I am still unable to resolve the problem to which I alluded in yesterday’s blog. The difficulty appears to lie, as much as anything else, in the lack of ready sources of advice to artists about the business side of things. The government’s Department of Trade and Industry has a web-site to which I made an approach, but the set-up there is evidently devoted to organisations which have more than an incidental approach to problems relating to export. Many years ago there was an organisation in Bradford called Fabric, which was set up in order to provide all kinds of support to artists. I got a good deal out of their training facilities, including the mentorship I enjoyed with Graeme Willson. The steady contraction of public funding for the arts since then, however, has resulted in the closure of this particular avenue to to support.
One additional idea occurs to me, which I will take up on Monday. There is an organisation to which I belong named a-n (artists’ network) and it has struck me only belatedly that my problem might well be exactly the kind of issue they are created to deal with. First thing on Monday I’ll be on the ‘phone! No doubt the results of my enquiry will figure in a subsequent issue of the blog. Watch this space!