GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

from the King Blues. Some of you are looking open mouthed, saying, “Who the

hell are they?” They are after Led Zeppelin 4 by the way, although some of

you will not be aware of that. We have got ranging from Itch from the King

Blues to the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, so a whole range of

organisations are coming together to present sessions. On the Friday night we

have got Francesca Martinez followed by Banner Theatre’s new show, Rise

like Lions, and then on the Saturday night we have got a multi artist line-up with

Captain Scarby and the House Band, Itch from the King Blues, Attila the

Stockbroker, Antony Anaxagarou and Rob Johnson and the comedian Chris

Coltrane. Then during the day we have got keynote speeches from Tony

Garner. Tony Garnett was the producer of Up the Junction, Cathy come Home,

The Lump, Kes, the Price of Gold, the Spongers, Days of Hope. Tony has had

an amazing career. He produced a lot of Ken Loach’s stuff. Tony is going to

give us one of the keynote speeches. One of the other keynote speeches will

be by Raoul Martinez who is a brother of Francesca Martinez and he has

written a book some of you may have heard of called Creating Freedom and

that is a fantastic book about the moral basis for the meritocracy that the lady

was talking about beforehand or the failure of the moral basis for a meritocracy

and it is having a similar effect to the Spirit Level in terms of the way it is

changing the political debate.

That is Liberating Arts. The funding basis of it is that we are hoping it is going

to break even on the basis of a lot of sponsorship that we are in the process of

raising and ticket sales and our budget for ticket sales is predicated on what we

are calling an institutional ticket. This is a model that we have taken from an

academic conference where if someone is presenting at an academic

conference their university pays for a ticket for them to go and it is usually more

expensive than if you are paying for yourself, so we have got the same system

and we would be very hopeful that all of the unions in this room will be sending

delegates to the conference and help us to fund it through that institutional

ticket. Thank you very much. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks very much indeed, Chris. Inevitably, you will hear more

about that event as the year progresses, but it is an important new event on our

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