Wildewire

So, it looks as though "The Temple" has finally been 'lost' to some Chinese restaurateurs! [though I won't get official confirmation for a couple of days]. What could have been a dynamic centre for art, creative professional career development, culture, comunity enterprise and diverse activities will be a giant Chinese restaurant and karaoke bar! It has been a long haul against implacable resistance and I realised a while back that there was much more I could have done... but I'm not good a schmoozing! I don't know anyone worth sidling up to anyway- well, certainly not up here and it has been hard representing people who were too scared to stand up when they needed to be counted. I'm pretty sure I would have got further if I had gone a-empire-building, but it really isn't my style. I feel more comfortable in a creative democracy than a dictatorship even if I'm in charge! I like people who get passionate about stuff like I do- even if its ...

I don't understand it: I spend time making sure that what I do 'for' other people is with their explicit consent. I contact and consult and research and engage and yet when I present that work to the cultural gatekeepers their reaction is to request NEW consultation, research and engagement. The energy put into this "admin" is irritating and pointless. It serves to slow down real development in an attempt to wear out the active and reduce their potential impact on the status quo. It is so much procedure for the sake of being able to say that it was followed in case something goes wrong. My stint in a public sector agency taught me that the primary goal of the average public sector worker is to follow procedure, if everything goes tits up, as long as you can show you followed procedure, your particular butt will be covered. There is nothing creative about that. What REALLY pisses me off is to discover after a recent procedural road block, that the actions of a ...

A great guy, a dancer for whom I have huge respect was moved to have a rant-ette on facebook about the fact that Newcastle City Council has proposed a total cut of arts funding towards a saving of £90m in their "Austerity Measures" response. It prompted the following response from me... "The Arts" continue to be the first lamb for sacrifice. I think we 'arts workers' are often complicit in what happens to us. All those reasonable arguments about protecting essential services ARE reasonable. Present a paediatric cardiac unit next to a picture of a performer and ask the public to choose which to cut and its a done deal. But I don't think we should have EVER thought of ourselves as anything but ESSENTIAL. I have witnessed and read and contributed to countless consultations and research that identify the contribution of arts and culture to this region's economy. Doesn't anybody READ this stuff? If they did how can the council be contemplating a TOT...

I had the misfortune of enduring a meeting about Black arts policy with a couple of white women earlier this week. One of them is... well-meaning, the other... isn't.  I had taken steps to avoid this encounter- going as far as getting answers to the questions that needed to be asked in advance and suggesting there was no need to physically meet, but they were having none of it. The venue chosen for this meeting spoke volumes: the cafe of the building where 'the one who isn't' has her office. Clearly: the discussion wasn't viewed as worthy of a business setting. I survived the first 100 minutes pretty well with 'the one who isn't' interrupting and talking over me until one point where she accused me of "shouting" and asked why I was raising my voice. I continued in a quieter tone which elicited a sarcastic "Are you unwell?"  to which I retaliated "Don't patronise ME, woman!" which I happily repeated in response to ...

When I was in my teens I learned that in gay slang; "trolling" meant being on the lookout for a (usually) sexual partner. I was told it derived from patrolling. I've always felt that "cruising" better described many hunting homosexual men. The most successful hunters projected an air of relaxed disinterest as they scanned and assessed potential prey; dismissing some and homing in on others. More recently "Trolling" is about being rude and nasty online- derived from the trolls of childhood stories I expect... here's a wikipedia definition . I've recently had my first encounters with tolls: I stumbled across a You Tube clip of a guy playing funk bass in Northumberland Street, in Newcastle. I'd seen him once and was happy to put cash in his hat. I 'liked' the clip and was about to make a comment when I read a surprisingly hateful, racist comment that entirely ignored the musician's talent, labelled him a vagrant and claimed ...

LOL: Jenny Harris has a lot to answer for! She was my first boss and she set a standard that NONE of the people for whom I subsequently worked achieved. I went to work at The Albany Empire, (now called The Deptford Albany ) on December 19th 1984 as the Drama Animateur, for the Basement Youth Arts Project. I'd graduated from Bristol 'Old Vic' Theatre School with naive ideas about "giving something back" before charging off to carve my career and end up directing at the National... ahem. Jenny was Artistic Director of The Combination Ltd which I think started in Brighton, but had come to Deptford to work in the old Albany Empire that had been burned down, rebuilt and then demolished for a road-widening scheme before the new building was built in about 1981. By the time I got there, Jenny was a veteran of community development. She could be abrupt and abrasive to some. I saw this as someone who knew what they were doing and didn't need short-cuts or to puss...

Few people outside Uganda might ever have heard the name David Bahati or Rebecca Kadaga were it not for the former's "Kill the Gays" bill. And that bill might never have been drafted were it not for the money of American "Evangelical Christians" who showed up in Kampala in 2009 to deliver a 3 day workshop where they convinced Ugandan Christians of the existence of a sinister plot involving foreign homosexuals infiltrating Uganda preying on young people, offering them laptops and other indulgences in return for (homo)sexual favours. It is not known how much money Bahati has received to "sponsor" his bill. Though the American Evangelists:Scott Lively, Caleb Lee and Don Schmeierer [you have blood on your hands!] claim to be shocked that the bill actually calls for the death penalty. But there has already been death as a result of their interference. David Kato was bludgeoned to death at his home in January 2011 after a Ugandan newspaper printed a "...

For five years I worked for a voluntary organisation that became the development agency for minority ethnic arts and artists in North East England. It built a network of groups and individuals. It identified the career development needs of creative professionals from minority communities in the region. The problem most articulated by the artists was that it was impossible to be programmed by major venues in the region. To achieve "cultural diversity" in their programmes, it was easier for those venues to scan national and international touring circuits to book artists "of colour" who were making the rounds rather than those working in the region. To justify this they and officers of the supposed support agencies calmly stated that there was a lack of minority ethnic artists in the region of regional or national quality to take to the major stages and galleries. I found this hard to accept and wondered how strategic cultural support agencies saw no irony in such...

I realise that ACE officers are driven by procedures and that those procedures derive from consultations and strategies based on post mortems of successive failures. I know there will be a showdown at some point in the future about the capacity of my organisation to effectively manage the grant we aim to ask them for so I spent much of the week end amassing copies of consultation reports about diversity and capital projects from the last ten or so years.  From my own experience I was aware of the cyclic nature of discussions about cultural diversity: every so often the lack of access to the means of production for creative professionals of colour reaches critical mass and has to be discussed. True to public sector form, the answer is always to commission new research that produces the same old conclusions and bits of cash are given to the usual suspects who mess it up and ACE is able to say "Well we tried..."  One such cycle gave rise to £5m being offered to Talawa Thea...

When Pat Cumper: the then Artistic Director of Talawa Theatre Company and me met the Arts Council's Head of Theatre in November 2010 to report on the progress of  Sustained Theatre , we were feeling pleased with ourselves. In the previous 18 months the target outcomes for the programme as set out in the 2006 consultation report ' Whose Theatre ' had been reached. Admin spending on the project had been drastically reduced during my tenure as Chair of the "National Artists Team" and there were 5 credible proposals for capital projects to create buildings across the country for the development of UK Black and Asian performing arts. Rather than pleasure or congratulations, this Sultana of arts policy became visibly agitated and expressed concern. She couldn't understand why we would want to develop independent capital projects when there were so many "established" companies with which we could have formed partnerships. Embarrassing fiascos like the H...

" Don’t confuse my passion for aggression, don’t say I am arrogant when really I am confident, don’t mistake my deep thought stare as intimidating, when really I am planning, organising & strategising. Don’t get it twisted and think I’m high maintenance or a bit of an air head just because I like to do my hair, nails and buy fabulous shoes. I know, I’m a woman of substance, regal / royal - if you make some time I’ll even list my qualifications! Don’t call me a coconut / bounty because I have a wide range of friends and also like to pronounce my words, when all I am doing is articulating my subject well & ever so eloquently, don’t call my country and continent (Ghana / African) 3rd world or developing because it was fine before people came to steal from our land, don’t tell me that I do not belong here and I should go back to my own *beep beep* county – for my parents & fore-parents built this and contributed heavily to the economy not just with labour but with lots o...

So; I discovered that there is actual movement on all the Sustained Theatre projects - except Newcastle. My successor as Chair of the North East group collaborated with Northern Stage over a project they'd been trying to get funded for years but when it came to the point where a proposal was to be submitted... Nothing. It MIGHT be because there wasn't any support from the remaining members of the group- who had been given only peripheral information about the project- I may never know and don't actually care, but I am furious that NOTHING has come from work that started in 2009. I contacted the current Chair of Sustained Theatre to try to find out what's what. I found that there is "potentially" up to £750,000 available for a project in Newcastle, BUT: in order to access it, I will have to go though the entire process again- proving support from the membership, proving the project is financially feasible, submitting an application etc etc. This process w...

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Albert Camus    I could kick myself for the time I wasted trying to help someone else fulfil their dream while putting my own on hold. I recognise a recurrent character trait that leads me to sabotage my own success over and over again: I start things with passion and enthusiasm but withdraw or hand the baton to another at the last moment- not from fear but embarrassment! -I am susceptible to the envious and ineffective who sit on the sidelines and make comments about my motivations and perceived megalomania. In truth: I'm usually motivated by the need to see positive and effective development; I don't need to be the one at the helm. -With hindsight, that has been the mistake:  when I should have held the reins and driven things in the direction I believed was right and had planned for a project, I have handed them to someone else. ...

I was slightly swindled into a recent "business relationship": It was based on a lot of work and research and planning over five years so when I learned "we have a building" I was eager. When I discovered the details of the 'deal' I was worried, said so and BEGGED the "partner" to hold off until some plans could be made. My pleas were rejected. Nevertheless, I lent a hand, after all; this was the closest we'd come to making our dreams real since being strung along by a venue owner in 2006. My role has always been administration fund-raising and community network development for a project that is part cafe/bar and part community development centre, but when the cook announced she would be unable to participate due to serious ill health, I stepped up to the plate as a temporary emergency measure. This turned out to be a mistake: in hindsight; if I had allowed the project to stumble at this first hurdle, it could have made a major differen...

I don't work weekends at the Pride Cafe at the moment in deference to my role as Foster parent to my 14 year old godson. I missed a message from my colleague asking me to come to the cafe to help him deal with the delivery of a baby grand piano from storage- I was doing housework or some such. It is a problem that things like this aren't planned. My colleague is a consummate bar manager, barman and host, but he doesn't "do" planning. What I call "fire fighting" he is used to as the way he works and it causes me stress! I had no idea the piano was going to be delivered - I wonder if its a good idea before completing the refurbishment and redecoration. I would have attempted to have a couple of people ready to help in advance, not send a last minute text message. At least it means that the choir Northern Proud Voices, will be able to start rehearsing at the Centre... or it will, once I've 'sourced' some chairs! I met one of a group of stu...

CHN is about working with freelance creative practitioners to deliver workshops, training, performance, exhibitions etc with communities and groups in underused venues across North East England and we work with venue managements to develop new spaces for community use. In return for raising money to refurbish and then coordinate group access to the "community space" (left) and a suite of up to ten offices on the second floor, we've been given a desk in the Pride Cafe admin office and will be able to hire the space at a very discounted rate for our own programme of activities. Work to date has been about getting the space ready to receive users whilst I draft applications to funders for a major refurbishment that will see the installation of audio-visual equipment, renewed ceiling and lighting, a system for exhibition hanging and lighting renewing the floor and installing a movable partition to make the 46ft X 20ft space into two smaller ones when required. Almo...

Three months ago the friend with whom I've been planning a LGBT centre for Newcastle (on and off) since 2006 called to say "we have a venue". The next day I went to see for myself and found several people busily getting ready for a launch event THREE DAYS LATER!  I BEGGED my friend to reconsider: despite the cafe-bar being fully fitted and pretty-much ready to run, the rest of the building needs work. My friend was adamant that we opened in time for the fast-approaching May bank holiday weekend and would not be swayed. My choice was to join in or leave, I joined in. The day before we opened, the person who was to have been the cook announced they were suffering from a terminal illness and would not now be able to participate and £1,500 worth of alcohol wasn't delivered- because the person who said they'd order it "forgot", it is a testament to my friend's experience and standing amongst the Gay venue managements and suppliers that everything...

Considering how much time 'Not for profit' organisations spend in meetings, its astonishing how bad most of them are at doing them properly!  Its not just the quality of the Chairperson: too often; if Trustees or Committee members read the relevant papers on the way to the meeting, they feel they've done well. They're volunteers after all and those with the best skills and experience to be board members also tend to be the busiest. Its an imposition to expect them to WORK for nothing, the organisation should be grateful they show up at all. I've reported to committees who didn't have the first idea of what they were supposed to be doing and witnessed other treating their workers like low caste servants: one lot sat on what appeared to be a healthy bank balance that turned out to be a grant for work that they had to pay back to the funder a year after the work was supposed to have been completed, because they thought they were showing good management by refus...

Selling out at the box office is preferable to doing it in your creative practice. What one person sees as "Selling Out" is another's  "Survival Tactic" .  Survivors seldom see their actions as betrayal or principle-abandonment and dismiss peer criticism as jealousy and sour grapes.  The competitive world of subsidised arts is akin to pigs at a trough: individual companies and artists try to get their snouts deep enough to feed themselves for the next one to three years at each feeding. The cunning  understand that with proper preparation, they can get to the front of the queue before the feed is even in the trough! Make friends with the 'farmer', become his favourite and, not only will you get the choice feed, you'll continue to avoid the chop. The 'difficult' or stubborn who want to go their own way and won't be yoked, the ones likely to snap and bite rather than stand still and look cute, the ones with unusual or unfashionable m...

The most important rule to maintain your funds  has nothing to do with the quality of your work or organisation, it is NOT to criticise your funders- ESPECIALLY if they're a government agency! At least not publicly. I worked as an advocate and developer for minority ethnic artists in North East England for 5 years and the stories I heard from the artists, groups and organisations I served about their treatment at the hands of the regional branch of Arts Council England were often shocking. The same stories were never repeated in ear-shot of ACE "Relationship Managers" who continue about their business believing that everything in their garden is rosey. Something interesting happens to people who become ACE Relationship Managers: before; they criticise and complain with the rest of us, once in receipt of 'the king's shilling', they suddenly understand and are happy to spout the corporate rhetoric without question. 4 or so years ago ACE issued a questionna...

This debate has surfaced again.  Familiar arguments about "equality" and "discrimination" have been aired. I ran a couple "Lesbian and Gay Clubs" as they were then called, in South East London in the mid 1980s. My door policy- and I often worked the doors myself, was to allow straight people as guests of LGBT patrons - only . It was a rough neighbourhood and my priority was the safety of the patrons inside and near the building. "Safety" means more than JUST not encountering violence... Imagine a young LGBT person who is not "out", and slips away into a LGBT club or bar, where they are seen by straight acquaintances out for a laugh at the queers. That must be a really bad way to be outed. My personal bug-bear are the "Stag" and "Hen" parties who descend on gay bars for a giggle and a bit of a flirt if they get drunk enough- and a bit of a fight if any gay man responds to them. The pissed women who waddle ov...

I wrote my last entry just before things got VERY uncomfortable for me... I'd accepted so-called "Voluntary Redundancy" six months earlier and was running out of cash. My employers had enough cash to pay one of the two workers. I could have claimed the 'last in, first out' rule  and fought to stay, but the other guy was a new dad and had only been in post for about six months and besides; having predicted the organisation would be in that situation as early as October 2009 and having submitted various proposals to avoid it that were politely ignored by the Board of Trustees, I was pissed off and wanted out. It really was strange. One of the Board confided that he hadn't actually believed my prediction would come about "so quickly". I reminded him that it was central to my job to have intelligence about the economic state of the sector the organisation purported to serve. I was confident I could "go it alone". I thought that without the ...