Taxpayers Fund ‘Interpretive Dance’ Research Into ‘Worm-like Phallic Forms’ – Guido Fawkes

Taxpayers Fund ‘Interpretive Dance’ Research Into ‘Worm-like Phallic Forms’

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Co-conspirators will be aware of UKRI’s generosity with taxpayers’ cash – especially when it comes to funding bizarre and baffling research projects. One of which may raise eyebrows is a project discovered by the Taxpayers’ Alliance titled ‘The Vocabulary of Touch: Encountering Otherness through Contact Improvisation’. The project – running from 2020 to 2025 and backed by UKRI’s Art Council – was a awarded to researcher Rosalind Holgate-Smith at Kingston University. Holgate-Smith was given a taxpayer-funded Techne scholarship worth £72,177 for three years. Some of the results from her research so far include:

• The Unveiling: A performance in which students are invited to “dive into the affects of touch, and explore the skin as continuous, through the orifices of the mouth, nose, anus and into the digestive tract.” That spelling mistake is not Guido’s…

• The Pleasure Patchwork: where students can experience “interactive soft sculpture” using “a crochet blanket made of worm like, phallic and invaginated forms, that can be turned inside out. Cocks up, down, and enfolded” to explore the “depth, tone and density of contact with human and non-human matter.” Eh?

The Taxpayers’ Alliance Joanna Marchong told Guido:

“It is absolutely absurd that taxpayers are funding this madness. UKRI has serious questions to answer over how these bizarre academic projects are approved, and whether they serve any public good. Ministers must rein in this artsy excess and stop taxpayers’ cash being wasted on touchy-feely nonsense.”

Bonfire of the quangos, anyone?