'We will emerge stronger': Manchester's Commonword reacts to funding axe
Days after losing its Arts Council funding, Manchester’s Commonword, a writer development organisation, is still taking stock and looking at its future options. But in a defiant message its artistic director, Pete Kalu, promised that the organisation would survive and “emerge stronger”.
Commonword had been seeking £94,000 a year for the next three years, a total of £282,000. Its Arts Council England funding in 2012-13 represented 59% of Commonword's total funding that year. Kalu told Write Out Loud that "we have a robust plan in place, taking in a wide range of other funding possibilities", but the loss of the Arts Council funding "may significantly curtail our work with new writers until such time as we have regrown income streams".
He added: "The ACE directives for us to programme more events and to deliver more and more ‘metrics’ – reports measuring progress, present more written plans for building audiences etc - combined with a simultaneous reduction in the very funding that would allow us to do these additional things made life difficult. These directives were accompanied by a view that we should raise more ‘private income’ – itself something which requires time and resources to establish and which is far easier for a theatre or opera house than a writing development organisation - meant we were effectively being set up to fail.
"The wider context, of course, includes the political climate, the veneration within Arts Council England of business models for the arts, arts as tourism, art as industry. None of these sit easily with the holistic, time-intensive nurturing of new writing talent and the idea that giving voice to communities has value in itself, outside of any economic benefit.
"The idea of cultural equity – that black communities have a right to be represented in the arts and, importantly, to represent themselves - has fallen by the wayside. Literature at the moment in the UK looks very white, both the publishing industry and the Arts Council personnel. This raises the likelihood of what Professor Stuart Hall and other social commentators have called an ‘unconscious bias’ creeping in. That bias probably played its part too. Black-led organisations tend to have to deliver double the results to attain the same status as other organisations."
In an earlier statement Kalu said that Commonword had been a pioneer and an advocate in the field of community literature for many years. “While embracing new techniques and technologies we have stayed true to our founding ethos – that everybody has a story to tell, that it is important to give voice to those communities whose voices are not so often heard.”
On its website Commonword lists a number of writers it has helped along the way, including Lemn Sissay, Mike Garry, Anjum Malik, Ben Mellor, John Siddique, Dominic Berry, Henry Normal, Joan Ncube, Keisha Thompson, Rosie Garland, and Shamshad Khan.
Commonword also organises the Superheroes of Slam contests, an annual series of slam heats across the north, including Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Oldham, Wigan and Manchester, culminating in a final in Manchester.
Kalu added: “A scrutiny of our achievements will show incontestably that nobody has engaged with black writers in the north-west better than us. Nobody in the north-west has fostered a youth writing programme that engages with disadvantaged young people better than us. Nobody has built a national community of writers committed to diversity in children’s writing better than us. We have always been a radical organisation, fearlessly addressing the issue of who gets published and why and unconvinced that the answer is entirely a matter of merit.
“We have helped many people get their first publication under their belt, make their first steps on public poetry stages.
“The reasons for our loss of funding? We defied political gravity for a long time, in particular, the Arts Council NPO focus on private donations and private income streams. Commonword has faced and met bigger challenges. We will survive this and will emerge stronger, retaining our belief that giving voice to marginalised communities is in the common good. Our work goes on."
