Readers of the 3CA Blog will know that I have always had my doubts about the figures supporting the success of Mintfest and Lakes Alive but it wasn’t until last week that I realised I had been barking up the wrong tree.

My worries about the connection between Mike Savage, a Research Fellow at Cresc, who was Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) from 2004 to 2010 and  Kendal Arts International are actually nothing compared to what  Private Eye said about a report prepared by CRESC eulogising Lakes Alive’s “remarkable rate of return on public investment”:

the glowing CRESC report was written by senior research fellow Andrew Miles who at the time was on the Companies House register as a director of Kendal Arts International ….. [ I think he was actually Company Secretary ] *

But then Private Eye adds

Oh, and he also happens to live with Lakes Alive boss Julie Tait, who is his partner and mother of his child.

Well, well.

* The comment about being Company Secretary is my own comment and is not in Private Eye