The arts Council again

[Hoardasurass]

I'm lost for words over this grant
Female-born trans man given £64K of public cash to find a sperm donor https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12640313/Female-born-trans-man-given-64K-public-cash-sperm-donor-Sex-Education-writer-gets-Arts-Council-grant-host-live-Netflix-grill-men-suitability-father-child.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton

£64,000 for just one performance of the show? How on earth is it costing that much for a single performance?

Sounds like the arts council might be inadvertently cross-subsidising Netflix who are contributing less than half that amount.

I might understand a commercial company funding something like this when you think of the types of programs being made nowadays.

But how is this remotely 'art'?

I can see how it could count as “performance art” but I don’t see how it needs £64k for a single performance.

And of course there needs to be a local venue available for artists to perform in, for them to be able to submit a funding application in the first place.

It would be interesting to compare that grant award for a single event with the amount of arts funding that reaches communities in economically deprived areas outside London. In their latest de-funding round, arts council removed funding from a theatre in Oldham for example, which I think has closed as a result.

Count the 'I' in that piece, and also the 'we', meaning this individual and partner. It's abundantly clear who and what this is about. And it's not creating art for the benefit of the public.

We are becoming such a morally bankrupt society.

@LoobiJee
Arts Council England also forced ENO out of London & have since had to backtrack somewhat on that spectacular idiocy; but they’ve still screwed over a load of people in low-paid but secure employment (including people working past retirement age); & generally committed utter fuckery across multiple sectors.

I don’t like opera, & these days am pretty much housebound anyway, but hoiking ENO out of London because they’re promising to invest outside London is… aurgh. Part of ENO’s success level is due to its location - ie they’ll play to a[n almost-] full house every performance & ticket prices will be “London prices” - though they are of course exceptional artistically too; & they provide “accessible” opera in terms of performances being in English. Crucially though, the arts scene outside London deserved investment, not that kind of bait & switch. “We’ll be investing more in arts outside London… by moving a London institution somewhere else!”

Battersea Arts Theatre is in Wandsworth, where the child poverty rate is 28% & the poverty rate as a whole is 34%. This performance certainly isn’t designed with them in mind. The Arts Council had no business giving this grant. (Do we think I could hit them & Netflix up for a wheelchair that meets my needs if I let them in on the endless process of getting the Council to install a ramp at my home? I’m willing to talk up being agender [& just not mention it’s in the sense of not believing gender identity is an actual thing…])

I can't say I'd consider this art, but then that applies to a lot of things.

Equally we spend public money on fertility treatment for lots of other couples (which probably comes in at more than £64k per couple on occasion).

It's a bit weird but it's not like weird art and spending public money on fertility is a new concept.

You can't get funding for fertility treatment as a bog standard lesbian couple in this country, or at least, not until you have spent several thousands of pounds on icsi and if that doesn't work you may qualify for 1 round of IVF.

Yes I know, but that doesn't negate the fact that we still spend public money on fertility treatment for lots of couples.

Like I say, this situation is bloody odd. But they're hardly doing anything new or outrageous. Poncey weird performance art will always exist and the UK govt already spends public money on fertility treatment.

“The Arts Council had no business giving this grant. (Do we think I could hit them & Netflix up for a wheelchair that meets my needs if I let them in on the endless process of getting the Council to install a ramp at my home? I’m willing to talk up being agender [& just not mention it’s in the sense of not believing gender identity is an actual thing…])”

Worth a try, nitro. The performance could take the form of…a creative journey from [a venue local to you] to [the council offices] challenging our everyday assumptions about inclusion and identity, via a provocative but sensitive curation of interactive experiences and explorations along the way. You’d need to come up with a suitably grandiose title for it of course - eg “Independence and Dependence - An Evocation of Struggle and Surrender” or some such.

Whilst you're correct about poncy art and information on the NHS, however, this is a false equivalence. Would you expect the NHS to fund an opera, or the arts Council to fund a hip replacement surgery, i mean the government funds them anyway?If not why is this ok? If so why bother having specialist services like the NHS and arts Council, why not save some money and just have a 1 stop shop for everything?

No, but this is (apparently) an artistic performance with a motive. It's the same as if a disabled person gave a performance about their disability in order to buy themselves a new power chair and got funding from Arts Council.

The fact they're using the grant money in order to fund a health-related thing is their choice.

It's the same as if a disabled person gave a performance about their disability in order to buy themselves a new power chair and got funding from Arts Council.

Are you seriously equating someone finding a sperm donor (which afaik other women somehow do without any external funding) with a disabled person funding equipment?

<starts making notes>

There is supposedly a surveyor coming tomorrow, but as this has been dragging on for months (I don’t think we’re yet at years plural…) I’ll believe it when I see him. Might as well crack on with researching that grant application 🤔

In that they would both be applying to the Arts Council for a health-related issue which is the NHS' remit, yes.

Have a read back of what you wrote here.
Noone should be getting funding from the ARTS Council for medical treatment or equipment.
The only thing that the ARTS Council should be funding is art not medical treatments

Strictly speaking they are funding performance "art". Although as I said before, I can't say I'd personally consider it of artistic merit.

@Flickersy it's not art though it's a female interviewing males who want to father a child with them (through artificial insemination presumably).

In my opinion it's not art either. But neither is an awful lot of shite in museums, theatres, and galleries in my opinion, yet it still manages to attract funding.

As it's being done as part of a live performance I presume it's been decided that it meets the threshold of art for the AC, however.

And given public money is frequently spent on weird art shit which frankly you couldn't pay me to take home or see, I don't really get the outrage that this particular piece of weird art shit is attracting.

It isn’t one performance, it’s on for 10 days, with interviews for 3 hours on some days and 8 hours on Saturdays!

Also, from the description on BAC website and the linked First Trimester website, it is far more about the conversations about what being a father / parent / donor if sperm entails, and what qualities we should value.

Participants in the interviews don’t even have to be able to produce sperm. So women can take part.

Grey area for me. They are not staying that this show (durational performance art) is an audition and will lead to choosing the donor. It is billed as being about conversations about parenthood, but they might, by chance, find the person who is the donor.

Really unethical to use a show to find a donor, less so to use the premise to invite people to have conversations in which they are asked questions based on the artists explorations about what parenting and bring a donor is.

https://bac.org.uk/whats-on/first-trimester/

https://firsttrimester.co.uk/

Not art, and not within the NHS remit either.

And not just interviewing males. Anyone can apply to be a participant whether or not they produce sperm to or would consider being a donor.

You can't get help with fertility problems if your problem is that you are both the same sex. That's not a medical problem. Why should entirely fertile women who are Lesbian have fertility treatment, ffs? Or a gay male couple? They are not infertile, they are in a relationship that cannot produce children through sex. I think we also get hung up on the idea that children are a right - they are not. As to the 64k sperm donor vetting, if that is art then so are the seagull droppings so artistically arranged on my car.

Agreed.