Some good stuff here guys (also looking at the 1 Nov thread with interest - as we live by the sea)

MC Fat: Everything is possible - miracles we can do at once, the impossible just takes a little longer.... this year we laid on an entire Art Trail around the town, 20 odd events in someone's big back garden (which we can't do again as the PEL/Environment Officer made rather a lot of noise about it (ironically!), and a couple extra versions of the club... trouble is the autonomous body aligned to the Borough Council, having put us all up to it, then didn't - as promised - publicise it, at all, despite having 270 quid earmarked to do so. We then tried sending them an invoice for a contribution towards some of the £1,000 or we personally spent between us + £10 to them for us to become members - their decision was that it was "not appropriate". Just do it. Things come out of the woodwork..

Music officer? We don't even have an Arts Development Officer!! There is an Arts Manager at the local theatre (which now only has pantomimes at Christmas) and we've written to him 3 times and he has just ignored us.

Hi, Mooman: yes, sadly this is the town where Oscar Wilde wrote "The Importance of Being Earnest" - do we have anything to commememorate this? No - apathy and "Ooh-er don't want to think about that scandalous man..." Stil, we did have Lonnie Donegan here last week - a rare gem to relish amongst the "Mighty Wurlitzer organ" concerts :(

Sympathy, advice, personal experience is REAALLY welcome as we are biting off an awful lot to chew - in fact things that the Arts Development officer SHOULD be doing - if they existed...

John-in Hull - great link, lots of stuff to digest off-line, thanks for that!