Island Life

Moments of crisis are more frequent when I work in isolation. I am confident of my ability to deliver the things I plan but when I look to the people FOR whom I think I'm doing this stuff and can't find them, I question my motives. Added to that: when "wise" friends chorus concern for my plans based on their life/business experiences, it seems more than arrogant of me to continue... 

I AM my fiercest critic: I check and re-check my assumptions and plans constantly. IF the people who said they would use the proposed ICONNE Centre anything like as often as they have told me in the past couple of years, it will work! Even if we gave free hires to groups: if those groups attracted audiences to eat and drink in the cafe etc it will work. If families started booking spaces for wedding receptions and other parties, it will work, if the groups who complain of lack of rehearsal and development- let alone presentation space use it, it will work. If the touring companies who complain they can find nowhere to present work in Newcastle come to the building, it will work. The building could provide a platform for a host of different culture-based initiatives from intergenerational to interracial, inter-faith etc, the "key" is to be flexible and welcoming and to engage the wide range of creative practitioners and their audiences who are not being served by the existing arts and cultural infrastructure and who do not benefit from the £45m+ of capital expenditure on arts projects in Newcastle and Gateshead since I came here in 2003.

It speaks volumes to me that the Arts Council find my proposals so "complicated": They're used to a compartmentalised reality that is alien to the actual world. They have gone as far as to question the logic and sanity of my proposals. My vision is of independent creative and cultural organisations subsidising their own incomes through subsidiary business activities like office rental, catering and paid membership services is to them- madness. 

I remain unrepentant. I dislike cultural projects that come into being with the expectation of perpetual public bail-outs. I understand that ACE fears a future need to bail out another failing arts organisation, but I haven't asked that of them: From the beginning I have proposed that if the project failed, its assets should be liquidated and reintroduced to the arts budget for someone else to have a go.

I am angry at being disempowered by otherwise impotent people exercising only their ability to inhibit creative commercial development -in the name of public art! It disgusts me to have to deal with those 'of our own' who continue to curry favour with the powers that be to maintain their personal positions with disregard for their peers. We contribute to the problem by never questioning or challenging the gatekeepers- except when they're not around, so they believe they're satisfying expectations and dismissing dissenters as unrepresentative. 

Creative practitioners from and representing minority communities, (at least those in North East England), need to wake up to the need for revolution in the cultural sector! We need to stop being grateful for the crumbs that fall our way and claim our overdue rights to the choicest portions! We need to organise and be engaged with and supportive of each other... 

My main motivation for the ICONNE Centre is the focus it could give minority artists for their own development and that of their communities. We have had SO MUCH "Training" and "Development" and "Support", what we haven't had is access to the venues to present our work consistently and to audiences who understand and reflect our cultural expressions. 

I am disappointed that the organisation I claim responsibility for building up from nothing to the point where it was being taken seriously by the key cultural agencies and venues in the region was allowed to fade to insignificance in less than a year. It seems clear to me that they should be leading the charge to create the ICONNE  Centre but they lack obvious vision or drive and are happy to accept whatever ACE might give them, which isn't much because ACE sees the organisation's activities as irrelevant now that "Diversity is a cross-cutting theme". Of course: the problem with everyone being responsible for something is that no one actually does it. I question if the trustees of the organisation I worked for ever shared my values and vision for the organisation. Boards are the voluntary sector's 'Achilles' Heel'! 

I don't think I can endure much more of dealing with the ACE! A little part of me hopes that the City Temple DOES become a giant Chinese restaurant and karaoke bar: perhaps its exactly what we deserve!