With community group users of the White Elephant Enclosure looking to have to pay a vastly inflated cost to use the venue, as a result of Deputy Dictator Cllr Eugenie Sherry’s Top Secret Consultants Top Secret Report it’s fair to say that the months of June and July would be incredibly quiet if it wasn’t for the Boredom Project.
The supposedly community-focused Boredom Project, dedicated to telling the story of a pile of local deadwood, has been able to hand over wads of Lottery, Council for the Arts, and Council cash from the successful grant funding of over £200,000 achieved, to hire the venue for a series of workshops.
The first of these workshops, scheduled to take place in the WEE at the end of April, was cancelled ‘due to Corvid’, although the hire fee was still paid. The auditions, held at the WEE, claimed to have 12 people attend, although more than half of this figure are professional actors, producers and directors who have been employed by the project, with very little interest or involvement from the community thus far.
The third workshop, which offered a chance to learn how to ‘Sing like a Fish Wife’, was held at the Porland Community Hall and managed to attract around 20 members from the various WEE choirs, no doubt keen to take advantage of the free transport which enabled them to sample the free sandwiches on offer.
On the same day a further workshop ‘Learn to be a Town Shouter’ was due to be held in the evening at the same venue, however SomersetClive has been unable to confirm if this event took place and, if it did, how many local residents took part.
The fourth workshop ‘Design the Stage’ scheduled to take place at the WEE at the end of June, saw so few people sign up that it has instead been rescheduled for the end of July, renamed ‘Build the Stage’ and moved to Nelson Park Gardens.
The numbers attending rehearsals for the show are quoted as 24 people, however, recent photographs belie this figure. So far all the project has done is advertise a variety of paid job opportunities, including a Community Director, Director, Production Manager, Community Stage Manager Street Artist, Marketing Officer, Set Designer, Costume Designer, Choreographer, School Workshop Facilitator, Sign Language Consultant, Writer, Composer, Theatre Facilitator & Booking Liaison, and five professional actors.
All of these vacancies have been filled with people from outside of the Smalltown and Dullbridge area, although one of the professional actors did once come to Smalltown on holiday. As community projects go it is a bit of a tenuous link.
It is good to know that the SaD Town Council grant of £2500 is helping to ensure that the actors and assorted others are kept well fed with free sandwiches, whilst at the same time having some sort of occasional event on at the WEE which can be used to show how popular the venue is.
Unfortunately for the WEE, the show itself will take place in early August in Nelson Park Gardens on Smalltown Seafront, so any hopes of claiming a huge audience by either the WEE or the Boredom Project itself are lost, as although the audience will be expected to purchase tickets for the event, paying whatever they think it is worth. With a bring-your-own-seat policy it will be impossible to get any idea if the event has been worth the £220K of grant funding awarded.
Never mind, it’s not our money and is being staged to to benefit our community. Except it is and it won’t.