Alison Pilling on what really happens inside a What Next? meeting.
Debates about funding of the arts have raged on here for a while now and I decided a short while ago to throw in my own views about the importance of the arts to me and my children. Further discussion followed and comments and all that jazz and in the end … well you’ve got to be in it to win it I thought, so I signed up to go to ‘What Next?’ cos it seemed as though that’s where some of these issues might get even more of an airing.
What Next is a national ’movement’, which started in London but with a few offshoots to other places. Last Wednesday’s meeting was Yorkshire’s first attempt to join in, and I went with absolutely no preconceptions – in fact pretty much devoid of any knowledge or ideas at all, if I’m honest.
I was slightly concerned that I’m not exactly arts establishment… just a well-meaning amateur on the edge of all that debate. But whilst I went there feeling outside this arty world, I had a good bit of sympathy for the establishment. In my day job (in the demonstrably uncreative world of transport), I have a fair bit of clout and am therefore – not unreasonably – one of the people who gets harangued if things aren’t going well, or even if they are going well, but a bit too undemocratically.
Debates about funding of the arts have raged on here for a while now and I decided a short while ago to throw in my own views about the importance of the arts to me and my children. Further discussion followed and comments and all that jazz and in the end … well you’ve got to be in it to win it I thought, so I signed up to go to ‘What Next?’ cos it seemed as though that’s where some of these issues might get even more of an airing.
What Next is a national ’movement’, which started in London but with a few offshoots to other places. Last Wednesday’s meeting was Yorkshire’s first attempt to join in, and I went with absolutely no preconceptions – in fact pretty much devoid of any knowledge or ideas at all, if I’m honest.
I was slightly concerned that I’m not exactly arts establishment… just a well-meaning amateur on the edge of all that debate. But whilst I went there feeling outside this arty world, I had a good bit of sympathy for the establishment. In my day job (in the demonstrably uncreative world of transport), I have a fair bit of clout and am therefore – not unreasonably – one of the people who gets harangued if things aren’t going well, or even if they are going well, but a bit too undemocratically.