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?

  1. D'log

    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”

  2. nikki

    Hi, thanks for expanding more on what you meant.

    Most of your criticism seems directed at the Midwest website. I wasn’t around for the first of the fallow periods you describe (still an undergraduate with no clue of what was going on outside of the university walls!) and only came across it when it was flourishing (26/01/05-11:48pm, according to my profile). Certainly it looks all but dormant now in comparison.

    Not quite useless though - I still log on regularly, even if it’s not as frequently in the past. There’s no discussion there like there used to be though and that’s a shame.

    Whose responsibility is that? Can we really lay that blame on the organisers? After all, they describe themselves as a catalyst: something to activate people to get on and do it themselves.

    We’ve seen that the website is functionally able to provide the framework to support a range of online activity: calendar, message board, articles, profiles etc. So in that sense I think they’ve done their job. Approximately 1500 registered users but the chemistry’s not there any more for people to be as vocal as they used to be. I’ll take 1/1500th of the blame.

    Maybe we’re just being vocal elsewhere: Brum’s online landscape had changed a lot over the last few years…

    I’m not sure how accurate this memory is, but it seems to me things went a little bit shaky not long after one particular user of the website got quite abusive on the messageboard. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for certain levels of antagonism, but this seemed to over-step the mark and it’s my guess this caused a lack of confidence in all but a few core posters stopped putting their views across online quite so readily.

    Generally speaking, is it possible for administrators of a forum-based site to artificially stimulate conversation if the users aren’t generating it themselves? Would that be obviously false and end up killing the site anyway?

    My description in this post of the Midwest website as a closed community refers to its use predominantly by people within the arts community as opposed to being used by a more general public too. Your comments seem to imply your experience of Midwest has been one of further divisions and barriers within the arts community: “for those who managed to be involved with MidWest”. Is that right, is that what you mean?

    I attend the Midwest events whenever I’m able to. Other than the quality of the content, the main attraction is that they give me the opportunity to meet artists and other professionals from outside the little circle that I usually have contact with. This includes others working in Birmingham, but also people from outside the region too.

    I can’t remember an event where the speakers have been from Birmingham and I think it was absolutely critical that the three organisers of Midwest were not Birmingham-based either. Between them they have been able to inject fresh ideas and perspectives and provide kicks up the pants whenever local participants started slipping down the slope of “there’s nothing interesting happening in Brum”.

    The ‘Casino’ events pre-date my awareness of Midwest but, judging by yesterday’s conversations, the simple act of taking a bus-load of Birmingham artists out to another city and meeting people involved in artist-led activity elsewhere seem to have had a significant effect on a) participants’ activity back here and b) perceptions of Birmingham from outside.

    Where do you think the Birmingham-centric criticism has come from. Is it that other parts of the Midlands feel left out? I notice I’ve been continuously referring to the city of Birmingham rather than the region of the West Midlands…

    Maybe the West Midlands remit really was too ambitious.

  3. Ana

    I could go on about Midwest all day, but I think if I had to sum up my observations, most artists feel they’ve done some good stuff, but they could have done a lot more.

    Just think about everything Self Service has done with no or tiny amounts of funding.

  4. nikki

    So, is it that it didn’t meet expectations in terms of reach and/or quantity, or is it that the activities weren’t right for what you feel would have benefited you?

  5. nikki

    Afterthought and rhetorical question about the low-cost achievements of Self Service: surely that’s largely due to the huge amounts of time, effort and resources we all give for free. What do you suppose the actual cost would be if we attached a monetary value to this aspect of it?

  6. Faye

    Just briefly to chip in on the Self Service mention (which I’m grateful for - thank you, it’s great to have our activity appreciated). Rather than being an example of what Midwest should or could have done (more effectively with less money, as I understand the post) I’d say Self Service is an example of what Midwest DID do. Without being engaged with Midwest Self Service may well never have happened, practically because the core members met through Midwest activities, and philosophically/emotionally because over the past six years of being engaged at various levels with the project, we have all gained so much more confidence in approaching other professionals and in valuing our own support of each other.

  7. jason e bowman

    I have been following this with interest.

    I want to make a comments, which is factual and based on my own personal expeience of being a co-director of Midwest.

    The three co-directors of Midwest made a decision in Sumnmer 2007 to close the project and informed the Arts Council of their intention to do so at that time.

    An announcement, as mentioned here, was made to the Midwest membership in September of 2007.

    It seems appropriate to make clear that Midwest was not one of the organisations that has received Arts Council cuts and therefore should not be considered as such. Jason

What do you think, Linda?

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