Enter the Arts Fundraiser or Dumbing Down For Successful Fundraising ?

I have had a lovely email back from an arts fundraiser (local) recomended by an artist friend of mine who is also using her services. She will meet with me early in the New Year , oh what joy if we can agree the time period required and price regarding my re submission, to a the leading funding body for the arts in the UK. Such is the way of things, as I is need to be able to concentrate more fully on art rather than being an arts administrator etc. I had a strange conversation with an artist colleague, after discussing how generally to be accepted as an excellent artist by ones peers , said same artists do not get funded in many cases. My own a case in point to date. I have directly received grants as such for development as an artist bar one for soudn engineering msuic technoly they padi 50% of a £2000 course I paid the rest myself . As I was more of an arts entrepreneur in terms of my own development. He began to recount his many refusals also of arts grants funds. As a result his advice was that you should 'dumb down' your proposals, emphasise how much you need 'their help' to succeed , dumb down a bit your achievements, capabilities and definitely your entrepreneurial spirit in particular, past excellence of what you have done and importantly hope to do, only with their help of course. He seemed utterly convinced that this was the way forward. I could not help but reflect on what he said and how this may apply for next year in an ever increasing competitive 'market ' for grants . I found it useful to refer back to the end of my March 2010 blog !

Fighting Dragons & Turning the Wheel - Inevitably

I am about to do the inevitable,have somebody else work and support me in this production phase. It is a very new development but very much unavoidable given the circumstances as 'the race or game is on'. I have done so much as to be completely 'fagged out' in the process and experiencing something quite foreign to me a 'writers block', as regards my grant application only. Despite having done all the work and got all the information required previously. It all needs to formatted and redone etc.

I cannot see the wood for the trees right now , my head when not 'turning the wheel, keeping the wolf from the door and sword fighting dragons '. Percolates all the while with intriguing words , poems, staging ideas and the such. I am blessed with a lively creativity , however I am resigned to the back up practical support right now. It is new as my journey is a one where duw to a lack of support, based on my particular location on the 'totem pole' I like others like me have done everything often on my own . This case is quite different, I only have to find the artist user friendly person, to basically re -format my own work in the required way. Fundraisers are ubiqutious now in arts organisations, whether freelance or in house. This raises questions to me about what types of art actually gets made and why as such ? Is it the work that can always get the funding and does this aggregate over time ? How is innovation therefore maintained ?

I am strengthened though in my continuing resolve, by artists that read this blog and cite on their own e.g Leanne Stoddart a Poet in Birmingham. I will need to 'pull my finger out ' sharpish and keep on trucking with it all . The author of the 'Sports Writer' Richard Ford on the radio offers a variety of priceless advice on the craft of writing he says it is 'a vocation rather than a profession' he talks interestingly of writing dialogue, character development, locations and not physically describing his characters much and his dyslexia - it makes him a slow reader but he is able to pore over his words and attune more to the musicality of them. I conclude he is very much a poet too.

He also talks of his humble background and crises of confidence, I now so identify and empathise, with why I know artists become disheartened, apathetic or have crippling self confidence in what they do. In my background and also Alan Silitoes and many others, as we come from similar backgrounds - as to class . We definately did know anyone who was a writer or wished to become one. I acknowledge how this has shaped me and gives me my own rich imagination a uniques view on the world. The struggles and the journey that starts from traversing numerous barriers and obstacles can steel such writers and make available to them abundance of wildly orgianal ideas to draw on. I consider myself fortunate to have been largely self educated and to have come as far as I have, enjoying arguing the toss with literature Ph.d's and MA's etc.