Ty Pawb and the Waste of Our Money, a project mis-timed during Austerity & Cuts
-
Posts
-
At this very time of cuts and austerity, the council and their Councillors are pursuing another £4.5 million, vanity project (remember City Status?) that will not benefit any ordinary person of this town. We are not London, Paris or even Manchester or Edinburgh.
Why have the council modelled Ty Pawb on an Altrincham model ? Let us compare the towns – Altrincham Average Income £46,000 – Wrexham £21,000, Altrincham Average Property Price £050,000, Wrexham £150,000, are these towns comparable ?
Opinions have been expressed that this project has been designed to inflate the council executives ego’s and to boost the ego’s of our Councillors who obviously have not canvassed their constituents for their thoughts on this mistimed ‘arty’ project, which will only benefit a small percentage of their constituents.
There are times for these projects and now isn’t the time! Everyone in the borough, the employed, the unemployed, the homeless, the elderly, the children, the musicians, the disabled and the sick are facing council tax rises and/or cuts to the council services provided – this project CANNOT be justified in the current climate.
Thus, it is necessary for the populous to re-focus the council and the councillors to teach them a lesson that they must reflect the aspirations and wishes of the majority of their constituents. In order to achieve this, everyone who agrees with these thoughts should be part of the largest public demonstration ever seen in the town on the day in April when Ty Pawb is scheduled to open. This action will quickly deflate the ‘puffed out’ chests of those responsible for this undemocratic piece of mal-administration. The only way to see an end to this project and its future on-going running costs, is for the people of the town to boycott the ‘hub’ after it has opened. We must teach the council and their councillors ‘a lesson that they won’t forget’ when decisions are made in the future.I really like your enthusiasm and energy about your wanting to take the council to task and there are a lot of people both on this forum and around Wrexham who share your view about the whole arts hub project.
Now the major pitfall is actually getting the good people of Wrexham physically fired up and into action about anything. Actually getting people to constructively campaign about things or fill out consultations that affect decisions on their lives in the local area or even vote for a change in councillor come election to break the rut the town is in is beyond the vast majority of apathetic Wrexham citizens.
It’s the whole silent majority who push councillors into the delusion that they think they’re doing a good job.
My prediction is that the one thing that would generally rile up the average Wrexham resident and risk public outrage would be pushing black bin collections to every 3 weeks. This is why that idea has been shelved.
But it really is a shambolic state of affairs when in the consultation they acted like they were protecting school budgets by freezing the funding rather than cutting it, but the reality of it being inflation was effectively making it a vicious cut. Anyone with half a brain could see that wasn’t going to work. For it to take headmasters in the area to have to write to the council and say they’d struggle to stay open and would be forced to send kids home and not be able to hire enough staff is absolutely shameful. Schools are already struggling in the area vs other counties to the point where teaching staff are celebrating narrowly avoiding being put into special measures during an inspection or those less fortunate cheering when the school is finally taken out of special measures. There’s no academic excellence goals there for schools to be just about managing to maintain the minimum standards to be allowed to stay open. Then extra curricular activities being robbed from many children with the music budget being slashed.
The council can have its useless arts hub, which has apparently so far excluded local artists. But as far as education is concerned – just one small facet of the many glaring issues with the town, people are going to be desperate to get their kids into schools across county borders.
As another of the probably, majority of Wrexham residents and tax payers who has absolutely no interest in
the Ty Pawb project other than to be disgusted by it i have to agree with the posts above. Council vanity projects are the bane of normal peoples live’s as they suck rsources out of the system that are much needed elsewhere where they can do most good.“Ty Pawb” will be a money pit from the day it opens. No business would or should be run with the intention of making a loss from day one, but because it’s the so called Arts we throw money we cant afford to loose at it in abundance with no thought to the outcome. Wrexham has not the need or the desire for such a place, but We have the hierarchy who keep telling us that it will help with education etc while they cut real education spending to help balance the books. It’s actual position close to the virtually abandoned area of the former BHS, TJ Hughes, Post Office etc etc means footfall will be non existent and people are shunning Wrexham because of bad press that seems to surface on a daily basis.
If this project would have gone through Scrutiny with all the facts that are known now, were known then, I would be surprised if the project would have got off the ground.
Councillor Hugh Jones brought the project before the Executive Board without having a clue what he was leading us into. Full costs were not known and we were I believe led up the garden path.It is becoming more and more obvious that the one thing Wrexham needs is more ‘arts’. However I do think that looking at the philistines who comment on here all we are doing is casting pearls before swine. Get involved in the arts. Support Ty Pawb. After all, the clue’s in the name.
Agree with your sentiments BUT why then have a touring exhibition that does not have really any real connection locally- the principle of Ty Pawb was that it was a local venue for local art where is this reflected in the launch — the souvenier being produced have more than half the arts people from totally outside of the area.
It is becoming more and more obvious that the one thing Wrexham needs is more ‘arts’. However I do think that looking at the philistines who comment on here all we are doing is casting pearls before swine. Get involved in the arts. Support Ty Pawb. After all, the clue’s in the name.
Typical answer is to blame the Philistines. Where is it becoming obvious we need more Arts ??. Since when has it been casting pearls before swine to to have an opinion about something that affects the population of an area that is having to suffer major cuts to basic services.
I consider myself and my family normal, we are active members of the National Trust, we visit the theater regularly, support Comic-con and various other activities in and around the area when possible.
Cuts to services including education have a major impact on the local population and need to be addressed before massive amounts of money is spent on these projects. These Education cuts have a direct impact on the ability of local children, students etc to learn the value of the Arts.
The name means nothing it was voted for by less than 1/4 of 1% of the local population so its not everyone’s!!!
[quote quote=142989]It is becoming more and more obvious that the one thing Wrexham needs is more ‘arts’. However I do think that looking at the philistines who comment on here all we are doing is casting pearls before swine. Get involved in the arts. Support Ty Pawb. After all, the clue’s in the name.
Typical answer is to blame the Philistines. Where is it becoming obvious we need more Arts ??. Since when has it been casting pearls before swine to to have an opinion about something that affects the population of an area that is having to suffer major cuts to basic services.
I consider myself and my family normal, we are active members of the National Trust, we visit the theater regularly, support Comic-con and various other activities in and around the area when possible.
Cuts to services including education have a major impact on the local population and need to be addressed before massive amounts of money is spent on these projects. These Education cuts have a direct impact on the ability of local children, students etc to learn the value of the Arts.
The name means nothing it was voted for by less than 1/4 of 1% of the local population so its not everyone’s!!![/quote]
This is true.
feedshallow is typical of a lot of people that are into art whereby they think they are on another level to the, as we are referred to non art loving, “swine”.
[quote quote=142991]
This is true.feedshallow is typical of a lot of people that are into art whereby they think they are on another level to the, as we are referred to non art loving, “swine”.[/quote]
I think it’s more of an indictment of the pretentious nature of these so-called art lovers that they have to feel the requirement that lavish amounts of cash have to be spent for the purpose of hosting art. Somewhere where you can herd people around with incredibly limited time or space to actually enjoy anything artistic and then bore everyone to tears by talking about it constantly about how they’ve been there and the high level of concepts that have allegedly been applied. Then get baited to pay for the space through donations or overpriced merchandise tat.
I like art in the respects that you can see things that are artistic or beautiful everywhere in the world, for free. I think most other people are like that. There is nothing Philistine about that, yea I’d probably be massively impressed if I went to the Louvre or the National Art Gallery, but this is Wrexham – we need some perspective – will the visitors to the gallery think that the Zombies who will inevitably be slumping outside to be some kind of high level performance art?
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
