Scots defund festival on diversity grounds
NewsThe Chair and Trustees of the Lammermuir Festival have declared themselves ‘appalled and saddened’ at the lack of investment in the 2023 festival by Creative Scotland, the dispenser of state subsidy.
They say the reasons given are ‘first: prioritising applications with activity earlier in the year; second: Fair Work; third: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. This third application was refused on a criterion which the Music Department assessor judged to be fully met. We are urgently seeking clarification on how this could be.’
The festival is one of the country’s most enterprising and energetic, but Creative Scotland have joined Arts Council England in wielding a wrecking ball at successful events.
Who will end this nonsense, and when?
You could join Henry II (Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?) and Dorothy Parker (What fresh hell is this?) as a creator of an epithet that lasts forever and continues to be applicable.
Right. I’m quite in favour of having the words ‘inclusion, equality and diversity’ banned. Kaput. This movement has turned into a toxic, nasty cult, spearheaded by anti-musical plebs who get given the privilege of running these things.
Whatever happened to meritocracy for the sake of meritocracy? These plebs wouldn’t be able to tell as they are tone deaf administrators, not musicians.
Why do the British funders of culture, so refined in the chicanery of ignorance, judgementalism and classism, not to mention political correctness, continue to loom so threateningly over the fate of arts institutions in Britain?
Is it naive to think that, over time, these same arts organisations would become proficient in engaging in vast and sophisticated fund raising and business development efforts in the private sector, thus gaining a greater degree of independence from the finger-wagging, know-it-call, condescending government funding agencies?
Of course, this would involved the monied music lovers in Britain putting their money where there mouthes are. And, as in the US, the UK tax code would have to generously encourage and reward such behaviour. Ah, Mrs. Sybil Harrington of New York City, where have you gone?
Dear God, if there is one term I am getting sick of, it is Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (the order in which I prefer to list them, for acronymic reasons). I have no objection to any of the component parts, lower-case lettered, just the institutionalisation of it to the extent that it completely minimises or ignores the importance of anything else in any given project.
Given the 2023 Festival is currently on, this might suggest they left the application rather late?
I believe this is a refusal of (an encouraged) re-submission based on an earlier ‘didn’t quite make it’ application. Given that decision times from these bodies can be weeks and months, it’s perfectly possible that the original application was made months and months in advance of the festival.
I know of at least two other (good, significant) festivals who’ve had incredibly late-notice refusals from their respective state arts bodies after being encouraged to resubmit when their original application was rejected. It’s brave of Lammermuir to be so open about the difficulties – there will be a lot of festival organisers watching from the sidelines knowing how it feels and wondering what more the festival sector (so much of which runs on skeleton teams and scanty resource) can possibly do to satisfy the holders of the purse strings.
This was their third application
Not at all – the application was submitted in plenty of time. It was rejected twice on spurious grounds and the Festival was encouraged to re-apply. The final rejection was six days before the Festival began.
Maybe some woke DEI “struggle sessions” overseen by left-wing political commisars are in order.
Very sad and shortsighted, one of the best music festivals in Scotland showcasing so much diversity in music, and so well attended.
Limiting what is on offer in the interests of “diversity” and “inclusion”?
Yes, makes perfect sense.
How long have I warned you here in these comments that the Woke (Left) will come after classical music looking for blood? Since the 2000s?
I’ve talked about this kind of behaviour before and I make no apology for referring to it again – this is a prima facie example of some faceless ‘Philistines’ who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, taking an arbitrary decision and denying a perfectly decent arts organisation its right to exist, by slashing or cancelling its funding. This behaviour is quite disgraceful. If only these people would get off their collective backsides and do an honest day’s graft!!
It would be interesting to learn how *exactly* the Festival supposedly failed the EDI criterion. Is there a deepdown assumption that people of all classes, ages, sexualities, races, sexual identities, etc, must enjoy equally the sort of music presented at the Festival or must be equally represented among the performers, at least in in accordance with their proportion in the total population? Is someone saying, “Too few trans/Asian/under-12s in the audience”?
Classical music cannot survive DIE. It is predicated on an anti-Western deconstructionist philosophy. Classical music represents everything the woke left hates. Beyond the obvious that cultural revolutionaries are never satisfied and never finished, classical music, along with ballet and opera and the fine arts, is incompatible with their race- and gender-based tyranny. If they get ultimate control (and they are controlling more of the purse strings, as this article reveals), performances of Beethoven will be preceded by apologies for his whiteness, European roots, misogyny, citizenship in an imperialist empire, and failure to speak out for oppressed minorities during his lifetime.
okay grampa, back to your medication
I heard on the the grapevine that a species-mobile oboist currently identifying as an elephant has been excluded because they could not supply a big enough chair for it/she/him/her to sit on.
Bit difficult to comment without seeing the quality of the bid. If they treated EDI as just a tick box exercise, they deserve to be defunded. This is public money after all.