The Question of Palestine Exposes The Rotten Core of Arts Funding by Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal
Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal is a theatre and performance studies lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, a trade unionist and a UCU (University College Union) member. In this piece, Jaswinder explores the contradictions of arts funding and the question of Palestine.
In February 2024, the Arts Council For England (ACE) released a statement alongside an update of its policies warning of reputational risk and the possibility of organisations losing their funding over “political” statements. This led to many questioning why now, especially since the Arts Council For England shared its support of actions of solidarity from cultural organisations during Russia's invasion of Ukraine via its public X account.
On January 23rd 2024, the National Theatre building, sitting on London’s South Bank, was lit up with projected images of white kites flying northwards off the wall of the building, followed by text: ‘25,000 killed in three months. This is genocide. Why are our cultural institutions silent? Silence is complicity. Culture Workers organised the Action Against Genocide, a network of arts and culture workers who, since October, have been organised in response to the sectors' overwhelming silence about Israel’s ongoing massacre and occupation of Palestine.
In an accompanying post on their Instagram account, the group wrote: ‘The targeted killings of artists and destruction of Palestinian cultural institutions are part of Israel's attempt to erase the Palestinian people. The refusal of arts organisations around the world to speak out is a double erasure. British theatres have sold tickets to plays portraying Palestinian suffering but won't call for it to end. Arts organisations have to speak out for justice and freedom now.’
The National Theatre is one of Britain's most powerful and influential cultural institutions. It also receives the most public subsidy, over £16 million annually, from Arts Council England. Yet its silence mirrors the failure of British cultural institutions more broadly to reflect public anger and grief at the scenes unfolding in Gaza or even to adhere to their own standards of international support or solidarity for artists suffering repression.
A sector that prides itself on producing insightful work of social importance, sees itself as playing a key role in shaping the political debate, and is frequently driven to defend its existence against the ever-looming threat of more significant funding cuts by asserting its importance to the public sphere has failed monumentally to make any meaningful contribution to Palestine, the defining political question of the moment.
When the Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp was raided in December 2013, with three members of their team violently beaten and abducted, many major theatres stayed silent. Whilst thousands of cultural workers signed letters and staged walkouts in defence of their Palestinian colleagues, few theatres themselves would come out to publicly defend them from attack. Although there were notable exceptions, including the Royal Court in London, there has been silence even from those who hosted the Freedom Theatre’s work within their venues. Institutions like the National Theatre, which was recently lit in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, have found themselves in a state of sudden political paralysis over the question of Palestine.
This silence reflects not only the deep political failings of these organisations but the rot caused by decades of hostile attitudes towards the arts and arts funding from the government. Research by Equity has found that since 2017, arts funding from UK arts councils has been cut by 16% in real terms. These years of funding cuts, dismantling arts provisions in education, and attacks on creative subjects at the degree level have left the sector financially scraping by, with little appetite for risk on or offstage. With cultural institutions desperate to stay in good stead with whatever government is in power and private donors, any meaningful commitment to justice or anti-racism has found itself swept aside by cowardice and self-censorship.
In early 2024, Arts Council England published new guidance for organisations it supports, warning them that ‘overtly political or activist statements’ could cause reputational risk in breach of funding agreements. As some have pointed out, this attempt at outsourcing potential ‘reputational damage’ for ACE to its funders can only inevitably lead to self-censorship, impacting what work is commissioned and supported by producers. Despite quick ‘clarification’ following public outrage, it’s hard to read ACE’s comments as anything other than lifting the veil on what many already know to be true - funding decisions are increasingly politicised, with artists and venues fearful of stepping out of line.
In May, a freedom of information request by the actors union Equity confirmed that ACE’s guidance was drawn up following a meeting with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to discuss ‘reputational risk relating to the Israel/Gaza conflict’. The Arts Council, who in 2022 issued a statement saying ‘the cultural sector in this country can play an important role in putting pressure on the Putin regime to end the invasion of Ukraine’, appears to be bowing to political pressure and firmly steering artists away from playing any role in putting pressure on their own government to end its complicity in genocide.
These limits to artistic expression, as communicated by ACE and the government, have been reinforced locally by the numerous institutions that have already engaged in acts of censorship around Palestinian work and support. For example, the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol cancelled a series of events as part of the Bristol Palestine Film Festival in November 2023 after claiming ‘it could not be confident that the events would not stray into political activity”.
Over 1,000 artists backed a boycott of the gallery, announced before the gallery was forced to apologise ‘without reservation’ and resign its executive director. In Manchester, the venue HOME cancelled a Palestinian-led ‘Voices of Resilience’ event after complaints from unnamed groups. Nearly 100 artists withdrew their work from the gallery before the venue reinstated the event.
Both cases, as well as many others over the last year, show the power and determination of cultural workers to resist censorship and make such policies unenforceable. While these venues and organisations are constrained by their deference to corporate sponsors, cultural workers remind us that it is their work and labour that such institutions rely upon; without them, there is no cultural sector.
Crucially, these campaigns are also drawing links between repression of Palestinian voices and ‘art washing’ more broadly. Hay Festival recently dropped Baillie Gifford as its sponsor following widespread protests and boycotts due to the firm's links with both Israel and fossil fuels. At Sadler’s Wells, Culture Workers Against Apartheid have been campaigning for the institution to sever its ties with Barclays, a key BDS target, for its financing of Israeli weapons as well as its investment in fossil fuels.
The British Museum was recently forced to close early when the group ‘Energy Embargo for Palestine’ gathered to call attention to BP's (one of the museum's main sponsors) role in pursuing offshore gas licences in Gaza. Activists in the cultural sector now find themselves on the front line of drawing links between imperialism, genocide and climate catastrophe. In fighting for the fundamental rights of cultural workers to make free artistic and political statements, they are calling attention to the deep decay within funding models more generally. As ever, Palestine is the issue which unlocks and makes visible the unsustainability of the current order, in this case, a system of arts funding which relies on corporate sponsorship or ever-shrinking public funds tied to an increasingly right-wing political agenda.
Even more importantly, those within the sector are no longer waiting for institutional leaders to catch up with the political moment. Instead, they are leading themselves, producing their work to fill the gap left by major institutions. A new grouping, the White Kite Collective, has been staging fundraisers across various venues for the past few months, including the Bush, Rich Mix, Tara, and Arcola. These organisations have all stood out for their support of Palestinian voices and have offered their spaces for this much-needed initiative.
At their recent week-long show, ‘Cutting the Tightrope: The Divorce of Politics from Art,’ the short plays on stage reflected grief and disgust at events unfolding in Palestine and anger at the cultural gatekeepers in Britain. ACE’s policy on political statements loomed large over the event, with post-show discussions each night challenging the self-censorship that has become normalised within the sector and advocating for the need to build alternatives.
From this moment of rupture, new paths have to be found. Cultural workers and audiences have stopped accepting the cowardice of the organisations they fund and work with. Support for the Palestinian cause and liberation has only grown in the last 9 months. It continues to grow as people watch Israel commit crimes with impunity, supported by British and other Western governments. The struggle for artistic and political freedom is bound by how art is made, produced and displayed. Palestine, as always, exposes the deep cracks in our society - and forces us to join the fight for the better.