No Scope or Interest

Part of my plan for community centre is to resurrect the organisation I built up and had to leave in 2011 when Arse Council funds were cut. There was more to it of course: I'd foreseen what was going to happen after the crash started in America in 2008/9 and I was convinced that once it hit UK, the government would be true to previous form and cut the arts and culture budgets first and most fiercely. I started reporting to the Board of Trustees in April 2009 about the need for diversifying income and not depending on a single source. They patted me on the head and ignored me. When the cuts approached, the Arse Council fell on its own sword and made its own cuts perhaps hoping to be spared but it was not the case as additional cuts were demanded from central government and, as the organisation did not produce art but supported minority ethnic artists, it was one of the first to go...

...Anyway: as you might imagine, although we were "civil", this was another of the jobs out of which I flounced in medium dudgeon. I became furious when, in under 6 months, five years of my work had evaporated into something so incredibly innocuous I don't think it actually convened more than a dozen times. It had gone from something providing information and practical support to disregarded black and Asian artists to having 'inspirational walks" across bridges at night. I began to think that the Trustees had wanted it to fail for some time. It went without a whimper.

I'd grown increasingly curious about the motivations of the Trustees: I had developed an organisation that poked and prodded 'The Mainstream' on behalf of talented individuals who were being ignored by them. Members of the Board included NICE white people with local political ambitions. One of them never actually attended a single meeting. The point being that these people were not willing to rock any boats for fear of negatively impacting their own ambitions but seemed to benefit from being able to say they were on this Board. 

I checked the website- defunct, the Facebook page hasn't been updated since June 2015 but there was no formal closure or shut down. I contacted one of the last Chairs of the organisation (I realise that the very last one has regularly ignored my messages - he is a strange man!), I told him of my plans to resurrect the organisation as a project delivered by my community interest company IF my plans re the community centre AND the Eclipse Theatre job come through. I wanted to know if there would be any objections from the former Board to my plans. I was told that the organisation had not been wound up but had "finished its work" and there was "no scope or interest" in reviving it.

"No scope or interest"??? Even Andrew Lloyd-Webber recently lamented the lack of diversity in UK arts. The recent Black British season on the BBC showed how poorly minority communities are still faring - perhaps even worse since Brexit. The Arse Council has realised the lack of diversity in UK arts (despite not acknowledging that this was inevitable after cutting support to "infrastructure organisations" in 2011). The BBC has announced new opportunities for producers in the corporation and on, and on, but as far as this local politician who is a "friend" to minority communities here, there is "no scope or interest" in providing services for creative professionals from minority communities in this region- and thereby diversifying the presentations of art and culture available in the region's cultural venues.

Now, despite being a politician, I think this guy is quite sincere, but this comment made me think how dislocated he and his colleagues had been and still are, from the experience of the creative professionals they were supposedly championing. I accept too, that I hit the red zone very quickly over these issues. I shuddered with memories of having had to fight rear guard actions against the people to whom I was reporting in order to provide what artists and their audiences had asked of me. That has happened too often in what I laughingly call "my career"! I shared what the former Chair had said with colleagues and got an emphatic "go for it" from them.

I'm only after the name as I came up with it and it changed the way the organisation was viewed and received by all its 'stakeholders'. But I was working for that Board so I can't just take it without the expectation of feather-ruffling. After this encounter, I decided "FUCK 'EM" i'll just add "North East" to the title and forge ahead regardless. It would be incredibly sweet to complete the job cut short in 2011 and to make the new agency better than it was before. I'm on waiting on tenter hooks for the council's decision re our bid for the community centre: if its a "yes" I need to do some pretty speedy admin, there's not a great deal I can do before I know what they decide.