A Bold New Future for the Arts in the UK
by Peter Foggitt
February 2024
“Our highly-trained cormorant chorus represents the very best of Brexit Britain.”
Today, a partnership between the Skegness Children's Chorus, the Portsmouth Sinfonia, and at least more than two secondary school music departments, has ‘secured’ the future of UK music-making.
“We're delighted,” gushed a spokesperson for the floor cleaning product used in one of the schools, “that this new and innovative initiative, in which we boldly relocate the Skegness Children's Chorus to a remote island in the Antarctic Ocean, will provide unforetold musical opportunities for over six penguins.”
As the news broke that the entire staff of the Chorus and Sinfonia had been made redundant, a spokesentity for Arts Council England commented: “We have long been searching for a possibility to deploy our highly-trained team of cormorants, all of whom are expert at making noises with their beaks, and also at catching saltwater fish. This is that opportunity! We do not regret at all the dismissal of a hundred of this country's most skilled and experienced musicians, since we are confident that we can create exactly the same effect using the directly comparable skillset of a flock of seabirds.”
The new partnership, in which the skills of the Portsmouth Sinfonia will be paired with a group of children incorrigibly clapping on 1 and 3, was hailed by a government spokeshologram as representing “the very best of Brexit Britain. We can,” continued the flickering mirage, “be certain that the best way to deploy the abilities of a group of such profoundly talented and versatile artists is to oblige them to teach six-year-olds how to sing traditional Uzbek folk songs (rendered into English by Google Translate no more than seven minutes before the start of each workshop). And where better to do this than a hundred miles north of Antarctica? This is truly the culmination of the British musical tradition.”
“I'm just going outside,” said the ghost of Sir Henry Wood, “and may be some time.”
