Several more weeks passed and my connection with the City Gallery all but dried up completely. I still went in a updated them every now and then, but their enthusiasm for the project had withered along with their own funding. They agreed to get me the contact details for someone in the Jewry Wall museum who could grant access to the archaeological stores, and this marked the last act of kindness on their part. Whilst in the meeting one of the other City Gallery staff came in and said that she had heard a rumor that the project had been rejected at the highest level. This was both unsubstantiated and ludicrous. The project had been provisionally agreed to and no formal proposal had been submitted to them that anyone could have objected to!
I waited a few more weeks for some kind of confirmation. Finally the City Gallery called me to explain that there had been some mix-up in communication between the gallery and the museums. It was put down to a re-shuffle in management, or perhaps a change in priorities and policy. Either way, it was still not clear what it was that had been objected to.
I emailed Renaissance East Midlands to find out if they would be interested in moving the project to Derby (though this was the last thing I wanted to do) and was surprised to get an email reply stating that a situation had occurred and that they no longer wished to support the project, and that they had sent me several emails stating the fact (which I never received, for whatever reason). I phoned them and was told that they had made contact with the head of the Leicester museums, who had never heard of me or my project. His response was almost certainly that this ‘show’ would never take place. Renaissance East Midlands response was also clear cut. In one meeting (at which I was not present) I lost two years of funding, two regional exhibitions and was branded a liar. But I was no yet run out of town, and I had a few questions to ask of the City Gallery about this ‘miscommunication’ that had occurred.
