[Ken Moss]

I once heard it said about museums and churches that no one goes but everyone feels better because they're there.

On the flip side of that coin we basically have a hobby that is funded by other people, not bad if you can get in on it and then use that as a springboard to earning money. Most of us who choose to be self-employed rely on our own mettle and business acumen to find a consumer market and make it successful without any form of subsidy whatsoever. If that is the employment route you choose to go down then you should do a feasibility study like everyone else to see if it is a viable option.

Much as I think that preserving our artistic heritage is important (despite it holding very little interest for me personally), I hardly think that in an age of austerity we should be handing more money out from any public fund which simply enables people to try and convince us of their artistic merit with our own money. Van Gogh was a categorical failure in his own lifetime and we don't even have the museum space to display all the artworks in storage at the moment.

Is this a specific area that really requires more funding, from whatever source?