Monday 13 February 2012: Pre-conference events
I was really pleased to have been awarded an artists’ bursary to enable me to attend the SOTA12 conference this year as last year I couldn’t attend due to the ticket price. I did attend the Scottish version State of Play: Art and Culture in Scotland Today in 2010 as a performer and audience member, then followed and engaged in the SOTA11 debate online particularly about the lack of artists’ voices at the conference. When awarded the bursary, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to attend due to recent major surgery but thought this was too important an opportunity to miss and decided I was sufficiently well enough to attend.
The first session that was arranged for artists’ bursary recipients (or “winners” as our info packs declared us) at the ACE North West offices was good to meet the other artists and to have the opportunity to raise questions. Immediately after that in the pub round the corner proved to be a much more familiar and less strained way to get to know everybody and begin the conversations around “Artists shaping the world.”
The Monday evening events provided courtesy of MIF were a nice touch but simply signposting to existing events in the vicinity could in future be a more locally supportive way of delegates engaging in the local offer. A comment overheard at the Whitworth Art Gallery during Amadou and Mariam was that it felt like a band laid on for a wedding reception rather than a music performance for its own sake. The general feeling of exclusivity about the whole conference and particularly pre-conference events made for a slightly uncomfortable experience. Whilst complimentary events, drinks, food and hotel rooms plus travel reimbursements are gratefully received, it felt wrong to receive such relative opulence in times of austerity when just down the road one of the best galleries in the North (Castlefield Gallery) has recently lost it’s ACE funding.
