Although I mostly cover taxpayer waste for my Substack Woke Waste, time and time again I spot ghastly funding under The National Lottery.
Today I wanted to show Daily Sceptic readers some examples from Arts Council England (ACE), which receives over £130 million in funding from the lottery per year (in addition to taxpayer funding):
ACE’s 'Developing Your Creative Practice' (DYCP) programme, mentioned above, is responsible for many horrors. DYCP received 2,600 applications for its latest funding round, which it managed to whittle down to 411 successful candidates – many of which seem to have been selected based on identity politics (for instance, the word 'queer' repeatedly comes up in DYCP grants).
With the programme now onto its 22nd funding round, where it “invest[ed]” £4.8 million (with individual grants ranging from £2,000-12,000), the numbers rapidly add up – and not on things I imagine lottery players will be too thrilled about.
Without further ado, here are some of successful DYCP projects from the last few years:
£11,980 for queer research in Nashville
Last year, ACE awarded just under £12,000 to artist Coral Bevan so that she could research “Queer Country Music” in Nashville. Photographs from Bevan’s Instagram show her travelling in the so-called 'Music City' dressed as her character “Wayne Wayneson” – complete with a stick-on moustache. When Bevan isn’t on queer tours of Nashville, she runs a “comedy and clown consultancy”.
£12,000 for “summoning the ancestors”
Discussion
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Gave up the National Lottery for those very reasons a few years ago. That and the infinitesimal chance of winning anything substantial. I always managed to get the odd £5 or £10 win each month which almost, but not quite covered my stake. Very smart! Kept you playing! Some local hospices now do their own lottery which I support.
Only a couple of hours left to rework an application I made elsewhere for funding into creating dildos modelled on trans-women penises.
Perhaps as follows.
Creative practice funding for an intersectional workshop on fashioning queer dildos modelled on slave-ancestry trans-women penises.
Any further suggestions ?
“Slovenian transdisciplinary performance artist, composer and vocal improviser” Jaka Škapin…”
Another freeloader who should be chucked out.
“Daniel Torquato Fortes…came to the UK through the taxpayer-funded ‘Chevening Scholarship’ scheme.”
And hasn’t feckin left.
Once upon a time in the past, my father bought me a book about Saving Money. The savings tip I like best was
Do you play the lottery? Throw £4 out of the window now. You’re saving £1.
Fair play to them, they’re ripping the p*ss out of stupid lefties, just like Tracy Emin did with her manky old bed. Better than working for money.
Here’s hoping they continue to be able to suppress their laughter.
I’ve long argued that the Arts Councils should be wound up as they have become luvvies dispensing patronage to other luvvies.
I am baffled as to why anyone thinks it’s appropriate to take money from my pocket to pay for “the arts”.
I play the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance Lottery. They seem OK from what I can make out.
I prefer to make a direct donation. On the rare occasions I’ve won anything on a community lottery my next donation has usually included my winnings. I’ll decide what is a ‘good cause’ thanks.
I sometimes worry that if I ‘won big’ I might not be able to stick to that.
Very good of you! I think I would take the money!
Well it’s a policy which has developed over time and now I can use it as an excuse not to subscribe ‘for charideeee’. I’m definitely not going to ‘win big’ on the church 200 club!
Lol. The Air Ambulance one I do pays out a jackpot of quite a few thousand sometimes – I might find it hard to turn that down!
I might give it to my kids – so the government don’t get it (yet).
Donations to charidees are just secondary taxation for the gullible.
Given that the National Lottery has online accounts you should be able to specify which charities get a cut of your sale. If you buy a physical ticket you should be able to scan it into your account.
On the topic of art….Does anybody remember a time before ‘woke’? I hadn’t even heard of this word until recent years, now it’s part and parcel of everyday vocabulary. Along with all these ‘ist/ism/phobia’-ending words that have been thrust on us and are now given a central part and disproportionate consideration in our ‘snowflake-centric’ society.
This is why I’m concerned about kids growing up now because they’re going to be absorbing all this and accepting it as the norm as they’ll know no different, whereas we remember ‘normal’ times.
For instance, who in their right mind would be offended by a naked statue? But then, who in their right minds would submit to that idiot’s demands by appeasing them and remove said art work? ( OK, it’s probably a feminist, tbh );
”The plague of presentism seems to be on an unstoppable march. One might think that the exercise of projecting the values of the present day onto the past has been exposed often enough to discourage those practising it. But this is not the case: it is not only zealous activists who want to see artwork embodying one of the ‘guilty isms’ disappear but overeager bureaucrats, too.
A minor… Read more »
“The plague of presentism …”
What the F is “presentism?” The criticism is as bad as the original crap.
Yet more justification for our very own DOGE.
When I investigated the “good causes” funded by the National Lottery, Postcode Lottery, the BBC’s Children in Need; Sports Aid etc I decided never to participate.
Their idea of “good causes” and my definition differ very significantly.
Just when I thought my blood pressure could go no higher along you come with list – by God what a horror story.
Remember those ’60s tee shirts “stop the world I want to get off”?
That’s how I’m starting to feel.