The National Lottery's woke arts grants

A strong drink may be advised

Although I mostly cover taxpayer waste for Woke Waste (which I’ve now renamed DOGE UK, incidentally), time and time again I spot ghastly funding under The National Lottery.

Today I wanted to show readers some examples from Arts Council England (ACE), which receives over £130 million in funding from the lottery per year (in addition to taxpayer funding):

ACE’s “Developing Your Creative Practice” (DYCP) programme, mentioned above, is responsible for many horrors. DYCP received 2,600 applications for its latest funding round, which it managed to whittle down to 411 successful candidates – many of which seem to have been selected based on identity politics (for instance, the word “queer” repeatedly comes up in DYCP grants).

With the programme now onto its 22nd funding round, where it “invest[ed]” £4.8 million (with individual grants ranging from £2,000-12,000), the numbers rapidly add up – and not on things I imagine Lottery players will be too thrilled about.

Without further ado, here are some of successful DYCP projects from the last few years:

£11,980 for queer research in Nashville

Last year, ACE awarded just under £12,000 to artist Coral Bevan so that she could research “Queer Country Music” in Nashville. Photographs from Bevan’s Instagram show her travelling in the so-called ‘Music City’ dressed as her character “Wayne Wayneson” – complete with a stick-on moustache.

coralbevan

A post shared by @coralbevan

Below: A video of “Wayne Wayneson” with a dildo

waynewayneson

A post shared by @waynewayneson

When Bevan isn’t on queer tours of Nashville, she runs a “comedy and clown consultancy”.