Quango Advantage West Midlands have decided to recruit a new bureaucrat to their ranks at a cost of up to £37,000.
The ‘Cultural Manager’ will manage the ‘Cultural Programme’ which includes the ambiguous ‘Cultural Olympiad’ – something I’m sure we won’t know how we lived without…
There’s little doubt that all the ‘relationship building’ this involves will be too much for one person to cope with alone, and so we can most probably add the extra costs of assistants and administrators to the initial £37,000.
The job description states:
“It's a challenging role with a strong emphasis on strategy, so we're looking for a background in successfully developing and integrating new policies”.
This certainly seems to herald more strategy meetings and costly consultations AWM-style, with little to no involvement from the general public.
The West Midlands is already swamped with quangos who all claim to be working to a cultural agenda, and at this rate they will be competing with one another! Culture West Midlands, Tourism West Midlands, Screen West Midlands, Arts Council England: West Midlands, MLA West Midlands…etc etc.
Another ‘Cultural Manager’ is surely the last thing this region needs?