No Funding Doesn’t Mean Giving Up

Our funding is running out, we are one of many similar projects that doesn't sit comfortably within the confines of a funding stream that trickles in a drought. It's time therefore to put things into perspective ...

Despite its inhumane outcomes, there’s something very human about capitalism ... I mean providing it doesn’t leave people dead or crippled, the push and shove that comes with battling for awards, achievement and status comes quite naturally to us all, one way or another. 

Thing is though, like religion, capitalism is a cultural framework and mindset easily abused by those who belong to a sub-species of the human race, who walk the earth with little by way of moral backbone. Dare I say then that the current wave of political and social atrocities that blight the UK landscape, are the work of sub-humans? It sure feels like it, however where I think we can safely say the atrocity is less of a travesty than say in criminality and healthcare, is in the Arts.

Yes, our cultural vision and practice is essential and needs to be ring-fenced within education and social welfare provision, and young people do need positive role models, but where there are funding cuts we do not have actual fatalities. The hard and wonderful inspirational fact is, that wherever in the world there is hardship, music itself continues to be written, to be played, to be sung, to be a source of inspiration.

This is the message behind a few words I have prepared for the young people at a music project I work with. Our funding is running out, we are one of many similar projects that doesn’t sit comfortably within the confines of a funding stream that trickles in a drought.

We’ll find a way, and if it’s not a way to keep this particular project going, there’s no doubt whatsoever that those young people who want to make music, will create their opportunities elsewhere. And so will I, because there’s something very human about being true to what you believe in ...