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I should have guessed that corporate bean counters were at work the day I was presented with a user feedback survey to fill out during my weekly visit to Collective. I got a distinct whiff that someone, somewhere was trying to cut some of the more fringe activities and services that the BBC is so good at providing.

The weekly BBC e-arts magazine, Collective, has introduced me to an amazing array of artists, musicians and writers over the last couple of years of my subscription, and I’m sorry to learn that it is now closing down. Have a look at their last front page, to get a flavour of their highly eclectic cultural offering:

The outgoing editor sent me a few Collective badges for me to display (below) as a sort of web based memorial to the now defunct project.

Here’s the valedictory:

We’re sorry to announce that Collective is closing.

We would like to thank everyone who has supported the site since it launched. From 2002 - 2008, Collective brought coverage of the most exciting new music, art, film, books and games to people in search of fresh culture in Britain. We aimed to celebrate genuine creativity and bring underground talent to the BBC’s audience. We’ve been privileged to host intelligent comment about popular arts, culture and society in general for almost six years, and occasionally been able to help our community of users in creative collaborative projects. At its height Collective had around 250,000 dedicated users.

I wish everyone on the Collective team the best of luck in their brilliant careers.

Here’s another part of the BBC you probably never knew existed: Blast! Not to mention the bizarre world of H2G2