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Educational statistics in Britain make depressing reading. Recent surveys show that 80% of children from professional families gain university degrees compared with 14% from working class homes:¹ that black children are more likely to leave school with fewer academic qualifications even though they enter the system showing promise: that only a small minority of children from comprehensive schools² gain places at Oxbridge although 90% of the population attend such schools: that a mere 4% of medical and dentistry students come from working class backgrounds etc. In spite of John Major’s³ optimistic insistence that Britain has become a classless society, it would appear that class differences in educational performance are not disappearing. On the contrary, a recent OECD⁴ survey, based on data gathered from 16,000 people born in 1958 and 1970 shows that the detrimental effects of inequality of opportunity are actually growing and that the opportunities gap between those from different social backgrounds is no better for those born in 1970 than it was for those born a generation earlier in 1958.

This is a demographical exploration of a wide variety of topics, which are as follows: gender, race, age, employment, substance abuse, mental illness, physical illness, veteran status, government assistance, physical & sexual abuse, hunger, and space. All of these topics were explored in conjuncture to ascertain who the homeless are. To explore this topic, data from LAHSA (Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority) was utilized to calculate demographical aspects of the homeless population with a raw sample of 4,852. I coded this data to further find insight among the population. Throughout this study it was found that nearly 60% of the homeless population in Los Angeles County are unemployed, 50% of the population have been incarcerated, a third of the population is homeless by age 20, a quarter of the population are women, and a third don’t utilize government assistance programs.

This chapter is concerned with the relationship between gender performativity and rhythm, taking the City of London (often known by its metonym the Square Mile) as the focus for the empirical research and extending a Lefebvrian understanding of urban space and time via the practice of rhythmanalysis. It is concerned with how the City of London is imagined, constructed and experienced in and through gender performativity which can be expressed rhythmically (Reid-Musson, 2018). The research is based on fieldwork including photographic and interview data, as well as an embodied, immersive methodology used to analyse rhythms, showing how this can help to both sense and make sense of organisational place, particularly in terms of how such places can compel feelings of belonging or non-belonging. The chapter looks beyond the spatial configuration of a single organisation to encompass the wider geographical location of multiple organisations, in this case the City.

The findings show that the relationship between the socio-cultural and material aspects of the City can be understood through the rhythms of place. Using a methodological approach based on Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis (2004), the chapter foregrounds a subjective, embodied and experiential way of researching the places and spaces of organising, and shows how gendered inclusion and exclusion can be expressed spatially and rhythmically.

“Music is Rhythm, Rhythm is Life.” This maxim, uttered by former Motown drummer Bill “Sticks” Nicks to my class and me a few years back, opens a portal to what being human involves. Most accounts of what it means to be human make cognitive capacities, language and reflective thinking, the be-all and end-all of human distinction. But think about it: how many animals do you know who beat rhythm for aesthetic enjoyment and social communion?

In this essay I reflect upon moments from musical experiences, primarily from blues music, to illustrate the place of the spontaneous gesture and ensemble improvisation in interaction, in and out of the music.