HARBINGER

And this is the  " Downside " to the proceedings of #WakeyLit19 aka the putative,  ersatz   Wakefield Literature Festival 2019 conceived, planned ,organised and curated by Destiny Poets  ( www.destinypoets.co.uk ). Even more than a decade ago ,when I visited schools on a fairly regular basis to do my poetry masterclass workshops, a common complaint from the teaching staff was that "creativity" was getting squeezed out of the curriculum and that pupils weren't simply getting opportunities such as my rather modest poetry workshop sessions to explore and enjoy culture. June / July with the school year drawing down to a close and all the exams out of the way ,was always the optimum point in the calendar to approach schools with the lure of poetry workshops. I had some reasonably confident expectations that some local inner city schools would jump at the chance of, (a) free poetry workshops and (b) the chance to showcase their star pupils and their school as part ...

The explicit stated aim of  # WakeyLit19  is to put locally based authors and poets at the centre of the litfest. And that the primary aim and purpose of a lit. fest bearing the name of the city,is to firstly promote wider public awareness of locally based authors and poets. Unless someone,somewhere knows any different,clearly Wakefield -its elected representatives and relevant Council departments and officials ought to adopt a positive,pro-active stra tegy of an on-going,enhanced promotion of local authors and poets across its libraries ,schools and the city’s leading cultural venues. This is the third of four blog posts on the topic of Wakefield LitFest. This one is  “The Upside” ,yet to come ,”The Downside”, be warned names shall be named.There will be payback.  The putative Wakefield Literature Festival aka Wakefield LitFest 2019 rebranded as #WakeyLit19 held its media launch on September 2nd. at Destiny Christian Church, with guest of honour, the Mayor ...

It’s Monday 16th. September 2019 and #WakeyLit19 the  ersatz   litfest is getting underway. No funding, no charges ,no fees ,no tickets ,next to no admin. A radical, quasi-improvised grassroots alternative to absolutely no litfest whatsoever following the demise back in 2017 of what was the  ” official ” Wakefield Literature festival. The Merrie City’s version of the some 400 off – the  -shelf lookalike characterless litfest templates where only the geographically specific prefix is all that’s locally authentic and distinctive about them. Being the UK’s 11th.largest city by population – @330k.- counts for diddly squat in Wakefield’s  case when it comes to the pecking order of venues queueing up to get their snouts in the trough of Publicly funded Arts Council monies. That said, for every £8 per head of Arts Council funding that Greater London alone gets ; the entire rest of the UK gets £1 per head!! Still, what can the city expect when you’ve had n...

Just for the record. There are around 400 so-called “Lit.Fests” staged annually throughout the UK. 400.That’s one per day and some to spare. Apart from a very few well known internationally ranked events such as those staged at Cheltenham and Cardiff and Ilkley, most of the rest vary in popularity and standing. Most of the 400 follow a general template that basically is off- the -shelf and with only the prefix of the geographic location to distinguish and differentiate one litfest from any other litfest. Their programme of events, the Arts Council funding,the roster of invited named performers et al are pretty much bog standard. Locally based authors and poets as a rule get the crumbs left over once the named names -the culturally elite privileged performers -have pocketed the bulk of the arts council funding which the Anonymous litfest had applied for. And so once the central funding gets cut, once the metropolitan cultural elitist establishment cronies fail to schmooze...