"Nottingham is as fruitful a field of ignorance as you will find anywhere," said Mr. Cecil Roberts, the poet, novelist and critic, at a meeting of the Conlemporary Arts Conference, in London.
The conference wants to form a Federation of British Arts, by whose activities the public—described by Mr. Bernard Shaw as the "consumers of culture''—shall be well and truly served in all Mr. Roberts, who is editor of the "Nottingham Daily Journal," was appealing to the conference not to neglect the provinces.
"Don't cultivate London too much," he said. "London is already crazy with arts, but there is great field of ignorance in the provinces. Provincials have the money; they have the leisure, but they lack taste."
Mr. Horace Shipp said that artists were the most difficult persons to organize. "Compared with artists," he said, political nihilists are tractable and docile animals."
As a result of the meetings Contemporary Arts Federation is to be formed. It isto have an annual congress in a provincial centre, and an executive which will include such names as Mr. Frank Rutter, Mr. A. Clutton-Brock, Mr. George Bernard Shaw, Miss Margaret Morris and Mr. Holbrook Jackson.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.