The non announcement by Arts Council England that Grants for the Arts will be cut by a staggering 35% (£29million) is further evidence, if any were needed, that ACE are poor stewards of this country’s artistic well being.
It is ironic that just last week Jo Saucek, the online editor of Arts Debate, ACE’s latest attempt at garnering public support for the arts, sent Article19 an email in response to our editorial ‘Begging for More’ that criticises ACE for a lack of venom when advocating for the arts.
Basically Ms Saucek complains that instead of criticising ACE we should join in the debate via the Arts Debate website. The email ends with the line; “These are the comments that will be used to shape our future policy.”
Evidently Ms Sauceck, ACE’s policy is to eviscerate the funding that plays the largest part in building the foundation for new creative’s to make work and show it to the world. Activity that will now become ten times more difficult to achieve. What on earth makes you or ACE think that Article19 or anybody else would wish to be associated with shaping that kind of policy?
So unbelievably incompetent are those charged with fighting for the arts then when we tried to reply to Arts Debate via email we find all of our email addresses blocked. So much for the open exchange of ideas.
All we can re-interate here is that ACE has crawled under a rock and begged not to be hurt too badly. What they should do is strap on the knuckle dusters and come out fighting with outright condemnation of the very politicians they feel the need suck up to with evermore disastrous results.
We would be the first to admit that some people in the arts are self serving, pretentious idiots that could do with a good slap.
The majority however are perfect examples of those that have taken the path least travelled by to illustrate to the nation that there is so much more to life than the accumulation of money, houses, cars and pension schemes.
They illustrate that a creative mind is something that we should all hope to have no matter what our personal endeavours may be.
They illustrate why we, as people, are a better than animals when there is far too much evidence to the contrary in the news every single damn day.
We reserve a special dose of vitriol for the alleged Minister for the Arts David Lammy. This sycophantic moron stood before the House of Commons during a debate on arts funding initiated by former actress turned MP Glenda Jackson. Instead of defending the arts he chose instead to defend the Olympics by saying they were “exactly the sort of one-off national event that the lottery was intended to support”.
With friends like that who needs enemies?
