I wrote a short blog post for the lovely people at Balfron Social Club.  Here's an embedded version.  Check out their site for loads more brilliant writing and information about Balfron Tower.

This blog post is a first draft of a spoken word performance script as yet unperformed. It is inspired by a ludicrous reference in this blog about the ludicrous forced adoption of Quality Metrics by Arts Council England.  Simon Mellor is their Executive Director.  He makes rather odd reference to Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (1957), a play that is, of course, all about the killing of individuality, of an individual at the hands of Kafkaesque state conformity; about conformist brainwashing and execution.  The agents of the state in The Birthday Party are McCann and Goldberg.  I imagine a conversation between these two agents of the "hard" state and Simon (Mellor), a representative of culture, or state "soft" power.  Webber (also referred to as Stanley) is the unfortunate recipient of an incessant barrage of state-sanctioned pressure to comply, to conform.  Petey is an old man: quiet but also considerate.

All words are quotes from either Simon Mellor's blog or from he Birthday Party script.

The performance would be interspersed with propaganda images from Arts Council England's website...

This is my first article for The Guardian Comment is Free section.  I've added my own pic here...

It's a response to Matt Hancock's recent maiden speech about UK arts and culture in which he said, "The hipster is a capitalist."

I'd love your feedback...

Everyone has the right and freedom to a home, don’t they?  And yet, so many people are homeless in the UK, in Europe, across the entire planet; displaced by war, oppression, climate change and the imperialistic march of global capitalism.  The United Nations are concerned: deeply concerned.

heresa Easton's superb new book explores housing crises and homelessness.  She kindly asked me to write the introduction.  Here's the draft published with the author's permission.

This was my prosecution witness statement from the excellent Participation on Trial event organised by the lovely Chrissie Tiller and Goldsmiths from May 2015.

I think it remains as relevant to me as it did more than a year ago but I would say that I was a little over-generous in my support for socially engaged art - a term now so completely appropriated by the Institution of Art that it effectively is THE SAME AS participatory art.  Perhaps my views have hardened?  Anyway, I now have claimed socially engaged art is DEAD - twice!  Undoubtedly, I will do so again...

The (eventual) verdict was “GUILTY – BUT WHO CARES?”  Do you care?