Please Committee Members Speak Out Against The ADeC Proposal

I READ with astonishment that the district council proposes to withdraw support from our wonderful ADeC and that a crucial vote takes place next Thursday. We remember, during our days at the Pottery in Prickwillow, the packed meetings held by the community, hoping to start an arts centre at the Waterside Maltings, which failed, but ultimately led to the formation, with council support of ADeC.

Since then, ADeC has gone on to fulfil the need that was expressed then and much more, becoming an enabling body encouraging all sorts of arts activities in the area. The jewel in the crown is the Babylon Gallery which even in its reduced form still widens the connections with the arts at national level, also, I am sure a large feature of the tourist scene in the area.

So too is the Ely Cinema, another popular and much-needed island of culture, without which long car journeys to Cambridge or Peterborough become necessary. More carbon footprint!

I cannot believe that the council which helped it all into being, at a time when Ely and the area was probably much less developed and poorer, will now, in comparatively more prosperous times, abandon such a useful, cost effective, voluntary effort supporting body.

With this decision all the voluntary efforts and council investments of the past will be thrown away. It makes no sense.

We know there are difficulties in public finance at the moment but I do not believe that times are any harder than those early days when Adec was set up. I think the proposal is a rather philistine change in priorities.

We live in Cambridge at the moment, and now, without the family responsibilities that brought us here, have been making serious efforts to move back to Ely.

This threat to ADec is a second serious blow to our intentions, the first being the threat by over development to wild life areas close to the city.

Please, members of the committee, vote and speak against this retrograde proposal.

MARGOT and DEREK ANDREWS