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| Poet laureate’s appeal
as cash axe falls on Survivors |
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Poet laureate Andrew Motion
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POET laureate Andrew Motion has spoken out against plans to slash
cash support for a poetry group which helps people who have suffered
from mental illness.
Survivors Poetry, based in Bickerton Road, Archway, receives an
annual grant of £165,850 from the Arts Council and is supported
by Mr Motion, who lives in Tufnell Park.
But now the group, which was founded in 1991 by four poets who had
all suffered from mental illness, is facing closure after the Arts
Council pulled the plug on funding – because of what it claims
are years of financial mismanagement.
Mr Motion said: “I strongly support and admire the work done
by Survivors Poetry. It is imperative it should survive as a fully
funded institution. Better to spend their money funding Survivors
than polishing brass door knobs at the Royal Opera House.”
Poet Carol Ann Duffy and writers Edna O’Brien, Jeremy Reed
and Iain Sinclair have also protested against the funding loss.
Survivors Poetry’s manager Dr Simon Jenner said the Arts Council
was failing to take the special needs of the poets into account.
He said: “Their scapegoating assertion that we’ve ‘compromised’
their aspirations to invest in ‘this (disability) sector’
contradicts their avowed, and government, policy: ‘Time to
get equal?’
“I inherited, as one on their own appraisal team put it, a
nightmare. But I have had no support from the Arts Council. My predecessor
received Christmas cards, but they haven’t sent me one.”
He added that the Lottery’s decision to dish out £20,000
to the charity so it could move office just three months ago made
the Arts Council’s decision all the more absurd.
Arts Council executive director Sarah Weir said: “Issues relating
to management, governance and finance have had an increasingly negative
impact on Survivors Poetry’s artistic output and the organisation’s
ability to meet funding requirements and responsibilities.
“This in turn has compromised our ambition for strategic investment
in this sector.” |
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