Tom Pow - Senior Lecturer, Glasgow University

FAO The Arts Council of Wales

It is with dismay and amazement that I have learned of the cessation of funding for CPR. I am a Scottish writer, currently engaged on a project on Dying Villages in Europe, supported by the Scottish Arts Council with a Creative Scotland Award. I am also a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Storytelling at Glasgow University, Crichton Campus in Dumfries.

I think I am therefore in a good position to know what Scottish organisations offer the practitioner. There is no Scottish centre which offers the international richness of the CPR. The work of the CPR itself is clearly of great value in enriching the sometimes closed traditions of British theatre practice and it is, I would argue, through its conferences and publications, the most cost-effective means available of sharing and disseminating such vibrant theatrical processes as those employed in Eastern Europe.

Two other points that I think are crucial to the case for CPR. The first is that it demonstrates a commitment to internationalism that is not at the heart of perception concerning Welsh culture. It is therefore in that sense an important flagship; one that Scotland lacks. The second is that, operating as it does at the geographical margin, it can be sensitive to and active in considering the enormous demographic shifts that are going to take place in the first half of the twenty first century. Because of such shifts in population, it is at the margins we shall find some of the most dynamic and challenging work in contemporary culture.

Now is not the time to close down such a rich vein of achievement and opportunity.

Yours faithfully

Tom Pow
Senior Lecturer, Glasgow University