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All Our Cultural Futures IIDateline: 3rd February, 2006If Welsh culture minister Alun Pugh is not feeling unsettled and unsure of his position at the moment, then he must be, even for a politican, singularly insensitive. Apart from the inevitable criticism of opposition AMs, who are presenting an almost unprecedented united front which resulted in a defeat for Pugh (29 votes to 28) on the amendment jointly proposed by all opposition parties, he has been attacked from all sides by the very people his ministry is supposed to represent, both in Wales and without. The amendment, now binding on the WAG,
Now the Writers' Guild of Great Britain has entered the fray, joining their Welsh equivalents Academi, one of the organisations which Pugh proposes to fund directly and which is not happy at all with the proposal, and Wales' national newspaper, the Western Mail, has sacked him as a columnist for his intemperate attacks on the paper's stance on the matter. On the Theatre in Wales forum rejection of the proposals has been unanimous, with theatre practitioners from all over Wales and some of the most highly respected arts administrators lining up to express their horror at the proposals - and pointing out the very narrow limits of the minister's knowledge of Welsh arts, including not knowing where Milford Haven's Torch Theatre (whose manager Peter Doran has just been acclaimed Manager of the Year by the TMA) is situated. He seems to believe it is in Pembroke Dock! No doubt Alun Pugh will receive public backing from first minister Rhodri Morgan but it is hard to see how, now that he has been defeated over a major policy decision and since he clearly does not have the support of the Welsh arts community, he can stay in post. An honourable man would at least consider resignation. And if anything proves the undesirablity of any direct control of the arts by politicians, it is surely this sorry affair. The arts in Wales have been, to use the words of Liberal Democrat culture spokesperson Eleanor Burnham, destabilised by the row, and whilst all has not been sweetness and light between artists and ACW in the past, at least those working in the arts in Wales know that the staff of the arts council, no matter how misguided people might think they are, at least know what they are talking about, and are there because of the same commitment to the field, not because it has been handed to them as a portfolio which they could have to relinquish to move onto something else at any time, depending on the whims of the first minister. The arts in Wales have won a battle, not the war, and must keep up the pressure through the public consultation exercise which must take place. The opposition AMS, too, must keep up the pressure, and make sure that the terms of the public consultation favour the public and not the WAG. There must be no political chicanery like giving a fortnight to respond in the middle of the summer holiday period. And this should be a wake-up call to the arts in Scotland, too, for culture minister Patricia Ferguson is making similar proposals there, albeit dressed in far more friendly language, but there has been depressingly little public reaction from the Scottish arts community. If direct funding is bad for Wales, it is also bad for Scotland, and if the maginalisation of ACW is a threat to the arts in Wales, SAC's merging into Culture Scotland needs more than a cursory glance.
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