After Monday night’s mini-spill outside the Tate Britain, enacted by the artist-activist group Liberate Tate, there has been a flow (‘scuse the pun) of press coverage from around the world, opening up the debate around corporate sponsorship of the arts (which is, in my personal opinion, a victory in itself).

Much of the arguments that are critical of the action taken, have followed along these general lines – that we, as activists, should be targeting BP, not the Tate; that we should be targeting all oil companies, not just BP, as other companies such as Shell have a high stake in our cultural institutions too; that oil has been sponsoring the arts for the past 20 years, so why bother protesting about it now; and that the Tate and the arts in general have no choice but to accept corporate sponsorship, especially in the light of further cuts in public spending.

In quick response, I would say to those – well, we have and are targeting BP, you may count any number of actions going on right now in the world that are doing just that. Targeting the Tate is about recognising our responsibility in all this mess. It is easy to blame the fat cats in suits, but here we are with big cultural institutions and artists (very well regarded ones at that, such as Grayson Perry and Cornelia Parker), endorsing companies that are causing massive environmental catastrophes and hastening climate change. Public concern about climate change is lower than last year and that is quite understandable. Political failure at Copenhagen, along with seeing oil companies endorsing our major public events and exhibitions, must of course give the general public the impression that it’s not that urgent.

In terms of targeting all oil companies – well that’s just a silly argument. Concerned citizenry willing to take action are currently made up of less people than those who work for big corporations. We’re trying! But if Shell are feeling left out and would enjoy 5 gallons of molasses on their doorstep, I’m sure that can be arranged.

And yes, oil has been sponsoring the arts for the past 20 years. Was Monday’s action the first action against it? No. Rising Tide and Art not Oil have been doing marvellous stuff for years. Even if this wasn’t the case, is that a coherent argument for not taking action? No. The Tate was founded on slavery money, and then sponsored by the tobacco industry. When this became unacceptable in public opinion, out those sponsors went. Something being rubbish for a long time is no excuse to keep on doing it, otherwise we would have a zero percentage divorce rate, amiright?

And lastly, to the argument that the arts have no choice but to accept corporate sponsorship. This to me, is the crux. I work for a charity, and believe me, I understand how hard funding is to come by. I also understand the vital need for art and culture, the very things that speak to me about what it is to be human, that make me feel alive. But to say that the arts have no choice in the matter, is doing us all a great disservice, and spectacularly undermining the role of art in the public domain. Are we merely to wait for corporations to stump up the cash before we can enjoy anything that we call art? Has art become such a commodity, that we must wait in line for the next big exhibition, buy a ticket and then wonder around for 45 mins with a furrowed brow, and that be the limitation of our experience? I have had an amazing time with Caravaggio at the Tate Britain, Picasso at the Tate Modern, Goya at the Prado. But have we forgotten what it means to create? Some of my best experiences of art have been small, intimate happenings – acoustic gigs, spoken word, craft nights – where the atmosphere is electric and alive with creation. So I have to wonder, who is art for? If it is for us, then we must ask whether or not corporate sponsorship limits the freedom of the artist to truly create. And it is wise to remember that Liberate Tate was born out of just such a limitation.

From Lefty Cartoons

A 5 minute video of a “Liberate Tate” action which is part of an upcoming documentary:

Balloon Power from Sharon salazar on Vimeo.

For more info on this action, read Sunny Hundal’s post on Liberal Conspiracy

By Hanna Thomas

A few years ago I was at drama school, waiting to launch myself into the world of showbiz and being prepped for life out in the “industry”. This consisted mainly of being told to lose half my body weight, wear chicken fillets and look either more or less asian (pretty hard for a dual heritage, Anglo-Japanese girl!) but also, more practical tips, like how to audition for advertisements.

Sitting in that particular session, hearing about how advertising corporate brands can end up being the bread and butter of an actor’s life, I asked about principles – how could you appear in an advert for a company like McDonalds, and reconcile that with your principles? I was told that my tutor’s friend had managed to buy a house outright with the money earned from just such an advert – “Principles, schminciples!” I cried, much to the hilarity of my course-mates, and left it at that.

But it’s a question that has stayed with me. For struggling artists, more lucrative jobs such as advertising can end up funding work we might deem more “worthwhile”. Some might argue that this is an unfortunate, but necessary trade-off. That, to do good, sometimes you need “bad” money.

In the wider world, there is a lot of evidence to back this opinion up. With ever-deepening cuts to the arts and consistent under-funding of research, we could assume that there is a lot of work that would go undone without corporate sponsorship. The National Theatre, National Gallery, Tate and countless other cultural institutions are all funded by banks and oil companies. Similarly, at an Earthwatch lecture I went to recently on Forests and Climate Change, I realised that the presented research projects had been funded by Shell (a dab hand at creating environmental catastrophes), HSBC (who have been connected to illegal logging) and Mitsubishi. Not exactly a roll call of climate change heroes.

Still, has all this corporate sponsorship managed to do “good”? Some would say undoubtedly so. The National Theatre £10 Travelex scheme has gone a long way towards the democratization of our theatre scene, making it more accessible to those who traditionally wouldn’t have spent a night at the theatre. And sure, without the sponsorship of conservation and research projects such as those run by Earthwatch, perhaps our planet would be in a worse state than it is now, without the few precious enclaves it has left.

But is this “good” good enough? Whilst BP celebrates their 20^th anniversary of sponsoring the Tate in a couple of weeks, they are busy creating the biggest oil painting known to man out there in the Gulf of Mexico. In the face of this, can we be surprised that new collectives, such as Liberate Tate are springing to up to protest against oil and the arts being bedfellows?

In the end, we have to examine what our definition is of “good”. It seems that sometimes our definition can slip, to encompass “the best that can be expected in the circumstances”. If we stopped to examine what is really going on, perhaps we’d find that the good doesn’t outweigh the bad, that they just cancel each other out, or worse – are we calling it evens when it is tipping the other way?

Check out the Shell sponsored Climate Science gallery opening in November at the London Science Museum, which “will step back from pushing evidence of man-made climate change to adopt a more neutral position.” Or, consider the entertainment industry once again – does George Clooney producing films about media corruption (Goodnight and Good Luck) and the oil industry (Syriana) balance out the fact that as “global ambassador” for Nespresso, he has helped sell millions of luxury coffee machines for a company with a pretty dodgy track record? When questioned at the 2007 Venice Film Festival about the apparent hypocrisy inherent of this and his appearing in Michael Clayton, a film about corruption in multinationals, Clooney said “I’m not going to apologise to you for trying to make a living every once in a while, I find that an irritating question.”

Considering he made $20,000,000 for Ocean’s Eleven, I find that an irritating response!

But many of us are complicit in these trade-offs – it’s not just celebrities, big companies or art galleries. Many of us know the city banker who is planning on making his nest-egg and then retiring to “give something back”. But what if that lifestyle choice isn’t good enough? What if that city banker did more harm working for a company that invests in arms, corrupt governments and oil than he (or she) can ever put right? Can we happily assume that our individual choices all balance out in the end?

I was recently invited to a Facebook group called Making Money + Changing the World. The description reads “This is for people that want to do both – that don’t feel like they need to compromise and are searching for a way that they can do good in the world and live the life they want.” It sounds great, but I’m not sure it’s possible. The same Facebook page calls for applications for Pepsi and Nike-funded social enterprise awards. It seems that, for the moment at least, making money and changing the world does require compromise and you can’t bank in which direction you’re going to change it.

Having said all this, I do hope that this is a temporary double bind that we find ourselves in, that another world is possible. Last year, the Co-op turned down £100m in un-ethical business and yet total lending by the Co-op soared to £8.3bn, setting a better example for our other high-street banks. On a smaller scale, we at The Otesha Project UK have developed a donor screening policy which outlines who we will and won’t take money from, based on their social and environmental credentials. This led to a super-satisfying encounter with Shell, where I could tell them where to go! I am incredibly proud of this policy because as time has gone on, I have realised how rare it is.

And now I shall leave you with a quote from Terrence Howard’s character in Hustle & Flow: There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don’t talk at all, ’cause they walkin’. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin’ for them.

Now, go lace up those hiking boots.

On this day in Addis Ababa, 1963, Kwame Nkrumah’s dream of Pan-African Unity was partially realised, the Organisation for African Unity was created and 25th May was declared to be “Africa Day”.

Kwame Nkrumah: African Socialist and Founding Father of African Unity

There are very few official celebrations that commemorate this day though the South African Trade Union Congress (COSATU) has released a statement in remembrance.

However intentionally or not, Yinka Shonibare’s artwork unveiled yesterday in Trafalgar Square is a fitting tribute and anti-colonial statement. Perhaps unsurprisingly the Mayor of London Boris Johnson has nothing intelligent to say about Nelson’s legacy in strengthening the British Empire and therefore British Colonialism and Imperialism.

Let’s hope that one day Africa will be free from war, famine and economic deprivation and instead a strong independent continent.

Actually let’s do more than just hope, let’s organise to make it happen.

It is nearly over but until then…

Courtesy of the BBC

So after all that hullabaloo, Gillian Duffy is now even famous in the USA, thanks to the Daily Show!

Jon Stewart is the best political satirist going at the moment, though Gillian may appear a sweet little old lady, but she does have bigoted though mainstream ideas regarding Eastern Europeans.

Watch the video

I’m embarrassed to say that until last week I had never been to The Wellcome Collection, a glorious building on Euston Road housing a museum displaying an unusual mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks. My visit was not to see anything unusual as such, but to see ‘Pressure Drop’, a mix of gig, play and art installation, all held together by the Bard of Barking himself, Billy Bragg.

Written by Mick Gordon, ‘Pressure Drop’ tells the story of a London based white working class family in the run up to the funeral of recently deceased grandfather Ron. The funeral causes the family to take a long hard look at their own lives, in particularly Ron’s son John, laid off from the local ‘plant’ and disenfranchised with England and resentful of immigration to the local area. John’s childhood friend Tony is playing on John’s vulnerability and desperately trying to get him to stand in the local Council elections for a party that we never actually hear the name of, but we can safely assume is a far right outfit based on the BNP.

The performance takes place in the main house of Wellcome with 3 separate stage sets, that the audience are required to walk between, getting up close and personal to the action whilst being directed and serenaded by Bragg and his band on their own stage at the centre of the room. The production is part of Wellcome’s Identity Project and looks very much at what it means to be English. Bragg is no stranger to dealing with issues of identity, particularly English identity, having written a book on the subject, ‘The Progressive Patriot’, and is also an active campaigner in the anti fascist movement, currently campaigning in his childhood home of Barking and Dagenham against the very active BNP in their attempt to win their first parliamentary seat.

‘Pressure Drop’ builds the tension by showing a family in mourning dissect their own purpose in life, which for Tony and John manifests itself in their national and racial identity. The lose of a grandfather and father, (who we learn through his ghost-like chats with the family was a huge reggae fan and wishes he could come back Black), pushes the next generation to the top of the family unit and confronts them with the dilemma of what mark will they be able to leave on the world?

‘Pressure Drop did a fine job of asking the question of who are we and what is it that we all define ourselves by? It also clearly raises the conundrum of why are the white working class turning to the far right for answers to these questions of identity. Is it fear of the unknown, is it because they are confronting issues that main stream politicians fail to address or is it purely that they don’t feel like they have a voice anymore?

The show is funny, sad and most definitely thought provoking. As someone of white working class stock myself I saw much that was familiar, particularly the strong family unit and good humour. Unfortunately there is that element of hate for the unknown that I cannot identify with, and more confusing is why people in parts of London at this very moment are looking towards far right politics as a way forward.

As a piece of theatre ‘Pressure Drop’ is great and Billy Bragg’s custom written songs are spot on and up there with some of his best song writing. Anything thing that makes us think about this surge in support for the far right in a constructive way without immediately demonising the white working class is a good thing, it should also makes us question our current politicians a bit more closely on the issues that are playing into the hands of the bigots who seek to break up what is otherwise one of the most diverse and tolerant countries in the world.

Pressure Drop is showing at the Wellcome Collection from: 19 April-12 May (excluding 22 and 25 April and 2 and 9 May). For more details visit the website.

Simply brilliant, the scary thing is that I know someone like this:

Hat/Tip: Pickled Politics

Judith Amanthis reports on how an innovative artist is pioneering methods of engaging working class communities whilst combating the far-right.

Everyone on the UK left knows why some members of the white ex-industrial working class have voted BNP. None that I know of knocks on doors in Doncaster or Dagenham, says “What can we do to help?” and talks to people. That’s what the BNP does.

Is it useful to engage in inside-left (excuse the pun) debate about whether the BNP is a fascist party? Is an elected Hitler likely in multi-racial 21st century UK? When the government’s far right immigration policy is an attempt to stem the haemorrhage of whiteness and Englishness from the UK working class anyway?

Whichever anti-BNP slogan the left chooses, one young woman is acting creatively. Artist Rachel Horne and her friends are trying to drag her South Yorkshire ex-mining community, and especially her generation, away from the BNP, but also from the British army and the drugs barons. An increasingly coercive and privatised social security system doesn’t help.

Horne, a strike baby, was born in a pit village in 1984. It’s where last month, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Great Strike, she organised an All Day Mining Party called Bring Out The Banners. 3000 people came, the brass band played, so did psychedelic folk bands, and Anne Scargill spoke about miners’ wives leaving their kitchens for police cells and speaking tours. Artists ran banner-making workshops. Photos, videos, miners’ memorabilia, and NUM banners became art and local history exhibition in one.

Horne, like Bob Marley, believes that to make something of the present you need to know where you come from. She first saw NUM banners drooping against the wall of Denaby Main and Cadeby Miners Welfare (the pit her father and generations back had worked down) when she was a teenager. Her immediate reaction was as an artist: their beauty and narrative power astounded her.

Then the banners’ meaning: that unity, watching each other’s backs and helping each other out, won battles for better wages and safer working conditions. Going on strike – losing pay – required collective loyalty. Helping your mate out down the pit lost you pay before nationalisation in 1946 brought in the basic wage. (But the bonus was a continuing incentive to work dangerously.) On all these marches, pickets and police battles, NUM banners were what people could see, what rallied them. None of the miners or their wives was armed. For a tightly-knit community, non-violence is a possible fighting tactic.

Horne’s videos, installations, collages, photos and drawings are about her community’s history. She takes it, distant and not so distant, to her community. She wants to create a new culture, new rituals, to replace (or substantiate) the ones Thatcher destroyed.

In 2006 she organised, in her home village Conisbrough, a day event and light installation called Out Of Darkness, Light to commemorate the 410 lives – men, boys and women – lost to Cadeby Main before its closure in 1986. She’s campaigning to get erased and grassed-over ex-colliery sites marked on UK reference maps. She’s had London art shows in which a lump of coal on a plinth takes centre stage, and got flak for it. She’s contributed to a street art exhibition. In 2007 she invited striking postal workers to a screening of her video Life And Land.

Can art be instrumental? Can it change the world for the better? Is Rachel doing art or is she just organising and talking to people? Who’ll pay her wages? Aren’t there problems with public art? Isn’t art really about making objects? Can a culture be fought for, or changed, or even healed, without a concomitant change in people’s standard of living? What’s she offering her community the BNP isn’t?

Horne is nothing if not controversial. But – she’s no fool – she believes artists like her can learn from her community’s collective creativity. She‘s trying to strengthen her enclave of the UK working class. That’s what other communities in the UK working class are doing: the Tamil diaspora, the Somali diaspora, west African women tube cleaners resisting victimisation for union organising, the list goes on. The stronger all these groups are the weaker the BNP is.

© Judith Amanthis 2009