The Good News: CPR is pleased and proud to announce the programme for its 10th International Giving Voice Festival, on the theme of Breath, Inspiration and the Voice. This year’s festival brings to Wales renowned practitioners from all over the world, to share skills and methods and celebrate the art of the voice - in the company of the many practitioners who will gather for this event. Giving Voice is a key ingredient of CPR’s programmes of workshops, performances and events that provide a special resource for both the profession and audiences in Wales. Further information on the Giving Voice programme is detailed on CPR’s website – www.thecpr.org.uk – as well as a full brochure downloadable PDF file. The Bad News: It is, therefore, quite shattering at the very moment of launching this year’s Giving Voice to receive notification of the Arts Council of Wales’ decision to withdraw revenue funding from CPR with effect from July ’08. Instead, the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) is offering CPR the opportunity to compete for project funding on an occasional basis without acknowledging that the lack of ACW revenue support could compromise CPR’s relationship and partnership funding with Aberystwyth University. It also inevitably limits the work that CPR can do, and jeopardises the infrastructure that allows CPR to develop and promote an exciting programme with the lead time that international work requires; in the field of labour relations, a proposal as unrealistic as this could be construed as ‘constructive dismissal’. It is difficult to understand the logic of ACW’s decision in the context of its recently published plan to establish an English-language National Theatre for Wales on a federal basis, for which it desires innovation, an international perspective and a rigorous training policy. In terms of knowledge, experience and contacts developed over thirty years of work, CPR is extremely well-placed to foster international connections and provide research, development and training that utilises the skills of the best theatre practitioners available from across the world. However, arguments of merit, artistic or otherwise, would appear to be disallowed as grounds for appeal within the formal terms of the ACW’s appeals procedure, wherein whether there is a case for appeal is, in the first instance, judged solely by ACW Chief Executive (currently Peter Tyndall), who was of course involved in the original decision-making process. Despite this, in preparing for the appeal, at this extremely difficult and precarious moment for CPR, we would greatly welcome hearing from those wishing to write in support, encouragement and advocacy of the value and integrity of our work - past, present and future. Letters of support may be addressed to Judie Christie and/ or Richard Gough Email to cprwww@aber.ac.uk or by post to: CPR, The Foundry, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK, SY23 3AJ Giving Voice will proceed, and resound magnificently as will - we hope with your support - many other future CPR projects. An illustrated chronology of CPR’s work can be downloaded as a PDF file from www.thecpr.org.uk (Welcome page). Further information and comment is below. Further information and comment: 1. CPR – ‘the Aberystwyth-based powerhouse of international theatre’ (The Guardian) - is one of the organisations in Wales from whom the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) intends to withdraw revenue funding status, stating that ‘unfortunately… faced with some very difficult decisions within the current financial climate … the main reason [for this decision] is that ACW is focusing funding on front-line activity’. In a surprisingly brief and unfinished letter of notification, ACW goes on to say that ‘the current approach to programming by CPR is probably best funded on a project by project basis’. There is no indication that ACW does not value the work of CPR – on the contrary, a 2007 report on the company produced by ACW valued ‘CPR’s instinct for programming that expands horizons’ and concluded that: ‘CPR is a vital and prestigious player in the arts in Wales. It is at an important transitional stage with new possibilities opening out with occupancy of The Foundry. It’s history, experience, and present interests are important to mobilise into the challenges of new resources for drama theatre and performance, centring now in Wales on the development of a non-building based national theatre.’ (ACW Director of Arts, 2007) 2. Naturally, we are greatly dismayed about the decision particularly since ACW has used only the language of economy and affordability, of revenue-saving within the current budget. We are also extremely perplexed about its timing: a decision made prior to ACW’s launch of a seven-week consultative period inviting response to its own draft five-year art-form strategies published in the middle of December. 3. Since the language of ACW is about affordability it should be emphasised that a relatively small grant (currently £118,300) – certainly much less than sister organisations in Europe – has been significant, enabling the retention of a dedicated core team who year-on-year have trebled the ACW investment, and enabling the priming of important projects and programmes. CPR has declined several attractive invitations to develop its work elsewhere because of its commitment to Wales and the model of effective partnership between ACW, Aberystwyth University and public/ private investment; ACW withdrawal threatens this complex yet fragile ecology of funding and activity. 4. The Arts Council’s decision to switch the mechanism from revenue to project funding will at best allow their cherry-picking of projects without investment into the infrastructure that makes them possible, and at worst see CPR’s ideas, experience and know-how disappear along with the bathwater down the plughole of the diminishing project funding pots. 5. If we are to be bound, gagged – or shot down – by militaristic terminology such as ‘front-line activity’, we should like to record for posterity that, from its outward-facing ‘ex-centric’ position [on the wild western front], CPR’s ‘pioneering activity’ across less conspicuous ‘fronts’ over the years has been instrumental in raising the visibility of Wales worldwide. But who from ACW Command HQ would know as they do not venture west? 6. CPR supports the Arts Council’s aspiration to redress years of under-funding to the independent theatre sector, to revitalise it in order to face the challenges – and opportunities - ahead. Despite the richness and diversity of work and practice that has long been a strength of theatre in Wales, funding policy and decisions over the last decade, playing to safety through a concentration of resources privileging the mainstream, the ‘establishment’ and the highly-visible, have helped create a fragile and fragmented theatre ecology in Wales; CPR has no wish to propagate the climate of competition for limited resources that has existed for so long, and indeed welcomes the funding uplifts to fellow artists and companies that can allow for their future development and growth. 7. A revitalised theatre ecology emerges out of a confluence of different ideas and influences across disciplines and sectors. As a meeting place, for ideas, exchange and discovery, CPR has consistently pursued and promoted this idea of collaboration and confluence, of dialogue and engagement - across borders, between cultures and between disciplines. CPR works to promote innovation, experimentation, and process, and offers access at all levels to innovative training programmes and approaches to making theatre alongside programmes of high quality presentations and performances from around the world that pursue ideals of accessibility without artistic compromise. CPR’s desire is to help foster a vibrant and distinctive theatre ecology in Wales – an ecology distinguished by its vitality, creativity, imagination, vision, openness, enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion. This would appear to match the strategic and capacity-building aims of ACW and an outward-facing Wales, and so calls into question ACW’s decision. In preparing for the appeal, at this extremely difficult and precarious moment for CPR, we would greatly welcome hearing from you. Please write in support, encouragement and advocacy of the value and integrity of our work - past, present and future. Letters of support may be addressed to Judie Christie and/ or Richard Gough Email to cprwww@aber.ac.uk or by post to: CPR, The Foundry, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK, SY23 3AJ Giving Voice will proceed, and resound magnificently as will - we hope with your support - many other future CPR projects |
| The Centre for Performance Research web site: www.thecpr.org.uk |
| Judie Christie e-mail: cprwww@aber.ac.uk |
Thursday, February 7, 2008 |
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