64 people have been taken to hospital this past Monday suffering from a variety of maladies ranging from catatonia to severe stroke following a mass reading of the latest press release from The Place concerning The Place Prize®™.

Those in attendance who escaped uninjured told disturbing tales of self harm, wailing, gnashing of teeth and general malaise upon the press release reading being completed. There are reports of effigy burning and one high profile dance maker telling Eddie Nixon to "go play in traffic" or words to that effect.

The press release concerned the latest information about the appointment of "judges", "semi-finals" and money off coupons from Tescos*.

At the time of writing The Place declined to comment on whether or not Mr Nixon, the Director of Theatre and Artist Development at The Place, had indeed gone to play Connect 4 on the M25.

The current competition, which has been running since the birth of Jesus Christ, is set to end sometime next year but only if we're very very lucky.

In an effort to protect our dear readers from succumbing to any medical catastrophe we have been trawling the internets looking for stories that are, on the face of it, a lot more interesting than this.

1. David Cameron names his new daughter after a character from the Magic Roundabout!

2. "High Street Sales Hit Three Year High"

3. Bomb proof Jaguar car for sale in Moscow

4. Nokia release, another, new mobile phone.

5. Sky is blue!

6. Ocean is wet!

The Place Prize®™ ends when the last person standing has killed the scary Emperor in the white armour, or is that a scene from 'Gladiator'? We forget.

In a statement The Place denied being completely useless, or at least they would if we asked them because who would admit to such a thing?

More info on The Place's website, if you dare.

*we might be making that up!

It occurs to us, here in TheLab™, that despite the information overload in todays world of super cell phones, laptops, iJesus devices and so much other nonsense that dance companies don't talk about each other very much.

Glancing through Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, websites, mail shots, emails and so on we notice a lot of information about Company A but not a lot of information about Company B or Company C.

Why don't dance companies talk about each other?

We've said this before, somewhere, that the wacky world of dance, as far as we are concerned, is not a competition. It's not a cut throat world of audience or participation grabbing where one show will lose out to another.

Dance performances are, more often than not, weeks apart and the venues are, more often than not, miles apart so as far as audiences are concerned it's not "one or the other".

All too often people are going to see one show blissfully unaware that another show will be in town, two weeks down the line at another theatre 20 miles away.

The "social" and "sharing" aspects of the internet, and all forms of communication for that matter, do ring a little hollow when all a lot of companies do is talk about themselves.

Yes, we want to know what you're up to but if you know what someone else is up to then tell us about that while you're sending your latest email.

We would suggest that dance companies, with every mail out or email they send, drop in some additional information about another dance company and something they might be doing, well known or not.

For every three Twitter or Facebook updates you broadcast send out one that's not about you. If you are still using postal mail then slide in a brochure for another company, maybe you could even share the cost for this most antiquated of promotional methods.

New companies and choreographers trying to get their heads above the surface of the quagmire could be thrown the lifeline they need so they aren't lost forever because nobody noticed they were drowning.

If dance is truly a "community" then you have to do more than just say the word, you have to actually mean it and follow up with actions. The National Dance Network are almost criminally pathetic in this regard so dance companies need to show them how it can be done.

Start talking about each other more, the fight isn't dance company vs dance company, it's with far more malevolent forces of indifference, ignorance and stupidity higher up the imaginary food chain.

For a slight change of pace we bring you some images from this past April of Candoco Dance Company's premiere of their new touring production 'Renditions'.

Renditions, featuring work from Emanual Gat, Wendy Houstoun and Sarah Michelson will be back on the road in September, check their website for complete details. Full captions and credits are available on our Flickr page.

[ Article19 on Flickr ]
[ Candoco Dance Company ]

Social Media, depending on your point of view, is either marketing heaven, free and easy to use, or a hellish wasteland of crap that is free and easy to annoy the hell out of people with.

If companies play the game properly you can get some useful tidbits of information, perhaps even engage in a little back and forth with them. Social media is supposed to be a conversation after all.

Case in point, New Art Club, the comedic dance duo of Pete Shenton and Tom Roden. Following New Art Club via Facebook and Twitter has proven to be an exercise in the latter.

Why's that you may ask? Well somebody, somewhere decided it would be a good idea to put out their entire tour schedule via individual messages on their Facebook page.

So what you get are twelve messages in the space of about an hour. Not short messages either. You get the full press blurb, date and the venue, all months away so of very little practical use.

New Art Club It is 1983 - Madonna releases her first album, Boy George is top of the UK singles chart with 'Karma Chameleon' and 13 year old future contemporary dance star Tom Roden illegally tapes the first 'Now What I Call Music' LP onto a C60 cassette.

Fast forward 27 years - Madonna is a divorcee on a mission to adopt Africa, Boy George is a man with conviction after all and Tom has teamed up with Pete Shenton to form New Art Club. Finding the cassette one day, the two of them listen to it and a brand new show is born........ etc

The resulting mess in the news stream, especially on Facebook, makes the company look bad in more ways than one.

To add insult to injury for their followers you also get the same information on Twitter, since they have linked them together, so what goes out on Facebook also ends up on the micro messaging site.

We point this out to illustrate two things. Try very hard not to spam the people who are actually interested in what you do (a couple of messages a day at most) and don't link your Facebook page to your Twitter account.

It might also be a good idea to actually engage with your followers and not use either platform as a broadcasting station.

Update: in the short time it took us to write this, New Art Club have deleted all of the annoying Facebook updates along with a few complaints from their followers.

Update II Thursday 29 July: And now we have Motionhouse Dance Theatre doing exactly the same thing. Come on folks, check the image below to see what a lot of people will do if you flood their Facebook or Twitter streams with too much information.

Regular readers of Article19 will know that we, here in TheLab™, have little time for the AD of Sadler's Wells Theatre Alistair Spalding. We have our reasons, do some digging to find out why.

That said the man came good when confronted with some journalistic jackassery from Gavin Esler on the BBC news programme Newsnight on July 15th.

Mr Spalding did a good job of debunking the oft claimed notion that people working in the arts are living large at the public's expense. Pointing out at one point that "dancers earn a pittance" when challenged by Mr Elser as to why artists should be on the "public payroll" which they aren't but that's another issue.

At one point Mr Esler stated that there might be "[too many dance companies]" and we were slightly disappointed that Mr Spalding didn't ask him to name at least five of them to really push home what an utter due-dilligence scofflaw Esler is.

Esler (sod the Mr.) can also be heard repeating the coalition government's talking point phrase "times of austerity". Nice to have a BBC journalist framing your policy shop gibberish for you.

There's a lot being written in the media about the coming cuts to the arts budget. Comments from the public, when they are enabled, are often to be found framing public funding as "handouts" for irresponsible arts organisations safely ensconced from the rest of the "real" world in their Crystal Castles™.

If you're thinking of countering this nonsense then make yourself clear. When it comes to companies, ADs, choreographers and dancers, the vast majority are being paid rubbish wages, especially in relation to the amount and difficulty of the work they do.

Millions of people of all kinds that pay taxes of all kinds really like the arts quite a lot and would rather the government didn't send us all back to the stone age as far as cultural development is concerned.

It's got something do with human beings being sentient.

We would also appreciate it if the right wing hacks would stop lying their arses off, but we'll get to them soon enough.

A letter sent by Arts Council England (ACE) to their client list of Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) tells those organisations to make preparation for cuts to their annual budgets of 10%.

The letter, signed by ACE's Chief Exec Alan Davey, is keen to point out that no numbers have yet been confirmed but states;

"Given the economic climate, and the fact we have been asked to model a reduction of up to 30% over four years, we are now asking you to model prudently for a minimum of a 10% reduction in your funding for 11/12. This figure is not final, but we suggest it is a reasonable figure for you to address at this point."

The letter also points out that instead of their usual three year funding deal ACE is planning a one year commitment followed by a further two year commitment to be confirmed at a later date.

Were ACE to apply cuts of 10% to all of their RFO's then some would lose millions (we're looking at you Royal Opera House) while others would lose tens of thousands.

It should come as no surprise to point out that all small to medium scale contemporary dance companies would lose significant portions of their annual budget. Unlike their large scale brothers and sisters (English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, et al) they have far fewer options in terms of replacing that funding through corporate sponsorship.

The current Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and his many minions in the UK's Treasury have some unproven, unquantifiable, pie in the sky idea that without government funding the corporate donors will come and they will come in vast numbers.

Such thinking plays into the idea of many a right-wing arts hater that all arts activity takes place in enormous crystal castles filled with magical dragons and unicorns, places to which the poor folk have no invitation.

Those with a brain know that Mr Osborne is a D-list economist whose thinking bears no relation to real life or fiscal competence. Don't take our word for it, ask Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman.

At the time of writing we are unable to confirm from where or how ACE has determined the 10% number.

It is possible that ACE, having access to information from the DCMS and The Treasury, is making a worst case scenario and the cuts will be lower. We're dealing with the government and political ideology here though so don't expect common sense or rational thinking to play much of a part in any final decision.

It's time to put the horseshoes in the boxing gloves and start swinging because the politicians are coming after the arts and pretty much everything else in christendom.

In our editorial 'Get Off the Floor' we pointed out that should the worst come to the worst then you will have to fight back and there are 57 specific targets we can focus on, namely 57 Liberal Democrat MP's.

Here in TheLab™ we've set up a simple page listing all of their names, where they are from, contact phone numbers (business not personal), email and a few other bits and pieces.

If all the opposition parties vote against the government's Finance Bill (by no means guaranteed) then 40 votes have to swing from "yes" to "no" in the Liberal Democrat camp. The Conservatives can't govern without their coalition partners so let's see just how shaky it really is.

It makes no difference if the LD MP is not your MP. These issues are national, not local and their votes will have an impact on you whether you like it or not so take your pick and give them a call or drop them an email.

Defeat is almost certain but you might as well go out fighting as anything else and it's a lot more fun making a politician or six sweat it out and answer to the people they work for.

Just remember, be firm, be direct, but be polite, don't give them an excuse to ignore you.

[ Political Leverage Page ]
[ Get Off The Floor ]

On the funding ladder of life, just one rung above Arts Council England (ACE), is yet another acronym. the DCMS, The Department for Culture Media and Sport. Although they recently added the Olympics in there somewhere the civil service appears not to have gotten the memo because they still call it the DCMS. But we digress.

We, here in TheLab™, thought it might be helpful to give you a brief insight into the thinking of the organisation that provides ACE with its funding so that ACE can, in turn, provide funding to the arts.

To do that we step away from the arts into the wacky world of swimming, folks paddling around in water to keep fit, have fun and generally minding their own business while they're about it.

Our friends at the DCMS were running a programme that enabled people up and down the country to swim for free in any pool owned by their local authority. Sounds like a plan, if people can go swimming for nothing then they can keep fit and save some cash into the bargain.

Except, not so fast there chuckles. In a press release announcing the programme was being abolished the DCMS said this;

"The research found that although 18 million free swims were taken during the first year of the scheme, around 83 per cent of those aged 60 and over and 73 per cent of those aged 16 and under would have gone swimming anyway, even if they had to pay for it."

The problem, according to the government's haywire brainstorming, is that the wrong kind of people were going swimming.

It's not enough to provide free access to swimming pools and all the health benefits that could encompass to people who really want to go swimming. What they have to do, like any other government project, is get people who don't want to do something to go do it anyway, just because.

Apparently it never occurred to the boffins at the DCMS that the reason a lot of people may not go swimming is simply because they don't know about the free programme, have no access to a swimming pool or they can't bloody swim! To say nothing of the fact that people, evidently, loved the programme because they took advantage of it 18 Million times in the first year.

People using a government programme for their own benefit, how dare they!

Over the course of two years the programme was set to cost £140Million. The cost of the new aquatics centre for the Olympics in London is (drum roll please) 250 million of your English pounds thank you very much and good night! The free swimming project was of benefit to a lot more people than the aquatics centre and cost £110Million less.

The hapless press flacks at the DCMS were unable to explain how a rectangular hole in the ground filled with water could possibly cost one quarter of a billion pounds. They were also unable to explain who was going to pay for it after the Olympics were over and it became just a regular old swimming pool.

Whilst digging a little further with the Olympic Development Agency, the people responsible for building the "aquatics centre", the only explanation they could muster for the cost was "that's how much it costs" and, to paraphrase, "we needed something really pretty at the entrance to the Olympic Park".

Perhaps it will go the same way as the Olympic Stadium which will, sans finding any practical use for it, be knocked down. That, bizarrely, is not a joke.

So there you have it. A small insight into the madness of government thinking when it comes to paying for stuff. Even when they run programmes that are successful and people enjoy, they will still cut them if the right kind of people are not taking advantage of the project.

We all need to become the "right" kind of people apparently.

Normally when an arts organisation is putting out press releases about their revolutionary new thing they really do love it when you get in touch and ask them for an interview. It gives them a chance to answer a lot of soft soap questions in a vain attempt to convince an unimpressed world that they're thing really is, this time, going to change the world.

Not so however if you are Eddie Nixon the "Director of Theatre and Artist Development" at The Place in London and the creators of the The Place Prize.

When contacted by Article19 to request an interview we had the following conversation with The Place press flack (paraphrased and augmented for comedy effect);

Article19 : "Hi, we'd really like to talk to Eddie Nixon about The Place Prize, if you could put us through that would be smashing and we would love you big time!"

The Place: "Sorry but Mr Nixon is a very important man and doesn't have time to do an interview because he's currently making some curtains for his new throne room!"

Article19: "Ok, wow, so when will he stop being so important and finish those lovely curtains so we can talk to him on the phone"

The Place: "Never"

Article19: "What, never ever?"

The Place: "Never ever with sugar on top!"

Article19: "Those must be some pretty impressive curtains"

The Place: "They'll blow your mind man!"

The flacks did offer to answer questions via email, the tried and tested method of the permanently insecure, but we refused. When it comes to interviews, and we've done a lot of them, there's a natural back and forth when you're talking to someone that you don't get via email.

It's also a lot easier to pin them into a corner when you know they're talking complete and utter crap.

We really did want to talk to Mr Nixon, after all The Place makes some bold claims about the festival that never ends.

For example, in their press blurb they write enthusiastically about the "£1Million" investment that has been made over the years in new work. We'll wager, here in TheLab™, that if that investment was subject to the scrutiny of the Financial Services Authority the cost vs return aspect of that investment would probably mean somebody would be doing some serious jail time.

The flacks did say this much;

"Eddie and other members of the team here at The Place frequently give interviews for all sorts of media outlets, both via email, over the phone and in person. We are proud to talk about our work, open in our dealings with the media and keen to give as full a response as possible to all enquiries, either from the media or the general public."

Except not in this case because they know there is a big difference between emailing and talking, if they don't they probably shouldn't be in their jobs.

If we were to give a few words of advice to The Place it would be this. Stop hiding under the sofa, if you're scared of us, don't be, man up, strap on a pair and speak your mind.

Also, if you work at an organisation that receives more than £2Million in public subsidy every year then be prepared to talk about it and don't expect everybody to kiss your ass.

The Place Prize runs sometime later this year until the end of time or when Jesus actually does return to the mortal coil, whichever is sooner!

[ Lion Cub photo by Martin Heigan ]

Arts Council England CEO Alan "Wavey" Davey has been sounding off in the papers, well, The Stage, but still, about the new UK coalition government and their saber rattling about cuts to the arts, "sharing the pain", and so much other nonsense.

Wavey has called for people to make "rational" arguments about why funding the arts is a good thing and cuts are a bad thing.

In ACE speak this means trotting out the usual suspects which means say anything you like as long as you include the words "diversity" and..... well, that's it really.

Looking past the fact that advocating for the arts to the top levels of government sounds an awful lot like the job you're paid six figures to do here's a helpful suggestion Mr Davey, from us, here in TheLab™

What it lacks in poetry it makes up for in simplicity we feel.

[ Wavey in The Stage ]
[ Dumbass Poster on Flickr for Sharing ]