136 : #WakeyLit19 Up and running The #Wakefield Lit Fest Without Funding!
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...