Dear Judie, Richard and ACW,
I am sorry to hear of the ACW funding decision. As a performer and director keen to make original work, CPR has been for many years my essential vitamin supplement - keeping me going as an independent artist at times when I was not funded.
Like most cases of malnutrition it can take years for the damage to show. I am worried that the pre-Olympic spirit is taking us towards a brawn not brain culture. Being Welsh it shames and saddens me greatly that because of the funding squeeze, we too are taking steps in this direction.
CPR have touched the lives of so many artists in Wales and around the world. They have created an invisible web of contacts (one of which for me was contact, during working with CPR on Restless Gravity, with Argentina which through a long chain of events meaning that I am now writing from Buenos Aires where I am working on a new film).
Where will be my land of song in twenty years if we begin the starvation diet now? ACW has priorities that in part very much targeted towards community access to the arts. What arts? What will there be and who will be supplying it? My Taking Part grant in 2002 enabled me to make a performance with a group of people experiencing mental health issues. As part of the process I took them to the Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth to see a solo performed by Maya Rao from India. They will never forget the experience and it showed me that the contemporary, the experimental, even the down right avant garde can have huge appeal when you create a chain of human contact, hand-holding, education... what ever you want to call it.
All of us benefit from reviews. All of us can learn, grow and improve but please ACW, joined up thinking. Don't mess around with the food chain.
best regards
Deborah Claire Procter
Performer / Film-maker
www.riversandmirrors.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment