Sunday, February 10, 2008

well, this is depressing (addendum)

Dan asked for some background on the London Musicians’ Collective vs. Arts Council of England dispute. Most of what I know, I’d heard on the grapevine. While others have also blogged about it, possibly the most reliable info I have is from the LMC website itself. Look at the two articles ‘LMC Funding Crisis: January 2008’ and ‘LMC Funding Crisis: UPDATE 5 February 2008’. An except from the former article:

The LMC currently finds itself among nearly two hundred arts organisations who are having their Arts Council funding severely cut back. In December we received notice that Arts Council funding, which has always been fundamental to the LMC’s survival, will be cut off from 1 April 2008.
And the update:
Sadly the LMC has not been reprieved by the Arts Council of England, and our funding will stop from 31 March 2008.
We wrote to the Arts Council answering their points of criticism, but clearly failed to dent their intentions…. The fact is that events like the LMC Festival cost a lot of money, eg just one visa for a visiting musician runs into hundreds of pounds.
You may also want to have a look at some of the letters of support for the LMC.

BTW, apologies for not responding to all those who have left comments recently, I’ve been a little overwhelmed (if you can be a little overwhelmed) with stuff (including an upcoming performance with a former teacher of mine… time to practice).

Friday, February 08, 2008

well, this is depressing

From l-m-c.org.uk:

We [the London Musicians’ Collective] sense that no one in the ACE [Arts Council of England] Music Department actually supports the kind of work the LMC does, and that this, rather than the war of statistics, may be the true reason why we are being cut off. This is further evidenced by the fact that no one from the ACE Music Department has attended an LMC event for the past five years, in spite of repeated invitations.