All in a Week
All In about seven days, and I believe in this order, I am predicting:
· A Labour landslide and the official end to austerity
· A ‘Yes’ from ACE to support the next development of Squeeze Box
· Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka, Jordan Pickford and co will lift the European Cup!
I started to play a game or some kind of karma request to the gods of election outcome, if I had to have two of these come true which two would it be!
text on screen reads: ‘workshop, that are on the face of it, universal (we all breathe right?), I feel dis-empowerment …d confused. …..ce participated………. ns………. seem to have le………
The weight of all three of these is causing fatigue – well, less so the football, that is just a big party. As this is a practise reflection blog, I thought I should concentrate on the hinterland that is the increasing time artists have to wait for an ACE grant outcome. And as the need for funding in arts/culture grows, the success rate for project grants is becoming less and less. That’s not to say it will be a minor miracle if we do get the funding because the application is a good one. A lot of genius people put in a lot of time to carefully shape the text and to support me to answer each question with laser focus. To answer exactly what ACE is asking for rather than the things that make a project like Squeeze Box special. The commitment and brilliance of the artists involved, that magical moment when a disabled participant feels like they belong, the endless possibilities of connection etc. With the overall guidance of the master proofreader of Bibi June I think we’re getting better at unpicking the questions and working out the best way to answer it, focusing in on those buzz words and audience engagement numbers.
And anyway Kier Starmer did a great job of analysing Southgate’s management style and England’s chances, (1 hour 32 minutes in for the important bit) as well as detailing how Labour will provide every primary school child with free school dinners, investing in green energy and ending no fault evictions etc… luckily enough the football is on BBC and ITV and not Sky so we can all watch it, right?
So, what to do in this wait? If we park the ominous feeling of tempting fate with putting the infrastructure in for a potential ‘yes’ from ACE, before that said outcome is sent to us (this is coming from someone that orders their filing system 1 to 12 and then 14 onwards), I’m in a bit of a pickle. I want to firstly dream about what September and October will look like working with Northcott in their dynamic Barnfield space. Imagining the Squeeze Box team creative journey, what we will get up to and how the work will go from strength to strength. Smiling at the thought of audience members experiencing the work. And second, putting plans into motion with all our amazing potential partners from CEDA to Wellcome Centre.
Yet this feels like a huge amount of labour for something that will not happen if ACE say ‘no’. It feels hypocritical to preach that artists should get paid for their time, and then do loads of work only to find that it’s all going to fall through. I then feel I need to conserve energy for if we do need to resubmit. Receiving that ‘no’ would be difficult, I’d feel like I would let loads of people down; that’ll take time to get over. Maybe I should walk straight under a ladder and prepare for resubmission – sort of like betting against England to lose… or betting when your direct boss, you know the one you’ve probably spoken to most days in the last 2 years, will call a general election.
As apathy begins to set in, I do have wonderful distractions from this wait. Firstly, I have the immense joy and privilege to be Mayfield school governor. A visit to one of the sites is food for the soul, totally inspiring and energising. I am over two years in this fortunate role and while I still can’t quite believe any trusts me to be their governor, maybe I’m beginning to be of some use. Likewise with my role at Doorstep Arts, although that has been over six years, I still feel that ‘pinching myself before every meeting’ kind of feeling. And there’s the small matter of adapting Humetheus for an enormous stage in London with the amazing CRIPtic.
Yellow bold captions reads: ‘Beyond that, it’s more. I can try and order something from the chaos, its like the positive flipside of conspiracy theory, borne from the total lack
Whispers are building about how ACE are struggling. That triggering (misleading and untrue) phrase “there is no money”, well at least in my nightmares, is ACE’s new catchphrase. This is from an institution that survived George Osborne’s ‘organisation to get rid of’, in the early 2010s – there’s a lot of improvement that is needed at ACE, but fair play to them for being able to provide public arts and culture throughout this. That said, the pressure that ACE are now under seems to mirror the relentless uphill battle of artists and grassroots organisations. Year on year, it does feel like the mountain grows a little and there is slightly less resilience to pack when climbing. I think ACE are feeling this too, and it almost feels like a healthy thing to finally be listened to, the horrible medicine at the beginning of a traumatic healing process. Things are not sustainable. It’s the community that will continue to become fragmented and without culture to glue us together… well, it already feels like things are crumbling down.
And on that hopeful note, I will continue to wait, twiddling my thumbs, a sliding door moment – let us see what is on the other side!