression is the social and political structures which cause homelessness within our society. The extreme growth in the numbers rough sleeping across the UK and in Westminster is not attributable simply to the individuals themselves but also to political policies that have left those individuals unable to remain in the security and stability of their homes.

Shelter recently claimed that two families in London are made homeless every hour. Their prediction, based on government homeless statistics, is that 1,260 families in the capital will lose their home in the next month and 7,370 over the next six months - the equivalent of a household every 34 and 35 minutes respectively. The number reported sleeping rough in England has more than doubled between 2010 and 2015. In 2015, the last year for we currently have figures, the increase was 30%. There was a time in the UK when rough sleeping seemed to have been nearly eradicated but we know, only too well, from our own experience here in Westminster that that is now far from being the case.

What has changed in that time? The government’s reforms surrounding Welfare have included caps to the local housing allowance, possible reductions in the amount paid to supported accommodation providers, individual sanctions and caps on the total amount of benefit for individual households. The effects of these Welfare reforms have been wide-ranging and impactful. While welfare reform is certainly a threat to increasing homelessness, cuts to revenue budgets in local authorities, with consequences for staffing levels in homelessness services, social work and related departments have also bitten hard. On Friday it was announced that Sunderland’s budget for homelessness services is facing a 100% cut. In the next round of austerity cuts other councils will be forced to take similar measures. The pressures of cuts in local authority budgets don’t just affect the homelessness service itself. They are being felt in lots of areas which meet (or should meet) the needs of homeless people, such as mental health care, substance abuse and recovery services, educational welfare services etc.

Welfare reforms and austerity cuts have been introduced at a time when we are not building enough new places for people to live: ‘Current rates of housebuilding in England are below half the level needed to meet existing and anticipated demand for new homes’. A further factor in this mix of government policies is the fact that migrants from the Eastern EU countries must first work for 12 months before they qualify for any state benefit. Should someone from one of those countries become unemployed, they are therefore at greater risk of becoming street homeless. This is reflected in the fact that 36% of rough sleepers came from one of those countries; a 188% increase since 2009/10.

While political policies are not the only factor causing homelessness in the UK, the combined effect of welfare reforms, austerity cuts, immigration controls and a lack of affordable housing has come at a time when there has been a considerable increase in rough sleeping across the country and especially here in Westminster. Therefore I do see this combination of government policies as a yoke of oppression causing homelessness and making the journey back from darkness to light more difficult to achieve. As Isaiah states, the yoke of oppression must be broken before there is any widespread prospect for rough sleepers and sofa surfers to experience abundance or joy within our nation.

Yet our reading insists that the light of hope remains. Where can that light be found in relation to our current political and social situation? Our worship on Homeless Sunday is intended as an opportunity to take our engagement with homelessness a step higher. How can we do that? Our newest initiative funded by our Christmas Appeal is the St Martin’s Frontline Network, through which we are seeking to find ways of transforming the social and political structures which cause the increase in rough sleeping that we see all around us.

The Frontline Network is the network of support workers who request grants from the Vicar’s Relief Fund on behalf of their clients. These support workers are on the frontline working with vulnerable housed people across the UK and they are, as a result, able to identify the issues and policies which cause homelessness to occur. The Frontline Network seeks to harness the ideas, energy and experience of those at the frontline working alongside homeless and vulnerably housed people in order to make a positive change in reducing homelessness in the UK. I wonder, therefore, whether we, at St Martin’s, can work together with the Frontline Network to build relationships, develop ideas and communicate the experience of the frontline to policy makers so that our social and political structures can be transformed in ways which prevent homelessness happening in the first place.

Were that to happen, we would see in our own day and time the light of hope, the lifting of burdens and the smashing of oppression of which Isaiah spoke. We would enable the journey, from darkness to light, that those sleeping rough, like Richard, have to travel, to become less burdensome and difficult. The story Richard told for the Christmas Appeal ended with him saying, that “in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be out of The Connection … [but] everything I’ve learned here, everything to get into work, everything for the skills is down to this place.” If the yoke of oppression caused by current government policies were to be broken, more rough sleepers would be able to say the same and the flow of people joining them on the streets would reduce. May that become our experience as we support not only The Connection, the VRF and the Sunday International Group but now also the Frontline Network too.

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Sinead O'Connor - Streets Of London.

Start:Stop - Steering through storms

Bible reading

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:35-41)

Meditation

Jesus' reaction to the storm (to sleep) and his response to his disciples after the stilling of the storm ("Why are you frightened? Have you still no faith?") suggest that he had expected the disciples to ride out the storm both by acting as responsible sailors and trusting in God to see them through. Jesus is able to sleep because he trusts his disciples to get him safely to the other side of Lake Galilee, even in the midst of a storm. After all, many of them are fishermen, experienced sailors, while he is, as a carpenter, a landlubber. The disciples know boats and they know the lake, it makes sense that he would trust them to sail safely from one side of the lake to the other. He trusts them enough that he can catch up on some sleep while they get on with doing what they are actually very good at doing. The disciples have skills and knowledge of sailing and Jesus expects them to use these and trusts that they will use them well.

Instead, they are panicked by the storm, forget to do the things that sailors should do in a storm and, as a result, come close to going under. The problem comes, of course, when they don’t use their skills and knowledge well. The strength of the storm is such that they panic and don’t take actions (like taking down the sail, bailing out the water, and steering against the storm rather than with it) which would have enabled them to ride out the storm and get to the other side of the lake. They made the situation worse by panicking and it was their panic which could have got them killed.

This, I think, is why they are rebuked by Jesus for lack of faith. Essentially, he was saying, “If you had trusted in God to see you through the storm, you would have done the sensible things that would have enabled you to survive. But, because you didn’t trust in God to see you through, you panicked, didn’t take sensible actions, nearly got us all drowned, and needed me to intervene to save you.”

This seems a salutory tale for us in the unanticipated storms of life – whether, the credit crunch and the recession it caused or more personal storms such as ill health or redundancy. Instead of panicking and looking for a miraculous instant solution to the storm in which we find ourselves, the faithful thing is to act responsibly, securing what can be secured and steering our way through the storm, trusting that we will come through, battered and blown, but alive nevertheless.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, help us respond to the challenge of your question to the disciples as we face the storm of this time of austerity. May we trust, and in our trust, take the responsible and sensible decisions that will secure our futures and those of others, both those we support and those who depend on us.

Steer us through storms, as we trust in the skills and experience you have given.

Lord Jesus, guide us as we make decisions in difficult times – the storms of life. Enable us to take the long view as we decide rather than acting only in the short-term, enable us to act in the wider interests of others – the common good – rather than thinking and acting primarily in our own self-interest.

Steer us through storms, as we trust in the skills and experience you have given.

Lord Jesus, thank you for giving each of us skills and experience. We pray that these will not be negated by a sense of panic in times of storm and difficulty but that we will trust enough in all you have given us to believe that if we use our skills and knowledge well, we will come through.

Steer us through storms, as we trust in the skills and experience you have given.

Lord Jesus, we pray for the EU and Greece in this week of crisis and decision. May all those who negotiate this week over the fate of these nations and their economies know your leading and take responsible actions which will enable all involved to draw back from disaster.

Steer us through storms, as we trust in the skills and experience you have given.

Trust in God, trust in God’s leading, trust in responsible actions, trust in the skills and experience God has given, trust in the midst of storms and difficulties. May those blessings of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and remain with you always. Amen.

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Cat Stevens - Morning Has Broken.

Abundance in scarcity

We live in a time of austerity where our government is implementing a series of sustained reductions in public spending, intended to reduce the budget deficit. Initiated in 2010 the austerity programme is currently expected to extend to at least 2018.

As a result, we live in a time of relative scarcity compared with the preceding years of a booming economy. There are important questions to be asked, particularly in the light of the coming General Election, about the fairness of where the cuts have fallen.

The reality of living in a time of scarcity has parallels to the feeding of the five thousand where Jesus and those with him are in the wilderness with no food except for the five small barley loaves and two small fish offered by a boy in the crowd. Jesus’ disciples essentially despair in the light of their situation as there is nowhere to go to buy food, they have insufficient money for the numbers involved and the boy’s lunch is too small to share with any but a few.

Jesus, however, brings abundance in the place of scarcity. He prepares the crowd to eat, gives thanks to God and begins to share the little that they have. As the sharing commences, the food is found to be sufficient for everyone’s needs with 12 baskets of leftover bread gathered together at the end of the meal.

How did this happen? We don’t know. It was a miracle certainly, but whether the miracle was a supernatural multiplication of food or whether the miracle was that the sharing of the boy’s lunch enabled others to also share food that they had but were keeping to themselves, we simply don’t know for sure. The result, however, was one that we need to find ways of experiencing in times of austerity; abundance in the face of scarcity.

In my previous parish we formed a Sophia Hub. This is essentially a support service for those wanting to benefit the local community by starting a social enterprise. Within the package of support provided, we included a Timebank. This is a form of volunteering in which the time people give is banked and exchanged. The members of the Timebank offer their skills to other members and make requests of help or input that they would like. Every hour that members spend in helping another member in some way is banked and can be spent by receiving help from others in the Timebank. No money changes hands but the 60+ members have now exchanged more than 340 hours since the Timebank was set up.

At a recent Timebank skills swap event that following offers were made: training on selling through Ebay, help with using social media, crotcheting with plastic bags, basic maths help, meditation, massage or Reiki sessions, legal consumer advice, bread making, creative writing, marketing advice, mobile website building, English as a foreign language, French conversation, making toiletries from natural products and a stress management workshop. By exchanging their time and skills, these are people who are experiencing abundance in a time of scarcity.

St Paul quotes Jesus as teaching that it is more blessed to give than to receive and Christ sets us an example of one who gives all that he had without counting the cost or asking anything in return. Yet, the reality is that when we give, we do receive although often not in the same way that we have given. Jesus spoke about this reality when said, ‘Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’

This is a promise about abundance in scarcity which is demonstrated by the feeding of the five thousand. But it is predicated on our willingness to give, to share, as members of the Timebank do in Seven Kings and, perhaps, as those in the crowd on the mountain in Galilee also learned to do on the day of this miracle.

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New forms of interconnectivity?

Great to see that, through The Tanks and the next Turbine Hall installation, Tate Modern is to feature more relational art, much of it also being art which critiques commercialisation. So, Charlotte Higgins writes in the guardian:
'The desire for live encounters, by both artists and audiences, was partly a reaction to the economic and political climate, said Dercon. Artists and audiences were expressing a disillusion with the impersonal systems that dominate modern life, and reaching for the human encounter.

"I'm not going to talk about politicians and banks, but we are completely surrounded by systems that do things to us and at us. Performance proposes a new form of interconnectivity."

The desire to focus work without physical form, that cannot straightforwardly be bought and sold, may also express a wider dissatisfaction among the art world for the vagaries of the art market and the extreme commercialisation of art before the financial crash of 2008.

According to Catherine Wood, Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance, "there is a desire for community among artists, and a desire to get away from the dominant news story about art, which is 'Damien Hirst sells for £50m'".

Serota added: "At a time of austerity, people are rethinking their values and looking at art that doesn't straightforwardly have a market … Artists want to make work that engages directly with audiences and is not so susceptible to commercial development."

Tino Sehgal, whose Turbine Hall commission will be unveiled next week, says in his guardian interview:

"Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects," he says. "I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years – that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding. I'm not against material things – I just don't work with them."

Objects, he suggests, offer false promises of stability and security ..."

Higgins explains that:

"Sehgal did not train as an artist: instead he studied dance and political economy, in tandem, in Berlin and Essen. A peculiar combination, you might think, but for him each unlocks the other. The paradox of economics, he believes, is that "we derive income from transforming the earth into goods, but you can't keep on transforming the earth. I felt I wanted to study that." And dance? "Dance for me was a solution. In the sense that I could solve this paradox at least for myself. It was about how I can derive an income from something that does not involve this material transformation. At the same time, I'm not against the economy or the idea of the product. Art is essentially something that is produced. What I think is overestimated is the power and potential of things. My work is a product, though – not a thing."

Still, Sehgal belongs in the art world rather than in the world of the performing arts: museums rather than theatres provide the best environment for tackling the kinds of questions that interest him. "The museum is a place where we think about how to produce material things. That is my question – not the question of choreography, which is 'How can a body move?', but 'What can we do instead of producing objects?'"

The paradox which doesn't seem to be fully addressed, however, is that it is commercial activity (galleries and sponsors) which funds much of the art which critiques commercialisation. Sehgal may dispense with contracts when he sells his works (that is, the right to perform them) to museums but they sell nevertheless for five-figure sums, something that, as Higgins notes, has prompted his critics to cry emperor's new clothes. Similarly, Tate director Nicholas Serota has praised non-doms who donated money to the Tanks at Tate Modern - saying: 'It's a very visible answer to the criticisms that have come from government and others about non-dom taxpayers not making a contribution to the cultural life of the country' - while using the money they provide to show art which critiques the commercialisation from which, in the main, their money derives. There are unresolved or unacknowledged issues here - having your cake and eating it - particularly where art which has become accepted by the cultural and critical establishment is presented as though it remains defiantly avant-garde.

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Mumford and Sons - Whispers in the Dark.