Don’t mention the money

For every cultural event or organisation, outside of the Royal Opera House or Old Trafford, money is the big neon elephant tooting and stamping in the middle of the room.
Some of our neighbours have had to pause their events, some have simply died.

But we will survive!

We’re exploring everything.

Tickets are a big no for us, though I totally understand why some friends have chosen that route.
The whole point of Montol is to revive and honour what were originally spontaneous, boisterous and unruly expressions of our culture – our job is to enable and facilitate that in a much more structured, managed, homogenised and demanding world.
So it must be free at the point of delivery so that anyone who wants to share in it can.

Sponsorship is a bit more complicated. We’re talking to an expert who’s absolutely sure that we can clearly lay out what they can get in return and we won’t have to compromise or cede control. But it’s so much extra work – it’ll take time.
It’s true, the pubs in town are rammed at Montol and I know one small business who made enough money last year to cover them for the rest of the winter. You’ll be lucky if you can find a room to stay over and some of the prices have been massively hiked for the 21st.
It’s not what we’re FOR but we do bring an awful lot of business into the town and we definitely help to put Penzance on a lot of cultural maps, even if it’s only for a couple of days.

But we are NOT looking at Osses with the names of Estate Agents and Accountants, Vape shops or a certain Steamship Company on their backs!

There are several sources of arts-style funding and at the moment they’re the biggest component. There are more to explore, and we are, but they’re all increasingly under threat and scarily contingent – one year or one project at a time.

It’s frustrating that both central and local governments talk in terms of “investing” in sport or even technology but about “spending” when it comes to protecting and developing local communities and their cultures – if that’s not an investment in people and their futures, I don’t know what is.
It’s about what you think is valuable, what matters, what counts. Ach well.

In fact one of the motivations behind the professionalising of finance, security and safety is to ensure a more stable arrangement in the future. The fact that it keeps us all safe is a bonus.

And then there’s you.

Through our Crowdfunder, you have pledged well over £2000 this year! Which is amazing.
I know it’s not ideal, of course it can be annoying and everyone is after your hard-earned these days but it really does make a difference.
Some of the little donations are huge to the people who gave them and they get so much extra love for that, but some are just huge – and we’ve been humbled again by your generosity and trust.

Thank you to all of you who gave.

Of course it comes around every year – what did you do with all the money we gave last year?

Well, to be honest … we burned it.
We did say we would.

So much for the money.

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To some of you I’m sure none of this really matters – it’s just a wild night on the town.
But to a lot of the people who work so hard to bring Montol to life it’s a great deal more. We’re here to embrace our traditions, ancient and modern and share our warmth.

It’s a celebration of Christmas, stripped of the Colonial Coca-Cola Santa Claus, Victorian sentimentality, Hollywood fake snow and spending money you just don’t have.

It’s a celebration of the Solstice, a still point in the endless cycles of life, embodied in fighting Oak and Holly Kings and a regenerating Goddess or in the wonder of the mechanics of the universe.

It’s a celebration of our bolshy distrust of authority, of our betters, an articulation of our shared history and belligerent Cornish pride.

And it’s an opportunity to celebrate the safety, the bonds of our community – to prove that we can still support each other, hold on to each other, across the generations, dance and sing with strangers in the dark.

Montol welcomes everyone. Cornish by birth, or Cornish on purpose, from just round the corner or from the other side of the world.

Whether you have any faith or none, in Sacred Books or Bucca, in God or The Goddess, hold with Humanism, Panpsychism or Science, in the stars or the earth, or an intoxicating cocktail of them all.

We are all different – indeed some of us are downright weird – and all are welcome here.