A bureaucrat in search of a purpose

If you’re a bureaucrat in charge of one of Swindon’s numerous partnerships, what would be the best way to justify your cost to the local taxpayers? Do something worthwhile perhaps? On second thoughts perhaps not. Do something worthless instead and write a piece in the Adver, claiming that everything in Swindon is within your remit. That’s the approach of the head of the Swindon Cultural Partnership.

What does the ‘C word’ actually mean?… As far as the Government is concerned, culture means just about anything that isn’t working or sleeping…. So, yes. According to that broad definition of culture, anything goes…. Culture may be all the things that the government say it is, but it is something else too. It is us.

If culture is ‘us’, then we don’t need this bureaucracy to tell us what culture in Swindon is.