135 : #WakeyLit19 Wakefield LitFest Rebooted & Relaunched without Funding of any kind!!
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 with their old university pals ,the local organisers abandon their culturally misappropriated fiefdom as if it had suddenly contracted bubonic plague, and they leave it to die.
Which is just about what happened here in Wakefield. And what is Wakefield ? the historic Merrie City ,the 11th.largest city in the UK , a population of around 300k. that is numerically comparable to Salzburg,Austria for example and double in size to Bruges,Belgium.
Except, of course, everyone’s heard of Salzburg and Bruges. Which happen to be my favourite two cities.
Abandoned,dead and buried these last two years, 2017 and 18, I searched the internet for signs of anything that might’ve indicated some attempt to do something along the lines of a lit type fest and surprisingly found nothing; nada,zilch.
What do people call it when something that was dead and buried is brought back to full life ? (No,they DO NOT call it a frikkin zombie..wrong genre entirely)
All the details, all the background , all the articles.
And this time we have a LitFest , a literature festival, conceived, organised and promoted by actual Writers and Poets who really do know what they’re doing.
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