The Best lack all resources, whilst The Worst get facilities and public cash

-And "yes" I DO class myself in the first category! I have met few people up here with the community arts and development skills and experience I possess. Its too hard not to moan when I see so much I can't change and I am very aware that my (bad) reputation precedes me- with some justification as I have locked horns with bored Boards and flounced off into the distance more than once. ANOTHER friend shared the horrors of working for inadequate managers recently, seemingly incapable of addressing obvious issues out of fear and obvious inability. The common theme is that if you're the sort of person who won't rock any boats, frighten any live stock and maintain the status quo; you're in!- Brown-nosing is a creative sector core skill. Beware the person who is everyone's (professional) friend: you can wager they're sharing information about you both real and invented with your enemies and will end up well funded whilst you fall from favour. There is a lot of TALK about "development" and "innovation" etc because it makes job descriptions sound trendy, but in reality too many really want more of the same, perhaps with added chrome finish or minority ethnic stylings.

Local Authority Arts Officers whose best skill seems to be maintaining their jobs FOR YEARS and keeping any who might threaten that gig out of the game. I'm not saying it is intrinsically bad for people to keep their creative sector jobs for 20 years, but if a review of their achievements is less than stellar, what's the point? Funding officers who know nothing of the art they're rejecting but everything about the corporate regimes they're protecting, people who, before joining the funder, participated in bemused conversations about the way it worked, but who experience a Damascus Road experience and become ardent promoters of that funder as long as the cash continues to hit their bank accounts.  Artistic Directors running from risk, 'tame' token artists producing esoteric inaccessible crap that obscures its banality behind veils of language and baffling imagery producing an "Emperor's New Clothes" effect among the "in" crowd; all eager to demonstrate their intellectual prowess by cooing approval of inane rubbish playing to smaller and smaller audiences whilst receiving more and more subsidy because of its alleged "importance" (but don't ask to whom). 

And bloody consultations! It doesn't matter if you've been living and working in a community for twenty years and understand the need for your work, how it can be effectively delivered and can demonstrate support from the target beneficiaries, thousands of pounds must be spent on "consultation" before it will be considered. I once worked for a public sector agency that spent more on a consultation justifying their refusal of a grant to a voluntary sector project than the project had requested from them. What is this reverence for bits of paper? I remember asking someone who used to work at Arse Council headquarters in London about the  scripts submitted as a result of a mid 1980s drive for new plays by black writers; she showed me a floor to ceiling cupboard of scripts that had little chance of ever being produced; money for production was not part of the deal.

For too long, too many creative professionals have been bought off by short term bribes to keep them preoccupied and not bothering the powers that be whilst the infrastructure to enable sustained growth and contributions to the economic and social development of the country is denied them. The language used is always so 'reasonable': about "protecting public resources" and questioning the ability of Creative Professionals with no prior experience to manage buildings etc. I have always found this to be spurious as it is not necessary to understand... plumbing for example, to hire a plumber to do what you want- why not an administrator, building manager, finance manager etc? Leadership requires direction and knowledge among other things, the point is that the leader doesn't have to have detailed knowledge of all the functions in order to be effective.

I hate these old boys club type networks: the groups who exchange tacit agreements in trendy bars to maintain the status quo at all costs and to nobble all but an easily controlled handful of pipette-fed creatives to give the impression of forward motion. It would have been absolutely brilliant to have secured the City Temple just to prove that there is another way... Thinking about Sustained Theatre; I was warned on the day I became the Chair that the Arse Council wanted the money to go to prop up certain buildings they couldn't openly fund any other way and that most of it would end up in London... That is what happened, but the project kept a lot of black and Asian creative professionals very well occupied for quite a few years until "the financial crisis" made any further agitation futile.