Phil Redmond: A second chance

Nov 30 2007 by Phil Redmond, Liverpool Daily Post

CLEARED. That’s what’s happened to the backlog of ideas inherited from the BMS (Before Mathew Street) Culture Company a few months ago.

The AMS (After Mathew Street) Cultural Clearing initiative, set up to respond to the frustrations people expressed at the time, has just finished going through every old idea resubmitted before the announced deadline of October 31. Some have been chosen to be part of the initial launch of Cultural Clearing, with the new Open Culture website going live yesterday. You can find it at www.culture.org.uk

Cultural Clearing itself has been a surprise hit. Designed as a second chance mechanism, it was also a way for people, organ-isations and businesses to offer any level of support from printing leaflets, loaning props, temporary exhibition space or direct funding big or small.

From discussions with the business community, it may come as no surprise to learn that they want to support cultural initiatives in their own vicinities, not just the city centre. With the website now up and running, though still developing, Cultural Clearing will provide a mechanism for that to happen and will in itself be another way to get everyone involved across the city in 2008.

Apart from the ideas posted on the website, there are several that we are going to take up and see if we can find help through our direct relationships with partner organisations and/or sponsors.

This again brings no guarantee of funding or support but they are ideas that we think worth investing time to see if we can develop something together across 2008, as we have done recently with the organisers of a certain board game.

That particular exercise has left me hoping that people will take the offer of help in the spirit in which it is offered, to assist them in pursuing their own goals, and not keep carping on because they didn’t get everything delivered on a plate. I’ll come back to this “giz a grant” attitude in the future and how we have to learn to get over that and look for ways to drive our individual visions forward, not simply rely on hand-outs from others.

So disappointment will come to some, but as I have made clear throughout the process, the second best answer in life is often a very quick no, as it allows people to get on with other things. A no from us also doesn’t mean that the idea itself is bad, simply that within our time and resources, it is not right at the moment. It may well be that someone else will think differently. It may well be that ideas can be revamped and resubmitted when Cultural Clearing reopens for new ideas in the New Year.

But for now we want to continue focusing on looking forward, now the backlog has been cleared.