14 Ray Vaughan, arts supremo

From the moment he caught his first whiff of formaldehyde, and embalmed his pet gerbil, Ray’s overwhelming ambition was to be an artist. So it was only natural that he should gravitate, sooner or later, to Milltown, where a man with a goatee and a paint-spattered smock could walk down the street with impunity. Ray embraced the creative life with gusto. But, despite jumping in at the deep end, Ray soon discovered how hard it was to make a splash in the world of avant-garde art. Whenever Ray came up with an idea so bizarre and pointless that a major art award seemed his for the asking, another talentless showman would invariably steal his thunder.

In desperation Ray considered exhibiting his own internal organs (just the duplicated ones, of course; "No point in being silly about it", he acknowledged) in galleries around the world, to create a powerful and persuasive statement about man’s inhumanity to man, or something, and then designating his plundered but still operative body as a walking, talking ("cosmetically damaged") work of art. He planned to follow that by putting all his worldly possessions through a car crusher and building himself a primitive shelter out of the blocks. The ultimate aim would be to blur the artificial distinctions between common sense and sheer foolishness... thus giving him a credible shot at the Turner Prize of maybe 2005, and riches beyond the dreams of Croesus.

How galling it must have been for Ray when another, lesser artist (the late, great Brink Pilsbury) hogged the headlines for weeks by disembowelling himself on daytime TV. Life imitates art. But isn’t it a shame that, at the start of the 21st century, it should be imitating Damien Hirst rather than Henri Matisse or Paul Cezanne? In terms of shock value, Ray just couldn’t compete; the only thing that got crushed was his self-confidence.

With Milltown already bursting at the seams with artists, Ray decided there and then to reduce that number by one. What should have been a difficult decision, wasn’t. For the very last time he lay down the tools of his trade: the paints, the pigments, the blood-stained butcher’s apron. Like so many other people - William Hague and John Prescott spring to mind - he came to the inescapable conclusion that he was in the wrong line of business altogether.

Let's face facts: any fool can stick elephant dung onto canvas, or exhibit an unmade bed, or risk life and limb in the name of art. But it takes a truly inventive mind to put together a successful grant application. What so many artists fail to appreciate are the flights of fancy and, indeed, mendacious self-promotion, that go into the soliciting of funds from the public purse. What's a picture worth, after all, when compared to a thousand carefully chosen words? If this isn’t the real essence of creativity, then Ray Vaughan - mover, shaker, arts supremo - doesn’t know what is. Ray doesn’t make things any more. Not ‘make’, as in paint... or sculpt... or write... or even eviscerate... Not tangible things at all. No, what he does is inestimably more useful than that: these days Ray makes things happen.

He sees his new role as imposing himself between the wolves and the lambs... between the big, bad world of business and all the unfocused inspiration of our local artists. Ray’s not interested in mere objects - decorative though they may be - but in partnerships. Partnerships between industry and art, between commerce and art, between football and art. Between football and almost anything, really.

Since he sacrificed his own crack at immortality to choreograph other artists’ careers, Ray’s record in publicly-funded art has been second to none. When Milltown’s councillors wanted the town to take part in the hastily improvised Year of Finger Painting, they turned, naturally enough, to Ray. In a matter of days he’d organised the Milltown Mural Marathon: a pioneering example of how crap art can help to bring a community closer together.

With lottery money sluicing around, it was Ray’s idea to create writers’ residencies in Milltown. If the project is successful, there won’t be a train, bus, abbatoir or fast-food outlet in the South Pennines that doesn’t have its own poet in residence. In kebab take-aways, especially after closing time, people tend to hang around, blocking up the place, while they decide which particular kind of fly-blown meat they’d like to have cremated and stuffed into stale pitta bread. The queues will quickly subside if there’s a fey young man with floppy hair declaiming his verses at them.

When we were short of attractions to appear at the Midsummer Festival, Ray was the white knight who came riding to the rescue. After a couple of hours on the mobile, schmoozing with some of his arty chums, he soon had the dates filled and the talent signed up. An innovative cat-juggling act. A local man who makes sculptures out of ear wax. A folkie tribute band - Steeleye Spam - offering foil-wrapped mis-shapes from the chocolate box of popular music. A woman who takes her audiences down the cul-de-sac of atonality, by rasping a selection of root vegetables with a violin bow. Ray looks after everything. For a minimalist show of conceptual art, entitled ‘Is that it?’, he left notes for the gallery cleaners, to help them identify what was 'rubbish' and what was 'art'.

Emboldened by these successes, Ray broadened the scope of his activities. He brought a version of 'Last of the Summer Wine' to the stage. It was a faithful recreation of the original, except that Ray performed the seemingly impossible task of turning it into a comedy. For his directorial debut, he turned to Shakespeare. His King Lear was, by all accounts, an ambitious production, transferring the action to our own South Pennine moors. The play won plaudits from the theatre critic of the Milltown Times for its 'bold and controversial savaging of a much-loved classic'. But not even the overly-realistic eye-gouging scene could fill more than half the seats in the theatre. After all, those of us who live in Milltown already know what it’s like to bring up ungrateful kids in adverse weather conditions.

Once Ray had padded out the schedules with an array of unremarkable events - car-boot sales, blood donor sessions, a visit from a peripatetic chiropodist - the festival was hailed by everyone in Milltown as the best yet. The only major disappointment was the radical dance collective that Ray engaged. They had a reputation for challenging accepted notions about dance. Unfortunately, this extended to the troupe creating a 'negative presence' by not showing up on the appointed night, and going for a curry instead.

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