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Tit............

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With your charming Tourette's affliction, we could almost put you on a stage and call you a performance artist. If you were only more interesting to look at.:(

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Doug this is not the breast feeding thread :D

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That is very disheartening. Other Councils manage to provide esential services, without having to sell off it's assets and cut back on it's cultural spending.

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How exactly are these icons going to do that? I don't get it, how are they improving and how are they regenerating

Haven't seen an answer yet.


Gayle has fire in her belly, and will be good for the area, I agree totally with you gayle on all your points. I think rindy's point is also valid though. People see theatre arts as a follow on from the arts groups you talk of gayle, but the loss of those arts groups and the four jobs will surely mean the death of not only the arts groups projects but also any hope of theatre arts. Seems like your council has decided that arts is no longer important, strange really, because I always thought you took it quite serious up there.
I've never really seen any art in accrington itself though. Surely you must have something, statues, sculptures, what’s this mosaic all about?.

What you need to remember is that there is always more to things like this than meets the eye. I'm not sure about these panopticans, because they seem to be in the middle of nowhere and I can't see what benefit they are yet but any arts in the town has multiple benefits to you even if you don't participate or even watch.
Regeneration, more tourism, more shops, nice places, nicer views, less disrespectful kids, less vandalism, more civic pride.

You really need to start thinking tourism.

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I had a good fund raising idea the other day. It involved elected members of HBC, stocks and wet sponges :D

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No we haven't. Neighbouring Blackburn has had the foresight to include public art in it's regeneration programme.

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Will it wait until May?:p

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Even we have a sculpture, it's made from a tree trunk and has been carved in to a player and ball to represent our shrove tuesday football game. It's not in town though which is a shame but is on the top lock and at least people can see it.

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We've got more than enough shops. They are forever building shops when half the town is already full of empty ones.

Nicer places, nicer views. Yes, I'm all for that, but our council seems to have a very shortsighted view if you'll pardon the pun. We have an area in town which could be very beautiful if it were developed properly but of course that costs money and they're very good at wasting money on things we don't need and already have too many of - like shops.

Ironically we have a "viewpoint" - a small layby on the A56 as you come over the coppice towards Huncoat. Unfortunately any view there may have been from here is obscured by scrubby "trees" which were never on t'Coppie when I were a lass and in the opinion of many residents should never have been put there at all! The layby also attracts litter louts who don't only drop whtever they happen to have on them at the time, but also seem to go to the trouble of bringing their bin bags from home!

Civic pride? Hyndburn? Perhaps if the kids had something to be proud of it would be a start. I'm sure the decent ones outnumber the vandals and hooligans but we all seem to suffer at the hands of the latter.

In contrast we drove around Whalley at the weekend and the views were somewhat pleasanter.

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I ducked out of the discussion last night because it was getting late and I was tired. Funnily enough I had been out earlier in the evening to the theatre - to Burnley.

So to answer a few questions.

HBC got an Arts Council grant to fund the arts posts, so argue that either way they were employed by HBC but with money from elsewhere - the grant has run out as they all do and HBC has decided that instead of building on the work that they are only just starting to do, they will scrap the jobs and leave us with a distinct lack of arts activities.

But once again I must stress that just because you don't know about them doesn't mean that the work that they are doing isn't valuable to this town.

The theatre situation is terrible - I had to go to Burnley to see something. The Mechanics always has good stuff on and it's only a slightly larger theatre than Ossy. This is something that needs fixing and I've on numerous ocassions approached the Council to ask to look at their business plan for the theatre and always been refused. Perhaps I might get some authority in the near future to demand it.

Public art - yes we need some. And again, if the current regime changes then it is possible that HBC may be open to some.

Mid Pennine Arts have pulled out of Hyndburn (more or less) because HBC have refused to pay their subscription to MPA. The other Councils in the area - Rossendale, Pendle and Burnley - continue to pay their subscriptions so naturally MPA will concentrate on working in those areas.

So I will stick to my guns about the arts dev officers, they are much needed.

But the rest of the issues, you know I wholeheartedly agree. We are an area bereft of arts and culture and it's one thing that I will be (hopefully) in a position to tackle very soon!

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PS - Neil - in May if you do want someone daft enough to sit in stocks for a fund raiser, I'll be happy to help.

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It sounds like fun doesn't it ;)
I have not seen it done anywhere for ages.