On not getting Bristol City Council Openness Funding
Alongside other colleagues across the city, we are hugely disappointed to hear that Bristol City Council are not recommending us for renewed funding for the next three years.
We know that there is enormous pressure on local authority budgets. There’s huge pressure on all of us. And it’s demoralising for everyone. The culture sector faces an increasing expectation to make compelling and persuasive arguments for the benefits of well-funded, embedded, varied cultural activity in the lives of people who live in this country. It’s very important but it’s also an exhausting narrative to keep finding energy for – particularly when it doesn’t feel recognised at home.
Our feeling in this moment is not one of negativity or resentment to the many wonderful organisations that do remain in receipt of support from Bristol City Council. Favour falls in different directions all the time.
Having funding bids rejected is part of running any kind of charitable/not-for-profit organisation. And it is part of being an artist. We are part of an ecology and we have to show up for each other. Be kind. Be imaginative. Sometimes what you do chimes with a funder, and sometimes it doesn’t. Usually there’s not enough money to go around to fund all the good stuff. But in all of this what remains vital is transparency and respect.
We think that this process has been deeply flawed and it’s been destabilising. Delaying decisions meant that the panel were assessing applications we all wrote at the beginning of 2022, and the world moves fast these days – our plans and the plans of the people they have funded and not funded look very different now. And we feel dismayed that the skills, knowledge and expertise of the council’s own arts team weren’t used in the assessment process.
For us it was what the funding represented that mattered. It was recognition of the impact of our work in the city. Acknowledgement that what we do for artists and audiences in Bristol makes a difference.
At the Edinburgh festival this year a number of our international colleagues remarked on the extraordinary quality of ideas and practice from artists we were supporting there. ‘What’s in the water in Bristol?’ they said.
We are inspired and motivated by Bristol and the artists here.
We are proud and connected to the audiences who continue to make Mayfest what it is – a gathering; a celebration.
We will keep making invitations to wonderful performance makers from all over the world to come and be here to share inspiring and beautiful work with the people of Bristol.
We’ll keep animating the spaces of this city – the car parks, the pubs, the shopping centres, the toilets, the parks, the waterways, and on.
We’ll keep being a place for stories and questions and a little bit of mischief.
And we’ll work hard to be part of better collaboration, communication and transparency between our peers and colleagues here. But everyone has to sign up for that.
Kate and Matthew
Ways you can help
Buy a ticket for our events and come along to show your support
Share our projects and shows with your friends, and advocate for the importance of culture
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