Dear Geraldine and everyone
Geraldine you've fully satisfied my concerns
regarding your very specific concern. I think you/we should get a
petition going.
I'm trying to forego my emotional attachments to funding
and its withdrawl. Close friend and colleague Steve Morris hung himself in June,
which triggered my own breakdown (but now, that's by-the-by). I've spoken to
all Steve's close relatives and friends since, and the final straw for him
was that Leicester City Council, East Midlands Arts and ACE together withdrew
funding from his twenty-one-year disability arts centre/project, Access Arts
Space. Based in the centre of Leicester, Steve pioneered disabiltity community
TV and the idea - revolutionary in Britain in 1983 - that ability/disabilty must
work together for the betterment of both - of all.
Steve was a campaigner for gay rights and active against
all forms of racism in the city. He was a fervent 'Stop The War' campaigner
and organised Leicester Gay Pride 2003. Back in 1987 Steve and I had a
'bundle' against white racists in a pub - and won. That sounds tough: Steve
was the funniest and most gentle, sincere bloke ever
met.
In being revolutionary (as poetry should be) one also has
to be an arch conservative. What poets want to preserve is their independence,
and time and space to work/produce - as all others do in society. I don't think
ACE is merely going through a 'tick box' review of concerns and commitments.
What's happening in the UK, in my view, is that Blair
& Consensus - having increased arts funding since 1997 by over 50% (via the
Lottery) - is attempting to reign back that budget. And, at the same time,
with their funding - 'Arts For All' (deleted) and the rest - emphasis is on
increasingly top-down projects. In Lowestoft, we've seen that with the utterly
awful Home Zone imposition and a terrible project to come: Commissions
East/ACE/Suffolk CC are to impose a sculpture on us entirely without
consultation - and with utterly no democracy involved.
Nobody wants the Lowestoft 'sculpture.' It'll be about
raising the past over the future - as all Lowestoft art projects have been about
before. What could we do with £50,000 - together?
***
Get a petition going.
Best wishes, Rupert