Richard Huw Morgan - Good Cop Bad Cop, Wales

To whom it may concern.

I am writing to add my unreserved support for the campaign by the Centre For Performance Research to have their full revenue client status reinstated by the Arts Council of Wales.

If Wales as a country is truly to have a future on the international stage in any field of activity, let alone artistic, it will need more organisations of the standard of CPR, not fewer. Organisations that can evidence their international status through the level of support that this short-sighted and, to date unjustified, decision by the Arts Council of Wales has generated.

CPR should exist as part of an integrated network of specialised arts organisations that feed each other within Wales. What should not be forgotten is that CPR was just one of the, and last remaining ACW revenue client, organisations spawned by the highly influential and respected Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, each operating with a specialist area of interest.

It was inevitable that with the decline of Brith Gof and Magdalena that CPR could appear isolated and perhaps, to some, limited in the scope of their activities. But it never was the intention for it to cover all bases. What is particularly depressing, demoralising and frighteningly familiar is that following consultation with ACW, CPR directly addressed the needs of Wales’ based practitioners and other ACW agendas but then still gets notice of revenue funding withdrawal.

I admired CPR’s ability to respond and diversify, and was encouraged by the further development of the CPR associate artist scheme and more particularly the “speaking to the nation” conference which evidenced a groundswell of positivity about the field among Wales based practitioners, presenters, students, etc that I had not witnessed since the start of the 1990’s – things were looking up!

I do find it particularly galling that I was not consulted as a member of the ACW’s National List of Advisers as to my opinion of the value of CPR to the performance community in Wales, and would question whether this oversight in utilising the expertise at hand is indeed grounds for appeal. The ACW’s website declares that among the duties of NLA members is to, “Assist with the periodic review of funded organisations” Which, if any, members of the NLA were consulted, and on what grounds they were selected and others, myself included, who put themselves forward for the NLA with specified interest in performance, not consulted? Is this a process of "openess and transparency"?

Personally, though my individual involvement with CPR has not been enormous, it has been highly significant in the development of my artistic career in Wales. To give just three examples: The first presentation by my previous company “Das Wunden” in a critical context at CPR’s Performance: Process and Documentation retreat in Brecon in 1993; My participation as part of the academic TRAWS collective presentation at 2005’s major “Towards Tomorrow”
International gathering, and finally my recent participation in the aforementioned “Speaking to the Nation” conference.

But value should not be judged purely in personal terms, purely by “what does this organisation do for me?”, but also in terms of its value to the larger community/communities of which I am also a part, “what does this organisation do for the performance community in Wales, what does this organisation do for the representation of the performance community of Wales worldwide, what does this organisation do for the economy of Aberystwyth etc.” Obviously such questions are much more difficult to answer than the purely personal, and as such demand a greater degree of application and intellect to address. The purely personal is the basis of the free-market economy; the needs of communities are the realm of representational politics, and as such, of those who spend public funds.

I could go on at length. What I really hate about the situation now is that it has become a campaign to have a bad decision overturned – a costly and difficult process – rather than having been consulted in the prior to the decision being made as to what my ‘expert opinion’
of the organisation might be.

With all my best wishes and ongoing support.

Richard Huw Morgan
Co-artistic director
good cop bad cop