five wasted years
I only became aware of them around 2005, but I’ve gained enough of value from attending several different workshops organised by Midwest since then that I’m happy to spend most of today and tomorrow contributing to Up, Up and Away: “part of Midwest’s programme for demise”.
Having just spent about 10 hours with a fairly diverse collection of artists and getting a sense of how the Midwest programme has also benefited them, reading this on D’log this evening was, um, unexpected:
Midwest £62,064
[ supposedly a support organisation for artists in the West Midlands, which never really took off — but somehow hung on to funding for about five wasted years ]
The full cuts list
The post goes on to say:
Cuts to the useless Midwest were widely expected among artists.
As I understand it, back in 2002/2003 Midwest were told in no uncertain terms that they had to prove their worth within the first 18 months of operation in order to receive the remainder of their funding for the rest of the initial 3 year planned lifetime. Not only did they do this, but they then went on to extend the programme for about another 2 years. That second segment has now come to an end and, with things in Birmingham having changed a lot since Midwest’s conception, the organisers have decided that it is now appropriate to bring Midwest’s activities to an end.
This decision was made public to the members of the mailing list in early September last year, so, yes, in that sense, Midwest not getting any further funding in the next fiscal year was widely expected!
Comments are currently switched off on the D’log post and with no obvious means of direct communication via the site I thought I’d open up things here to find out more about why Midwest is apparently seen as useless by some artists. It’s fair enough that some people may hold that view, but I’m curious about how this can be built on for things to come in the future.
What was it about the programme that didn’t work for you and how would you have done it differently?
Hi; maybe I was a bit harsh in calling it ‘useless’ and using the phrase ‘wasted years’. I should have been more precise, and explained what I meant. Those words have now been removed from that posting, but the criticism remains. Doubtless for those who managed to be involved with MidWest, it was productive in some way.
But I note that you’ve all but called the MidWest website useless, on your own blog…
“activity on the message board and calendar has gradually dropped off to the point where it’s no longer as useful as it was.”
And I think you’ll agree, if you remember, that it was also that way for several years after initial set-up. A relatively brief flurry of activity between two fallow periods doesn’t seem to be enough to me.
I guess the main criticism probably stems from the grand mission, presumably set by the Arts Council, being over-ambitious… to be a: “Professional development organisation creating networks, events and opportunities for visual artists across West Midlands”. One of the criticisms I’ve heard is that it always seemed very Birmingham-centric, unless when forced to go wider. Which I found to be true. And the opportunities were few and far between, and the publicity about them rather poor.
Doubtless it was useful for those few who it reached, but for the rest of us it was simply not much use. You yourself have written on your blog…
“I think this [MidWest] is another closed community type affair”