With Christopher Frayling’s whining voice ringing in our ears from the days old story of ACE not getting enough credit for being almost completely useless let’s take a look at a scenario from the recent past, shall we!
Let’s take two dance companies, we’ll call them Company A and Company B, just for the sake of brevity.
Now, Company A and Company B both receive a modest amount of funding, just under £5,000.
Company A produces a piece of work, performs that work a couple of times to invited audiences, the response is luke warm at best, no education work, no touring, no nothing. If this company had any targets to meet for their funding they almost certainly missed them.
Company B also creates a piece of work. They perform that work more than a dozen times in lots of different venues, in some circles this is called “touring”, they do education projects, teaching and generally hit all of their, self imposed, targets for what they wanted to achieve for their work. In ACE speak you might even say that Company B’s “mission statement” was a success.
Several months down the line Company B and Company A are applying for more money. Company A, having achieved pretty much nothing at all, asks for a lot more this time and is successful. Having spent the increased level of funding Company A, as before, has not yet completed their new work, has done no touring, no education projects, nothing at all. Their work is effectively dead in the water.
Company B, which you will remember hit all of their targets for performances and touring are turned down for further funding, in the same range as company A, for reasons unknown.
You’ve probably figured out by now that both Company A and Company B are real dance companies. You’ve also probably cemented in your own mind something you already knew, deep down in your heart. ACE, really is, completely useless. We feel sure they would deny that though.
ACE’s motto, if they had to balls to use one, should be “Don’t be good. Don’t Achieve. Don’t do anything and we’ll look after you”. We couldn’t figure out the Latin for that.