Over the summer, I have had to deal with the bureaucracy of a PIP application for my son.
I took part in Mansions Of The Future Summer School in an attempt to try to work out how to restart my career as an artist without being forced or coerced into “volunteering”. I don’t think it was very successful, as I haven’t yet received any offers of paid work, or funding to start a new project, and I felt as though I was being coerced back into old work that I abandoned as being exploitative a long time ago.
Thankfully, I finally received a letter from the council last weekend with a reduced council tax bill.
After the stress of the PIP application, we’re awaiting the outcome.
I have completed a short five week Carer’s Mental Health training course, so I can now use this training within my capacity as an artist.
It seems that the conclusion (from the Arts Council) is that proposals from artists in Lincoln are not good enough, or diverse enough, and as I know, graduates are leaving the city to seek work elsewhere.
So this means that the Arts Council think that the quality of work produced by University of Lincoln students / graduates is not good enough, and I don’t believe that, I believe that graduates here are not being given the knowledge and resources to make good funding applications to produce the work we want to, to the quality we want to. We are forced to compromise our work, and set up to fail.
