I WAS disappointed and baffled by the news that Swindon Council may cut its grant to Sixth Sense Theatre Company.

As head of drama at Commonweal School, Sixth Sense has provided brilliant opportunities for students to look at issues which are relevant to them in a creative and educational way.

Recently, Sixth Sense Theatre Company worked with our school on a play about teenage pregnancy. The standard of performance work was particularly high, but it was the response of the audience that really showed how invaluable their work is. If we are really keen to look after our children and their future, cutting back on their arts education is not the way. Do we want to be known as the town with one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, yet no effective theatre in education?

Sixth Sense has forged an impressive reputation over a number of years as an innovative theatre company, which has worked closely and collaboratively with many schools across Swindon. What prospective city would marginalise its culture in this way?

HEATHER BIRKBECK

Commonweal School

Swindon

SHIRLEY Mathias is wrong (EA, December 14). Art is not just a matter of hanging pictures on walls, or teaching people to dance.

It is an important part of the image of the town.

For far too long people living outside Swindon have ridiculed the inhabitants as being a collection of Philistines with straw in their hair.

Now that the hard work of the arts staff in Premier House is beginning to pay off in dispelling that image, the council has decided to withdraw support and make that very hard working and loyal staff redundant.

Thus they will create the very cultural desert, the existence of which we have for so long been trying to deny.

In the last bid for city status, Swindon was criticised for relying too heavily on its economic achievements, but with the rider that it had no soul. Shirley, art of all sorts is the very soul of a town.

RON CRAFER

Treasurer Swindon Artists Society

Parklands Road, Swindon