I have been thinking about this blog for over a week and have decided to publish it. As I outlined in my last posting, my exhibition, BLURRED, which was scheduled to be shown at the New Bridge Project in December, had to be cancelled due to a double booking on their part. (I still await any hard evidence that the other event was booked before mine; however, I think a trip to Venus is more likely to happen than any evidence arriving in the post.) So I decided to write to Arts Council England, as they fund the New Bridge Project, to see if there were any avenues of compensation. I also asked for financial information, through the FOI act, concerning a number of organisations funded by Arts Council England. This is their reply in full:
Dear Mr Carr,
Thank you for your letters and for making us aware of your concerns. I am sorry to hear that your experience with the NewBridge Project was not a positive one and we are grateful to you for having taken the time to share your concerns with us.
Though this cannot be handled using Arts Council’s published complaints procedures, as it refers to the actions of an external organisation which we fund, we still appreciate you giving us the opportunity to respond. We take all comments about an organisation in receipt of public funding seriously and I would like to reassure you that all your comments have been noted.
I feel that it is helpful to explain that while we may provide funding to an organisation, the organisation themselves are still fully responsible for every part of its business. We are not involved in the management of their day to day activity or responsible for any action an organisation takes, or fails to take. As such we are unable to intervene when there are concerns of this nature between an organisation and a third party. There are also no avenues for pursuing compensation through Arts Council England.
I was also sorry to read that you feel the work you have seen in the galleries you have mentioned is mediocre. I therefore fully appreciate your acknowledgement that appreciation of art is a personal preference. Please be assured that we have robust application processes and assess applications on their artistic quality as part of our criteria. These are extremely competitive processes and we are confident that our application and post award procedures ensure excellent artistic experiences for people in England. I am sorry that you have not felt this.
I note that you intend to self-fund future exhibitions so you may be interested in our open funding programme Grants for the arts. It is common for us to fund individual artists to exhibit their work through this programme and I suggest that this is something you should look into. If you are interested then please let me know and I can put you in touch with somebody in my team who will be happy to help.
With regard to your Freedom of Information request we will need you to be more specific in the details you require. My suggestion to get the information you are looking for is to request all successful applications to Arts Council England for the organisations you have mentioned. These applications will detail everything you have asked for, we are unable to supply these without specific request from you. You can email this request to [email protected]
I am sorry that I can’t help you further with your complaint and I hope that you will consider Grants for the arts as a way forward for your work.
Best regards,
Keir Gill Complaints Manager, Customer Services National Support Centre – The Hive Arts Council England
My next blog will be my reply.
