Ever Decreasing Circles.
What does one do when the very people FOR whom you have been fighting begin to act like the enemy?
It is a poor excuse that basic tenets of a project that has existed since 2006 and whose reports and commentaries and summaries are not only widely available but I have forwarded copies to those people several times in the last four years. They receive the information, don't read it and then complain that they don't know what is going on. They demand that issues that are and always have been central to the project be addressed. They dismiss "the past" and criticise 'reinventions of the wheel', they tell me that they do not expect me to have all the answers but direct (previously answered) questions to me. Then they wonder why it takes so long to achieve anything.
I have worked to support minority artists in North East England since 2006 by helping them to present professional project proposals, developing information networks, supporting fund-raising and promotional activities, brokering engagement with venue managements and consulting on ideas to develop 'The Sector' as a whole in this region. I listened to repeated complaints about the difficulties creative professionals from minority communities experienced getting their work presented to public audiences, about how the major venues won't even meet with them and they are left with a choice of out of the way "community spaces" for their presentations and productions. I listened to the frustrations of always being offered "development" and "training" and how The Arts Council and other funders will always fund further "research" and "consultation" before it would ever consider supporting production or presentation work.
So when an opportunity to secure funds for a building of our own: one that would specialise in the promotion of minority arts arose, I followed it and found a place big enough and close enough to the centre of "the regional capital" to offer both development and presentation and suggested it as the potential home of the "Regional Hub" of a national Arts Council programme. Opposition from regional Arts Council officers was open and immediate: having overseen the spending of over £45m on arts buildings in the last 10 years in North East England, including several high profile failures the "buildings are bad" mantra was put on a loop [Incidentally: for to offer some perspective on the above figure; a single new building for Newcastle University cost £35m]. Indeed: after such investment there shouldn't really be the need for a building for minority arts BUT: the pressure on venue managements to maximise their box office and other earned income means that minority arts have an even more difficult chance of being programmed. Local artists might not attract audiences as big as those generated by big names doing national tours. Minority audiences don't feel the major venues are for them so additional work is needed to raise awareness of programmes is necessary- with additional costs.
When, after four years of battling and surmounting successive administrative barriers, the Arts Council finally agreed to initiate a process with a good chance of finally releasing funds to enable the purchase of a building for minority arts development in Newcastle for North East England, key members of the group began to question the whole idea of a building, its location in Newcastle as opposed to less well resourced towns, who would allowed to use and benefit from it. Despite the fact that the fund is exclusively for capital expenditure on "spaces" a debate began to surface about expenditure on "Artist Development": seen by them as being at odds with purchasing the building (!).
It would have been hard enough to keep the project 'on track' past regional Arts Council opposition WITH the unequivocal and enthusiastic support of its proposed users and beneficiaries but this demand for additional discussion of original principles and renewed navel contemplation promised to add time to an already tortuously slow process that disregards the vicissitudes of the real world. Perhaps it is for the best that yesterday the vendors agreed to discuss two offers at the asking price. I need to get on with something that will actually benefit ME for a change and perhaps fulfil the belief that what I REALLY want is to build a personal empire! LOL if that were true, there would have been so much easier ways to have achieved it: I could have NOT raised complaints and criticisms with the gatekeepers who now dismiss me as a "Trouble-maker" whilst those who demanded I presented their concerns smile and roll their eyes as if in fact I AM the only person with a problem.
...I can't help myself: I DO believe that collective community action is the way forward.
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