I recently received a letter from one of my city's fabulous arts organisations about a major musical event planned for 2014. I am going to have a grump in a minute, but it's not about the general wonderfulness of this organisation or the specific value of this project, which looks genuinely artistically exciting. The letter was inviting me to a meeting to learn how choirs from across the city could participate.
Now, maybe I am just feeling jaded because I live in a city that has a lot of great arts organisations, and so I get a lot of these invitations, but they are starting to irritate me, and I have taken a little time to work out why. On the face of it, what could be wrong with the chance to join up with other people with whom we have artistic interests in common to make a special event happen? Massed voice events are inherently exciting, and it's good for our sense of civic community to do stuff together.
But the thing is this: these are high-profile events, run by funded organisations, but effectively subsidised by the unfunded community groups upon which they rely for participants.