There used to be a Dance Music Promoter/Brand called Sundissential back in the 90s and 00s which was actually a quite a successful brand. Well anyway, they’ve not done an event for about 15 years, have no employees, no company registered by companies house, and here is the local Tory MP congratulating them on being awarded 223k grant to keep them afloat. How inept can these fcukkers get? I know some proper arts businesses who have loads of employees, buildings to pay for etc that got sweet FA. Anyway, police now investigating. But what a shower this government is.
Seen about this. People are fuming. One of my mates who puts on small and medium sized trance events is absolutely beside himself. As you well know, it's a proper labour of love at the best of times, but he's well out of pocket on the events he's had to cancel. Unbelievable.
There is a company - Sundissential Limtied was incorporated in December 2016 and has only ever had one director - a bloke who is now 24 years old. It filed dormant accounts until May 2020 at which point its (non verified) balance sheet suggests that it has £160k in assets despite having zero assets and liabilities for 2019...
I'm astonished they managed to get past the Arts Councils very stringent vetting process. In the late 80's along with five others, I ran a Country Music Club at the Greenfield WMC in Doncaster ( The Tumbling Shack). We featured bands from outside of the Yorkshire area and had a ceiling cost for each show approaching £400, which we covered through ticket sales ( audience limited to 200) and a raffle. It was non profit making and nobody on our team benefitted financially. We applied to the Arts Council for a grant to allow us to feature some of the acts from the States who were in the U.K. to play the International Festival of Country Music at Wembley Conference Centre. I recall that from the date of our application to getting the green light, took nearly twelve months. Basically, what the AC agreed, was that they would cover any loss we made on staging our quarterly showcase over and above £500. We brought some named Nashville acts and their bands to the venue re- Joe Sun, Tompall Glaser, Dan Seals, Steve Young, Wendel Adkins etc and thankfully never had to make a claim on the Arts Council because their vetting and audit procedures were torturous, so given their credentials I'm at a loss as to how Sundissential were given this grant, unless of course, something " untoward" has been happening behind the scenes.!
I have a friend who owns a recording studio. He got a small grant for the period we were in total lock down. Absolutely nothing like the amount in the OP. He used the money he got to upgrade some of the equipment. And proceeded to feel guilty. "You don't charge anybody anything mate. There's bands in your rehearsal room, who use it every week, who haven't paid the rent for months, before we had any covid. People book in for one session and you give them ten, and produce it for them, and they still don't pay you for that one session. You bend over backwards to help anyone who wants to do something artistic. And the little money you got, you spent on upgrades for everyone to use." And the thing is, that's not unusual. Everyone who does these kind of things does that all the time. There's thousands of people all over the UK paying for events and recordings and gigs out of their own pocket so other people can have a good time and express themselves artistically. Maybe it isn't growing vegetables or inventing a new type of antibiotic, but it makes life worth living. This amount of money could have helped hundreds of people who devote themselves to making life feel a bit better and now they'll all get flack because these took advantage. B*st*rds.
I hear ya mate. Music is actually my life these days, outside of family. I know people who do it for a living and I know loads who do it for love. Some make shed loads of money from it, most don't. Creativity and Art in whatever form should be saved and protected. Without it, life just wouldn't be the same again. My mate, like yours owns a studio, and its a struggle for them, even though he produces for some really famous artists, work has dried up and he's a Central London studio to pay for with a young family. The life of a freelancer I suppose.
When I managed a Country Band in the 80's we used to record all our tapes and LP's in a specialist Country Music recording studio in Humberside. The owner used to give us " mates rates" because he liked the band so much. He once sat down with me over a pint and detailed his incomings and outgoings and I was absolutely shocked to find how much money he was losing to a music genre that he absolutely loved. He was far to trusting. He would have the albums pressed and the covers designed along with a supply of cassette tapes. He would then send you a bill and would allow you to sell your merchandise at your live gigs. Once you had money coming in, he would allow you to either run the bill down by instalments or would wait until you could settle using a single remittance. I did hear that some artists renaged on this very generous concession and failed to pay him what they owed in full, so it didn't really come as a surprise when he announced that the studio was closing down.
