Alice Briggs - Blaengar, Wales

Dear Arts Council of Wales,

RE: Save CPR - the Centre for Performance Research, Wales

I am writing to express my support for the Centre for Performance Research. I first came across CPR as an intern in 2002, and was fortunate to work with the company for six months; gaining contacts, skills and confidence in administration, performance and research. I have since gone on to set up my own artist’s group working site specifically and within in the field of performance.

I still regularly attend CPR events and performances, and am always extremely inspired by the programme, stunning companies and artists they bring from all around the world to Wales. Not only do they enable the public and practicing artists of Wales to gain more knowledge of performance and other cultures, but they are internationally renowned, quietly promoting Welsh culture across the world through its projects in a way that international events such as the Artes Mundi Prize and Wales in Venice have only very recently begun to do.

CPR’s position in Aberystwyth is also significant, placing Mid Wales on the cultural map, and creating a more geographic balance of arts organizations across Wales, in many other ways focused heavily in the south.

Withdrawing Arts Council Revenue funding from CPR threatens the brilliant work that the company has so far done, and the aspirations of CPR as a company with huge potential for growth situated as it is for the first time in a building with performance and exhibition space, a new library and extended archive.

I hope that you will reconsider your decision to withdraw funding at this time.

Yours sincerely,


Alice Briggs
Project Coordinator, Wales
Blaengar
www.blaengar.org