WHEN novelist, poet, artist and art writer John Berger died in 2017, I thought there should be a John Berger Society. After all, Thomas Hardy, Daphne Du Maurier and many other writers have one, with their membership events, huddles of aficionados and all that, yet Berger, one of the major European intellectuals of our time, had not. 

How to do it? Maybe it would confine him to memory, and not a presence. There’d be no point in historicising him, and he speaks to young people today, particularly through Ways of Seeing. And he would have hated the idea of it anyway. 

Yet after attending a superb film on migration and its human toll: “Surrender — Ways of Hearing John Berger” at the British Library last July, I invited executive producer Tina Grace to partner in establishing a sort of JB Soc, but to call it something else. The title of the project is therefore The Shape of a Pocket, named after one of Berger’s collections of essays and, as his film-maker Ways of Seeing partner, Mike Dibb said: “John Berger belongs to everyone,” and so everyone is a member. 

“The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order.” John Berger, 2001

Berger was a literary and accessible political writer, lamenting the “world economic order” in 2001. But how much worse it is now? Berger noted that capitalism had become speculative and no longer productive, taking a terrible toll on the world’s populations. When asked if he was still a Marxist (BBC Newsnight 2011), he replied: “Reading Marx at an early age helped me understand history and where we are in it … Decisions made in the world today are mostly made for the sake of increasing profit. Then Marxism doesn’t seem so obsolete does it?”

Always a supporter of the Palestinian cause, he didn’t live to see current monstrosities in the Middle East or the invasion of Ukraine, but he did track the intensification of the shapeless mass of poverty in the world. 

His writings live on, particularly the famous Ways of Seeing — a seminal BBC TV series and part of the secondary school and arts schools curriculum for years. I asked a friend who has taught art and been an artist all her life how Berger had influenced her over the decades.

“I started teaching in schools in 1950 and most art history teaching had come from the Establishment’s Courtauld Institute. Ways of Seeing in the 1970s was a real eye-opener and everything changed.” 

Berger’s novels include Permanent Red, To the Wedding, A Painter of Our Time, Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag and From A to X. He was a fine poet too and Smokestack has recently published John Berger’s Collected Poems. On sale at the event, folks! 

Berger’s importance, and the hopeful resonance of our project is reflected in the fact that an ask to Bob and Roberta Smith (aka artist Patrick Brill) to do the logo for The Shape of a Pocket was met with a yes and a vibrant painting. It will be on show at the theatre, along with work by Ralph Steadman, Peter Kennard, Mona Hatoum, Hassan Hajjaj, Richard Hamilton, Jillian Edelstein, Howard Grey, Jan Woolf and Thomas Lofill, with an accompanying talk from Peter Kennard, professor of political art at the Royal College of Art. 

Richard Bradbury, author of Become a Man, Lynton and Riversmeet will speak. Afghan rubab player and vocalist Milad Yousofi will accompany Rakaya Fetuga (winner of The Roundhouse young slam poetry award) in a stunning set. We have a filmed contemporary interpretation of The Male Gaze (from Ways of Seeing) by actor Ruby Serkis, with drummer Leo Taylor and there will be readings of Berger’s poems. 

Our patrons and matrons are legendary — Mike Dibb, Peter Kennard, Gareth Evans, Andy Serkis, Richard Bradbury, Lorraine Ashbourne, Sally Potter, Jillian Edelstein and Keisha Thompson.

In this world of bankers, speculators and influencers, Berger’s real and profound influence is more important than ever. So what we are doing is passing on the Berger baton — that way of looking at the world. 

“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves,” the better to understand and feel empowered enough to change it with others.

Always with others. 

For more information see: theshapeofapocket.com.

The Shape of a Pocket will take place Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London N6, on Sunday April 14 from 5-8pm. Box office: (020) 8340-3488, upstairsatthegatehouse.com.