[Dawn]

Ex-Pat, as clear, concise, straightforward and undeniably, unarguably, water-tightly (I know that's not a word but it serves) accurate as your views and opinions seem to you, I would ask you to consider that they may not hold the same absolution with others. When I talk about 'people' I'm not just talking about my immediate community or even the UK, or in your case the US, I'm talking about the people of the world. To me we are all linked, we all have a responsibility for one another. Yeah, I know a lot of you guys already have me down as 'do-gooder', I've already been told, even if I'm not exactly sure what people mean by it, but I fail to realise why people feel they have to pack others away into little labelled boxes and I wonder what makes them feel they have the skills necessary to do this.

It seems to me that there are those who think they know what's best for everyone and there are those who consider that everyone else might know what's best for themselves. Doesn't it strike you as odd that in your great country the majority of those who don't have a share of the wealth don't have white skin and or don't speak with an American accent, it's the same here in the UK and it's the same the world over. Money doesn't end up in the hands of those who are best able to manage and utilise it, it ends up in the hands of those who think they are. What would Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King have done with a billion dollars I wonder?

It's obvious that in your last post you were having a go at me and what you consider my misguided and uneducated folly. If only a billion dollars could be spent on community art the world over, you'd see a difference in a great many things. Art, and art of course is not necessarily a painting on a gallery wall or a sculpture in an exhibition, like money, is a powerful tool that can be used to achieve results with issues that have nothing to do with art. It can teach self-respect, self-confidence, communication skills, teamworking, tolerance and understanding, it raises self-esteem and addresses issues of diversity, identity, individuality, it enables expression, creativity, problem solving, it encourages forward thinking, change and progress as well as documentation, display, performance, memory, timing, feel, evaluation, comparison, contrast, strength, openness and influence. I could go on but I think that my attempts at explanation would fall on deaf ears.

Human beings could sing before they could speak, we banged things to make rhythm and danced to express ourselves and our wants and needs, we learned to extract colour from plants and minerals for the purpose of drawing and painting whether the reason was communication, documentation or just pure pleasure. People are creative, it's inate, it's instinctive and it's important. To lose it or to ignore it is to switch oneself off from massive potential. Art engages and propels people, it can switch people back on and they can then go on to 'feed themselves' or 'earn themselves a living', they can also go on to have more colourful, enriched and fulfilled lives even if they don't manage to earn ?100k salary.

You're probably gonna say or at least think, I'm talking crap. You're probably gonna say you can't do any of those things without money. I work with art with people who don't have money everyday, I've seen how it keeps kids out of prison, gets drug addicts clean, strengthens women enough to be able to leave an abusive relationship, helps prisoners to rehabilitate, empowers wheelchair users to dance, stabilises and re-engages the mentally ill................the list is endless but I think you're very probably bored already.

Give me and those like me more money so that we can do more of this and we'll show you the difference that art makes to societies. Then when your precious money isn't so tied up in hospitals, prisons, drug programmes, young offenders institutions, alcohol abuse centres, safe houses for victims of domestic violence and the rest you can spend it on educating people in the importance of equality, justice and humanity.