Richard Gregory - Artistic Director, Quarantine, Manchester

Dear Judie and Richard

I'm shocked and saddened to hear your news from the Arts Council of Wales. It appears to be ill-considered and shortsighted. All of us at Quarantine want to add our support to your campaign to reverse this decision

CPR is utterly unique. Over such a long history you've managed to forge a vital organisation which at once sits both clearly rooted in Wales and yet is widely recognised internationally for its distinctive breadth of activity. You're one of those very few British arts organisations whose work is truly embedded in its home environment yet manages to engage with (and share, with breadth, depth and vision) what is happening right now in the bigger wider world.

Our visit last year to CPR with our production SUSAN & DARREN strongly illustrated some of CPR's strengths. We were welcomed warmly and informally, yet with complete efficiency and excellence in the support of our work. The audience for our show and the participants for our workshops came from near and far and both experts and first-timers were represented. I can't think of another organisation that has quite this ability to embed and share its work and ideas with local audiences and artists and yet persistently look to the wider world for new ways of thinking and working.

The diverse combination of means of exploring and exposing the practice and the processes of performance-making by an incredible range of activities means that CPR seems able to constantly change shape. It's impossible to single out one element of CPR's work in terms of relative value. To my mind, the greatest potential loss - for Aberystwyth, for Wales, the UK, Europe and further - is that those moments of unexpected inspiration and revelation (whether through watching a show, making work, taking part in a workshop, reading a publication, using the archive or via other routes you've invented) may no longer be accessible to so many of us. My understanding is that these are the very qualities the Arts Council of Wales aspires towards nurturing - in the organisations and artists it supports and for the audiences it wants to help develop and serve. It seems utterly absurd to cut CPR's regular funding when it is a proven, celebrated expert in delivering these moments and extending them, time after time. From here, it seems obvious that your activities need and deserve continuity of investment, not the stop-start uncertainty of project funding. Wales and the world without CPR would be a poorer place.

Please let me know if there is anything else Quarantine can do to help. If you'd like a paper copy of this letter I'll happily send one.

With best wishes

Richard

Richard Gregory

Artistic Director, Quarantine, Manchester


www.qtine.com