Scores on the door-the full costs

Put another FOI request in to see what the launch event for the Capital of Culture Four Corners Event cost. Bit dear dont you think, the exhibition and alunch costing worked out about £10 a head per visitor but if you take it account the actual artists fees etc. it worked out about £100 per visitor to the exhibition. Real Bargain

Below is the full response from the very co-operative Culture Company

Liverpool City Council – Four Corners Exhibition Our Reference: 11721 ==================================================== Dear Stephen, Thank you for your enquiry regarding the Four Corners exhibition As part of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008, Four Corners is a celebration of partnerships across the city’s neighbourhoods. It allows people to come together to celebrate their community and identity addressing the question “What makes a neighbourhood?” It embeds culture into the fabric of communities and establishes qualities of trust, tolerance and understanding between neighbourhood teams, cultural organisations and Liverpool’s communities- allowing best practice to be developed and different experiences shared. In future years these ties will be cemented to ensure that a unique form of expression for neighbourhoods is allowed to flourish. This ambitious project- which this year culminated in an eye catching transformation of a redundant property on Great George Street into both an exterior piece of artwork and an exhibition venue open to all showcasing the creative pieces from each of Liverpool’s neighbourhoods- is jointly financed by Liverpool Culture Company and the government’s neighbourhood renewal fund through Liverpool city council’s neighbourhood services. The installation of the work and transformation of the building’s exterior was delivered by our cultural partner- Everyman & Playhouse -and the cost was £35,000. This included the sound and visual installations, electricity, paintwork, staffing, security and lighting. The artistic director was employed on contract from the start of the whole project in November and the cost for work over seven months was £15,000. This included working with St Vincent De Paul’s Primary School in the direct vicinity of the “Four Corners House” – producing pieces of artwork for use in the house, as well as consultation with local residents and groups concerning the scheme. The local community projects ,of which there were five, cost £15,000 each. This included cost for artists, workshops, filming, editing, multiple artwork and networking across the five neighbourhoods to maximise community involvement. With regards to the launch event the budget for this was £10,000, the breakdown provided for this was: marquee £3000 electric £800 Tables and chairs £300 security for week £1800 toilet for week £800 catering £3300 Finally the exhibition, together with ancillary events, welcomed some 1,070 people during the time it was open Four Corners Our House,although the internal exhibits have been removed, remains a public artwork installation up to the present drawing many additional visitors to view the exterior – grabbing attention in a similar manner to “The Turning the Place Over” artwork at Moorfields. This was always intended to give longevity to the project. Furthermore many of the creative pieces exhibited at the Four Corners House are now on permanent display at community centres across Liverpool ensuring a continuous legacy to the investment I hope you find all this information useful Kind regards Zena

Trevor’s Gone

Some good news from Freshfields Rescue Centre. Last Christmas Eve Trevor the Geriatric Neopolitan Bull Mastiff who had been unceremoniously dumped in Sefton Park on Christmas Eve and who had been languishing in the centre has found a new home in Southport.

Let’s hope he has a good last couple of years, good luck Trev!

Goodnes Gracious Me-Adventures in Indian Call Centre Land

 

 

Goodness Gracious Me! The trials and tribulations of making an insurance claim to an Indian call centre.

 

Two whole weeks ago some local scumbag decided to smash my backdoor in, cracking the door and frame in the process,  steal my laptop, mp3 player, digital camera, daughter’s pink Razr phone, and £35. No doubt within the hour my goods has been metamorphosed magically into a £20 bag of smack or a few rocks of crack. Imjected into his scrawny veinless arm or inhaled into his puny lungs

 

Alas and alack the worst part was that there was lots of data on there in respect  to grant  applications for the radio project in Kensington later in the year.

 

I then had to spend the rest of that week trying to find if there were any backups anywhere before I had to go through the onerous task of re-writing them. Bugger is an understatement.

 

But folks it gets worse, much worse.

 

I called my insurance company (the usually efficient Norwich Union) who informed me that because the door had been damaged maliciously then the insurance would cover the door, and someone would be round shortly to secure me door, which they did do.

 

The next day the same people came to survey the door and replace. All was gong swimmingly until the “surveyor” (or Measurer uppperer as I would like to refer to him) told me the joiner was on holiday for three weeks, so NU told me to get a quote.

 

At this point the only way into my backyard is to shin over the wall and drop down, which I have had to do on three occasions, once to get the wheelie bin out, once to get the recycle boxes out and once to add my new stock of worms into my new Liverpool Wormery.

 

As a fat 50 year old bloke who is aslo diabetic I wouldn’t recommend this activity in any way whatsoever.

 

Now I do now need to say that after the initial phone call to NU all other calls are handled by Indian call centres.

 

And I wouldn’t like to think this blog is now going to develop into a spirited xenophobic attack on them lot getting our jobs. But we are two nations divided by a single language. There is what you say, how you say it and what you really mean.

 

Anyhow my first encounter explaining the three week wait ended with me being  was told to fax the quote for the door, which I did, waited a week but no one got back to me, so earlier this week called them again, no they were terribly sorry but the fax didn’t arrive and could I post them the quote.

 

Did that too, but getting a bit fed up by now.

 

Called them again on Friday, to be told the quote hasn’t arrived, and “Sunny Guptal” had some bad news I wasn’t now covered for the door damage and that was that, end of….

 

The thing about Indian call centre staff is although they are very very very polite, too polite really, they are a bit robotic and lack any flexibility or even to understand fully what you are saying.

 

To cut to the chase I ended my conversation with “Sunny” a bit dissatisfied.

 

Decided to call someone from NU in Norwich UK, thinking a UK call centre person (probably Polish) would call me back, but in fact  another Indian, it sems NU don’t do English People in England anymore, even if you are complaining about how the Indian doesn’t quite  understand you.

 

This man wanted me to fax him my tenancy agreement,(to see if I was liable) which I didn’t want to do as this would drag the locked door old fat bastard climbing over the wall scenario on even further.

 

I basically challenged him to stop asking for my tenancy agreement, which he was repeating in a sort of mantra type way, along with “I understand what you are saying Mr Faragher”. But no he really didn’t, cause by this time I was fed up a bit bored and a bit narky.

 

I asked him to call me back in ten minutes and either say “YES” you can have your door fixed in which case I will remain a customer of NU or “No” we wont fix your door, and I then become an ex-NU customer (home and two car insurance premiums so about a grand a year they would lose), 

 

Ten minutes later the phone rang and I asked him what the answer was……………..”Can you please send me your tenancy agreement?” AAAAAAAAAAAAghghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhggggggggghhhh, so I used reminded him what I had just asked, and politely hung up.

 

Just sent off an email to the CEO of NU and congratulated him on losing me as  a customer and hoped all that  he enjoys spending the bonus he now has as  all the call centres are now in India.

 

MaybeNU should be more upfront about where the company is now really based by using the old Peter Sellers song “Goodness Gracious Me” instead of Spike Jones and his City Slickers on the soundtrack of their telly ads, it  might help prospective customers decide who to go with…….”Hello is that Harry Hastings, you are in Hastings aren’t you and you can tell when I am pissed off I mean really pissed off?

  

 

Four Corners-Scores on the Doors

 

Before I talk about the last four corners event (the one with the red doors on the outside of the building), I need to remind people here about the cost of one community event was a mere £600,000.

The NY artists who worked in/with/exploited the community, at the Royal Court last year was supposed to be the community working with these avant garde cutting edge artists, the resulting show being put on in the royal court over three nights. Dont know what the community were supposed to learn apart from how to con a bunch of middle class art funders out of  a shit load of money but…

So few people bought tickets that the Culture Company eventually given away the tickets for free, (I was offered one but couldnt be ars*d) it worked out that it would have been cheaper to send the whole audience to New York to see a show…..any show…. “Cabaret perhaps “Money money money”.

Just a though innit.

Anyhow back to the Four Corners,

I have some reservations about some of the work done by the artists, with some of the communities. I’ll quickly say that I have a BA in Fine Art, an Art teaching qualification, an MA in Multimedia and have worked in community and youth work for about 27 years, so if I am talking out me Arse then at least it is an old experienced and varied Arse and Im not just  a whinging scouser .

If you dont know what the exhibition was about then several artists and organisations had bid to the Culture Company to work on art and creative projects on the theme of “good neighbours.”

Firstly I have seen this type of thing before, an artist “parachutes” into a community for a short time, produces pieces of work, is airlifted out  before the community realises they’ve been had, back to their middle class life, they hold an exhibition, they then talk about how wonderful the “experience”   wasat conferences, about how great the piece of work was..and then move on to the next victims….it’s a fantastic example of a sociological experiment with the less well off

Basically the community is used to produce their own art work that looks suspiciously like the work the artist would have done if left their own devices.

The community have been used as (usually) unpaid assistants or minions (Damien Hirst at least pays his lackeys).

You have to ask whether the community is being exploited or not, but it will be  justified on the grounds that

the artist has “worked” with real people (grassroots man!)

it gives the artist a great deal of street cred (I worked with them an they were just like me and you!)

The commissioning organisations get the ability usually in a glossy document to say how they are “engaging” and “Capacity Building”  the poor people on council estates or deprived areas (“let them eat Art”).

But I think they’ve been well screwed.  

Can anyone let me know if any work like this has ever got anyone a job, inspired anyone to got to art college, make their own art, please please tell me.

If this type of work was done in this way with an african tribal community then there would be cries of Imperialism, racism, and so on. But the UK deprived working class communities can used and abused.

The art funding circus will move onto another community.

So that’s me crit of some of the work,

the exhibition as a whole, is another kettle of fish, and I think this is worse waste in a lot of ways.

The exhibition itself was held in a derelict block of flats near Chinatown, the building had to have an expensive electrics installed, an expensive phone line and wifi system installed,and of course all those doors stuck to the wall.

Setting the whole thing under the guidance of the artist was hideously expensive (I am trying to find this figure out by asking the Culture Company).

Next the launch event included the erection of a very large (i.e. Wedding size) marquee, a choice of five or six main meals, drinks, four security guards on the door checking on who was allowed in and who wasnt, all at great  cost.

To look around the exhibition you had to queue and be taken around in a conducted group. towards the end a group of the community participants with their guests (who they wanted to show their work of too) were queuing, and had been for about five or ten minutes, one of the artists decided he needed to show some of his “chums” around and walked straight to the front of the queue completely ignoring the “real” people.

This incident I felt just confirmed that the community are being used as a sort of “Artistic Cannon Fodder” by the mainly middle class artists.

So if I get the bottom line on the cost and how many people visited the exhibition over the five days it was open for, I’ll do the maths and work out the following,

How much per head it cost to visit the exhibition
How much per hour it cost while it was open

You may think that I am being a bit of phillistine but imagine what this must look  and feel like if you’ve got £57 a week JSA to live on

Carrying out a bloated,over blown and completely irrelevent events like this must look a bit excessive as you tuck into your Pot Noodle (whoa hang on isnt that a working classs sterotype you old hypocrite you) .
 

OK so exactly Where is Alt Valley?

Started a new job on a project called Alt Valley Vision, do the same thing we did in Kensington but this time in Alt Valley.

Despite thinking I knew where Alt Valley was, what I have found out is that the place is absolutely huge, I got the “BIG” map yesterday and realised that Goodison is even in AV.

The main problem about dividing the city up as thye did in the last decade meant that some of the divisions can seem a bit arbritary, and that even after all this time people are still unsure where it is and whether they live in the area or not.

For people to “belong” to an area, a sense of belonging needs t be developed through strategies, some subtle and some not so subtle.

The thing I have noticed last week was that in driving all over I still havent seen one bit of signage or identification to say the area exists, the council has spent thousands replacing all the district road signs, maybe they should all have had the area name underneath too.

Maybe they need to pay people too, i.e. businesses to sell themselves by area “Alt Valley Plumbing”, etc.

They can all anywhere anything but unless the locals call it that then you are on hiding to nothing.

The return of the Toms, a lack of sign of the times

      What my sign used to be like

  and there it ws gone

          Well just when you thought things had started to get better, got a sort of sign of sorts up and the fly tipping  seemed to have abated, the prostitutes on Sheil Road seemed to have gone to ply their trade elsewhere.Well first of all the flimsy laminated sign held on by two plastic ties surprisingly disappeared but it did last a lot longer than I expected.

The reason Romer Road and the rest of the L6 “Dead Zone” didn’t deserve proper plastic signs is the council don’t have enough money. Hmmmm, the Liverpool Echo did have a headline telling all and sundry that the council are planning to spend £4 on cleaning up the city centre for the Capital of Culture, (don’t worry I’m not going there). So as well as reporting the missing sign and increasing fly tipping to my local councillors (madam Baldock and Chemical Wendy)

I will also be contacting the council officer told me the bad news about the cash strapped local council and I’ll also be asking Chief Executive of Liverpool City Council, Colin Hilton to invoke his special powers to magic money out of thin air like he did for his £18,000 car port.I’ll let you know what Colin (I do feel we should be on first name terms) says about my request to spend some money in L6.

Oh yes the prostitutes are back, on a wet Sunday June evening I counted only three ladies of the night trying to coax the local sex starved male populous into sexual congress. If this does continue I may start a new blog “Tom-Watch” in which we  publish the car number plates of the “Toms” using this wonderful Kensington drive through service.

  Do you wamt fries with that?

  Do you want that supersizing?