Empire-building
I really enjoy going into our odd office every day and work happily making new connections with organisations and potential clients, writing promotional stuff and update reports for funders and 'stake-holders'. The internet stuff has been installed, but doesn't yet extend to our office so I am still relying on our mobile modem, which can need a lot of coaxing to start working but once it is working, it tends to be OK.
My aims are complicated: I want to create something that is at least comparable to the organisation I built up from an irrelevant talking shop for elderly Asian and African "community leaders" into a dynamic development agency for creative professionals from minority ethnic communities, but I won't deny that achieving that would be a big one in the face of lazy lackeys in 'the arts establishment' bent on preserving the status quo and their places in it. It is so liberating to be able to ignore people and organisations I know to be run by self-serving arseholes who claim to be speaking for communities that don't even know they exist, in favour of working with those who are actually making differences and delivering relevant services to real people. Some of what we're doing is exactly what my vision for the organisation I left in 2011 was, but that organisation has done nothing of note since that date: it went from serving minority ethnic creative professionals by arranging opportunities to meet programmers and decision-makers of the region's cultural venues in one-to-one situations, to organising esoteric walks that didn't actually attract anyone from an ethnic minority (surprise, surprise). I have sometimes wondered if the Board of that organisation, most of whom by the end had been invited by me, ever actually wanted any of the things I was constantly calling for, it is as if they were content with being known to be on that Board than actually making the organisation successful.
But I digress: I am confident that I am currently working with people who want to make as big an impact on the cultural sector in our region as I do, which is most exciting. We realise we have to take on one or perhaps two more Board members as three of the five of us are now actively involved in delivery. It is worrying how difficult it is to find people with similar values, talents, experience and integrity who are willing and able to take up the mantle, but if we make the right choice it could be amazing. The fat twat who controls the theatre where I worked at the end of last year told me that my "trouble" was that I didn't like being told what to do. I challenged his assumption: I thoroughly enjoy being properly advised and led, but someone who lays down diktats about "this is the way we do things" whilst claiming to want development command ZERO respect from me. It is ironic how a man universally regarded as a bully sees his own faults in others, perhaps he doesn't know how poorly his record in a former public sector culture role is thought of and how freely people discuss it. I don't like change for its own sake, but I constantly challenge the accepted 'norm' to find better ways of doing things, I look for people who share that idea to collaborate and work with. You can imagine how frustrating it was to hear things like "We've tried that before" or "that won't work [here]" when one is attempting to attract new audiences to new programmes and activities.
As we're beginning to develop our company, we're almost entirely reliant on raising funds from charitable trusts etc -and lots of 'social capital', but there are a number of potentially lucrative enterprise opportunities that I can see becoming viable businesses in their own rights and that is really exciting.
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ReplyDeleteOooh! My 100th post.
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