Getting communities involved in and enthusiastic about the arts is one of the most important challenges facing the sector in this country; and, unless we start to record some major successes, it will be increasingly easy for the powers that be to ignore our constant pleas for funding. So the notable and very public failure of cultural venues such as Ocean (p3) in East London ? and Stratford Circus just a year earlier and fewer than five miles away (ArtsProfessional issue 57, September 8, 2003) ? is depressing, and does nothing to persuade taxpayers and the tax allocating Government that arts professionals make proper use of public money. Let?s just keep our fingers crossed that the Lottery-funded Rich Mix (only two miles from Ocean in the other direction) and other community venues, face a more financially-sustainable future.
Sadly, big projects such as these overshadow and, through their headline grabbing failures, detract from the ongoing, everyday work of local community artists and organisations. Press reports about Ocean centred on its cost, its debt and the violence that marred some of the teenage events staged in its main auditorium. Little has been reported of the Rising Tide project, housed at Ocean, that has trained hundreds of young people in Singing, DJ?ing and Music Technology, or the tireless work of the community arts organisations that continue to work at Stratford Circus. Maureen Lehane Wishart of Jackdaws (Letters, p12) would no doubt agree that big projects aren?t in themselves a bad thing, but they can distract the public, press and politicians from the wider picture. And in community arts, the wider picture has to be the community, small projects and human contact ? not simply £23m worth of building.