Green Capital TreeSong ‘feels a bit hollow’

TreeSong, a £37,000 Green Capital project which was supposed to see music made from falling fruit, has run in to trouble after the chosen tree failed to produce nuts. Steve Glover, who lost out on Green Captial funding for his Severn Project urban farms, asks if tax-payers’ money has been well-spent.

It’s great to see innovative projects – the arts are, of course, very important and anything that draws attention to nature has to be applauded.

Whilst the project may live on after it’s dismantled, it’s installation on the Downs is incredibly expensive – working out at £781 per minute (12 hours per day x four days). Wayne Rooney earns £30 per minute, but he also pays a lot of taxes.

We are always very disappointed when we see public money being wasted in times of austerity. It’s a bit like a family deciding not to support an uncle and his family who, for no fault of their own (say ill health or an accident), cannot feed themselves while they buy art to make themselves feel better.

It feels a bit hollow. As a city we close respite care and youth clubs, slash other care funding programmes and then give money to people to make music from the sound of fruit falling from a tree. And they can’t even do that.

After news that the tree produced no nuts, Bristol Ensemble are now saying that the tree makes noises all the time and they are going to use that instead of the now famous/infamous litany of “fruit falling from a tree”.

Did they have a marketing budget? Was “spin” included in the budget? To me this is skating on very thin ice in terms of delivery. At the Severn Project, when we applied for green capital funding we had to submit business plans, cashflow projections and budgets.

Presumably this was to ensure (after all this is tax-payers’ money and we have to be able to demonstrate prudent spending of the public purse) that we could actually do what it is that we proposed to do. 

Bristol Ensemble are not doing what they proposed. There is no fruit, therefore what they proposed is not happening, can’t happen and won’t happen – no matter how they spin it.

Beech trees give fruit once every three years. So why pick just one tree? Why not pick a group of trees and you are much more likely to get a result? It’s called risk negation.

So, does that mean that the due diligence that was carried out by KPMG when assessing this project for the Green Capital panel is also flawed – or is it the panel? Severn Project scored over 90 per cent when assessed by KPMG.

If I told my customers that we had decided not to grow salad this season and we were going to supply them with nettles and dock leaves, what would be the outcome?

The market would dictate that we no longer had a business. What is going to be the outcome for Bristol Ensemble? Where is the accountability? Fruit falling from trees (again) should entail fruit falling from trees. It’s really that simple.

I believe there are a few other projects that got Green Capital funding that are miles away from their projected outcomes. And many people from Bristol are still completely unaware of what Green Capital is. Generally, fruit falling from a tree symbolises waste.  And this is a complete waste.  Of public money.

Pictures from Green Capital