I am all for quite a few of the cuts brought by the Arts Council, but it's a pity that the LMC (London Musicans' Collective) is one of them.


Dear friends,

Another seasonal begging letter. I apologise for troubling you but
hope you can take one minute to help us with a problem that will ONLY
be resolved with your help.

As you may be aware, Resonance FM was established by London
Musicians' Collective. LMC's remit has been, for thirty years now, to
support avant-garde music, that supposedly "difficult" stuff that gets
lampooned as elitist noise in the popular press and on the "Today"
programme. The list of its achievements would take up many pages (a
tiny fraction is at www.l-m-c.org.uk). Suffice to say, Resonance FM
was entirely the creation of the LMC Board and emerged directly from
its work. No other organisation would have realised such a project: no
other organisation did.

LMC's grant from Arts Council England's Music Department has now been
entirely cut. The radio station is not immediately threatened, as it
is financed directly by the Visual Arts department (Music having never
expressed interest in Resonance whatsoever). But to have one without
the other is, as you can imagine, a little pointless to those of us
who set up Resonance FM.

This year, ACE has managed to find £1.7million to underwrite the
launch of a new music umbrella body, "The New Organisation." LMC was
excluded from the discussions about this quango, the stated ambitions
of which sound remarkably like what we have been realising on a daily
basis for the last five years: the maintenance of a hub which
encourages, nourishes and broadcasts the work of musicians of every
stripe from our locale and beyond, etc etc (only couched in the
language of marketing consultants and apparently to be manned by
people devoid of originality or vision). Meantime, too, the sequel to
LMC's best selling CD, Peter Cusack's "Your Favourite London Sounds"
plays in ACE's lobby as a permanent audio exhibit!

I wonder if you would help me by writing a short email to the people
at ACE Music, expressing your support for LMC? And ask for an
acknowledgment of your email. If they receive five or six thousand
emails, maybe they will be prepared to reconsider this crisis of their
own making.

Please address your email to the following persons:

graham.knight@artscouncil.org.uk (Assistant Officer, Music, London)

helen.sprott@artscouncil.org.uk (Head of Music, London)

moira.sinclair@artscouncil.org.uk (Director, London)

peter.hewitt@artscouncil.org.uk (Chief Executive, National)

Please make the subject "From " rather than something
generic that can be easily ignored. Bear in mind, these are public
servants: they work for us and you can, I think, insist on a response.
Don't be surprised to receive an Out of Office automatic reply
initially: of course everyone responsible will be heading to the
hills!

Please cc it to "plea@resonancefm.com" so we have a copy on file. All
emails sent to this address will be treated in strict confidence.

The second way you can help is of course financially, by becoming a
member of LMC and expressing your support with your hard-earned cash.
At this time of year, such a request must appear vulgar and
inapposite. And it is something we have never pushed in the past,
because the radio station was set up with a sense of social purpose,
in a spirit of frank and open hospitality. So don't send us any money,
just another email with the subject "Potential Member," no more than
that: we'll only get back to you IF we manage to crawl out of this
particular hole.

I find this really mortifying. Every other email from me seems to be
asking our supporters for money: and this year we raised over £17,000
from individual donations, so I'd hoped that we were in the clear for
a while. But, cocooned in the overwhelmingly positive and intelligent
environment provided by Resonance, perhaps I underestimated the
cynicism of these times.

Sincerely

Ed Baxter

programming director

Resonance104.4fm

144 Borough High Street

London SE1 1LB

020 7407 1210

If you don't know what I'm on about, check this article out:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23427752-details/Funding+cut+hits+London's+arts+groups/article.do

[nick2767]

About 200 arts organisations will have their funding cut by ACE - that's about 1 in 5 funded organisations. That's some cull!

And the British Council will annouce this week that it's about to close down its arts department.

Happy Christmas!