Dear Mr Sump,
Re: your QUALC funding application for Ghost Bullion: Mining Towns Since Thatcher: An Anthology of New Sub-Social Poetry, edited by Barry Swabb.
I?m writing to draw attention to our new regional, local and international strategy paper ?Ending Up with Lincolnshire Art? this has pointed towards a new joined up strategy for ?needs-based bilateral community appraisal mechanisms, skills-focussed, with wider retention potential for displaced and politico-economic poly-social accommodation with a view to creating a positive cultural exchange for life term non-workers, centred upon alternative ideals of well-being and the international standing of east Lincolnshire as a centre for ecology and coastal art.? As Sir Terence wrote earlier this year in his groundbreaking strategy paper for DCMS:
?Moving from the counter argument of further arts proliferation, and not least necessitated by the less implicit or even reductive establishment of wider support and reception, this move towards judgement, sensibility and appraisal has long term sustainability at its heart. It is deeply engaged and engaging. It reaffirms the non-redundancy of creativity in a measured, quantifiable, imploring definiteness. My argument is for an enrichment of the global moment, for a resurgence of judgement and choice, selection and invigoration, the centring and alignment of creativity for our economic deviation and, indeed, the global gravity of this new age of long term golden disbursement. It is now an age of superior digital congruence.? See ?Fixed Forums for Change: The Binary of Lethargy?, section 45.6.8.
We have also identified, in line with COBAC?s national arts strategy, a three point plan ?to support the digitisation of the digital infrastructure, for all arts-based digital community programmes of new media outlets, especially to virtually support the digital positioning of radical outreach programmes for a sustainable media-rich, multi-platform delivery system, or systems, necessary for the twenty-first century and all of its manifest rich-media cartographies.?
We have also just examined the findings of ArtScope II, commissioned by DigiNeed and Ventrax Arts Consulting, and the outcomes identified pointed to further need for ?multiple enhancements to more deliverable literary digital groves, alternative media plasticity and modular peer-based quantification, not to be isolated from digital enactors and local innovators in Louth, Alford and Ingoldmells.? This has been implemented in a further fourteen step plan, known as the Bullet Point Sonnet, in partnership with SkillsSet for the creation of 73 new jobs in Skegness to support the arts integration network, and to be headed by our Chief Executive, Melinda Cartwright-Sawyers.
It is in this context, that your funding application for ?150 has been rejected for not being in line with this year?s strategy.
There is a further Disbursements Quorum Meeting on Thursday 11 January, if you could prepare Section K22 of the form with a six year cash plan, business strategy and executive summary we can pursue an Extraordinary Summation of your bid to try and push this through. However, you will need to demonstrate arts partnering with at lease four other local/international arts corpora. Do talk to our flagship partner, Hideous Boulders, especially Robert Ludge, the Chief Executive, about coastal arts opportunities. They?re based in Boston.
It will take five months to learn the outcome. We remain committed to new poetry.
Yours sincerely
Dr Reginald Pyron
Literature Development Officer
18 December 2002
Dear Dr Pyron,
You have restored my faith in George A. Romero?s vision of arts administration.
Your language skills appear to have been caught in the tar pits of Government linguistics: a colossal form of intellectual absence combined with a seemingly endless system of witless promulgation. Perhaps you?ve already moved over to the Dark Side, the humour of your job title was not lost on me or my colleagues here at Castell & Castell. Your work is paying huge dividends; at least to the incumbents. Factory-farmed poets may well lack the flavour of free range, but who cares with such wonderful caged abundance? Swollen coffers and swelling duffers, truly Lincolnshire is the land of bounty.
Castell & Castell?s support of Barry?s bid for a feeble ?150 for editorial costs and permissions has clearly impinged on the pension deficit once again. Hang on in there, Reg, only thirty years to go before you collect the Big One. I?m sure there will be munificent oinking on the way to collect your CBE for services squandered.
Back here in the real world, where language still make its little attempts at meaning, however complex, we think it unwise to align ourselves with your ?ber-strategy. I had clearly been mistaken that the role of our government?s arts administration should be to support those involved in actually creating literature and to finance their strategies however misaligned. Despite your lack of experience, skills, knowledge, expertise or innovation, I?m sure your Board will do a much better job?in making it all work than the weary writers and publishers. I think there?s another strategy paper on that, though I might be about to wipe my arse with it as I sit writing this.
Toilet kisses
Albert
Deputy Poetry Editor
Castell & Castell
tags: Letters?from?our?editor
