14 Feb 17 | News and features, Press Releases
Art and the Law gives artists and arts organisations guidance about the legal implications of controversial work across five areas: Child Protection, Counter Terrorism, Obscene Publications, Public Order, and Race and Religion
Arts Council England has awarded Index on Censorship funding for the organisation’s work tackling censorship and self-censorship in the arts.
The £100,000 grant will be used to provide workshops for boards and senior management of arts organisations in England and Wales on issues of censorship and other ethical challenges as they affect programming, fundraising and managing controversy. The workshops, delivered with partners Cause4 and the What Next? movement will roll out practical ways to support freedom of expression, so that practitioners feel confident they can create great work — not just safe work.
The programme develops the long-standing work by Index on censorship and self-censorship in the arts, including its ‘Taking the Offensive’ conference in the South Bank, which identified widespread self-censorship in the sector. In 2015, Index — in collaboration with a number of legal advisers and with the support of the Arts Council and Clifford Chance — produced a series of guidance booklets entitled ‘Art and Offence’ that examined various aspects of the law and freedom of expression in England and Wales. The guidelines on public order are being distributed nationwide by the police service to help officers better understand the issues faced by arts venues in hosting potentially controversial work, and police commanders will be invited to training workshops.
The award also builds on research and guidance produced by What Next? on meeting ethical and reputational challenges. With additional funds from Theatre Development Trust, they will develop a nationwide network of local groups who will support colleagues facing ethical challenges. In parallel, and drawing on cases that surface through this nationwide programme, Index will research examples of censorship faced by arts groups in England and Wales to form the basis of a report into the state of free expression in the arts to be published at the end of the programme.
“We are delighted that the Arts Council values this work. A risk-averse culture is putting artistic expression under severe pressure,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship. “In the recent past, we have seen plays, performances and exhibitions being cancelled when faced with a hostile public reaction, or where police have advised closure. A disturbing pattern is emerging, which diminishes the arts.”
Simon Mellor, Deputy Chief Executive, Arts Council England, said: “Some of our greatest art has, over our history, been created by artists taking on the important issues of their day. And they have often done it in a way that audiences have found difficult and uncomfortable. But by provoking a strong response, public understanding of those issues has often deepened. We need to do all we can to create the conditions in which today’s artists can continue to provoke and challenge. The Arts Council is pleased to be supporting this important project by Index on Censorship which will support arts and cultural organisations to help artists take risks, be provocative and, hopefully, create great art.”
Notes to editors
Index on Censorship is a UK-based freedom of expression charity that campaigns against censorship and promotes free expression worldwide. Founded in 1972, Index has published some of the world’s leading writers and artists in its award-winning quarterly magazine, including Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Samuel Beckett and Kurt Vonnegut. It also has published some of the greatest campaigning writers from Vaclav Havel to Aung San Suu Kyi.
What Next? is a national movement of arts and cultural organisations, artists, funders, policy makers, institutions, and individuals who come together regularly to articulate and strengthen the role of culture in society. It is an open network of self-forming chapters, building relationships with local and national government, forming alliances outside of the cultural sector, and engaging the public in new and different conversations about the arts. It is chaired by Artistic Director of the Young Vic, David Lan. Over the last four years the What Next? movement has grown organically to encompass 34 chapters around the UK, they bring together individuals, organisations and institutions to work on locally significant issues, and to consider how to contribute to wider action.
Arts Council England champions, develops and invests in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2015 and 2018, we plan to invest £1.1 billion of public money from government and an estimated £700 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk
16 May 16 | Art and the Law Commentary, Artistic Freedom Commentary and Reports, Campaigns -- Featured, mobile, News and features
Julia Farrington, associate arts producer, Index on Censorship, participated in the Theatre UK 2016 conference on 12 May 2016. This is an adapted version of her presentation.
In January 2013 I organised a conference called Taking the Offensive for Index on Censorship, in partnership with the Free Word Centre and Southbank Centre. The conference was held to debate the growth of self-censorship in contemporary culture, the social, political and legal challenges to artistic freedom of expression and the sources of these new challenges.
The report from the conference concluded that censorship and self-censorship are significant influences in the arts, creating a complex picture of the different ways society controls expression. Institutional self-censorship, which many acknowledged suppresses creativity and ideas, was openly discussed for the first time.
Lack of understanding and knowledge about rights and responsibilities relating to freedom of expression, worries about legal action, police intervention and loss of funding, health and safety regulations, concern about provoking negative media and social media reaction, and public protests are all causing cultural institutions to be overly cautious.
One speaker at Taking the Offensive suggested that we are fostering a culture where “art is not for debate, controversy and disagreement, but it is to please”.
There is above all, unequal access to exercising the right to artistic freedom of expression, with artists from black and minority ethnic encountering additional obstacles.
Many felt that far greater trust, transparency and honesty about the challenges being faced need to be developed across the sector; dilemmas should be recast as a necessary part of the creative process, to be shared and openly discussed, rather than something to keep behind closed doors. This will make it possible for organisations to come together when there is a crisis, rather than standing back and withholding support: “if we collectively don’t feel confident about the dilemmas we face how can we move on with the public?”
I think there have been significant changes in the three years since the conference and, whilst I think the same challenges persist, there have been some really positive moves to tackle self-censorship within the sector. The growth of What Next? has created precisely the platform to debate and discuss the pressures, dilemmas and controversies that the conference identified. What Next? has produced guidance on navigating some of these issues and is developing more resources on how organisations can support each other when work is contested.
Index on Censorship responded to the clear call from the conference for the need for guidance about legal rights and responsibilities if we are to create a space where artists are free to take on complex issues that may be disturbing, divisive, shocking or offensive.
We have published information packs around five areas of law that impact on what is sayable in the arts: Public Order, Race and Religion, Counter Terrorism, Child Protection and Obscene Publications. They are available on the website under our campaign Art and Offence. These have been well received by the sector and read by CPS and police and we are developing a programme of training which will, if all goes well, include working with senior police officers.
At the same time, pressures from outside the sector have intensified.
The role of the police in managing the public space when controversial art leads to protest has come into sharp relief over the past two-three years where they have repeatedly “advised” venues to remove or cancel work that has caused protest or may cause protest.
I did a case study on the policing of the picket of Exhibit B at the Barbican in London which is available on the Index website; and in the same year, the Israeli hip hop opera the City was closed in Edinburgh on the advice of the police.
More worryingly the police “advice” has also led to the foreclosing of work that is potentially inflammatory – as in Isis Threaten Sylvannia an art installation by Mimsy, that was removed from an exhibition called Passion for Freedom from the Mall Gallery last year.
With the removal of Isis Threaten Sylvania, we see a shift from the police advising closure following protest to the police contributing indirectly or directly to the decision to remove work to avoid protest.
In this case freedom of expression was actually given a price — set at £7,200 per day for the five days of the exhibition — the price set by the police for their services to guarantee public safety.
The police took the view that a perfectly legal piece of art, which had already been displayed without incident earlier in the year, was inflammatory. And in the balance of things as they stand, this opinion outweighs:
- the right of the artist to express him or herself;
- the organisation’s right to present provocative political art;
- the audience’s right to view it;
- and those that protest against it, the right to say how much they hate it, including when that means that they want the art removed.
This new chapter in the policing of controversial art sets alarm bells ringing and represents a very dangerous precedent for foreclosing any work that the police don’t approve of.
But going against police advice is problematic.
In Index’s information pack on Public Order we asked our legal adviser, working pro bono, questions that many artists and arts managers are concerned about:
What happens if police advise you not to continue with presenting a piece of work because they have unspecified concerns about public safety – and yet tell you it is your choice and they can only advise you?
The artist would in principle be free to continue with the work. It would be advisable, however, to ensure that the reasons held by the police were understood. It may also be prudent to take professional advice…
And then what responsibilities for safety do employers have to staff and the public in relation to continuing with an artwork that has been contested by the police?
An organisation also has duties to their employees and members of the public on their premises. These duties may extend to making an organisation liable in the event of injury to a person resulting from the unlawful act of a third party if, for example, that unlawful act was plainly foreseeable – in other words the police have given their warning.
What are the options for an arts organisation to challenge police advice at the time of the protest itself?
If the organisation believes that it has grounds to challenge police directions to avoid a breach of the peace, it can seek to take legal action on an urgent basis. Realistically…legal action will not be determined until some time later and until it is determined by the courts, the organisation and/or its members or employees would risk arrest if they do not comply with police directions.
So – what starts out as police advice which implies genuine choice, on closer inspection transforms into a Hobson’s Choice where failure to follow that advice could lead to arrest.
On this evidence, both self-censorship and direct censorship are the undesirable outcomes of this as yet unchallenged area of policing.
But the Crown Prosecution Service has read and approved the packs and our law packs are in the system with the police.
The ideal policing scenario is to keep the space open for both the challenging political art and the protest it provokes. Both are about freedom of expression, what we have to avoid is the heckler’s veto prevailing.
Going back to other recent examples of censorship — questions remain about the role of the police in the decision to cancel Homegrown the National Youth Theatre production of a play about the radicalisation of young Muslims by writer Omar El-Khairy and director Nadia Latif. This was followed earlier this year by the presentation, without incident, of Another World: Losing our Children to Islamic State at the National Theatre, play on similar themes by Gillian Slovo and Nicolas Kent.
I mention Another World because it is important to state the obvious, that all the work that has been contested by the police and been cancelled, relates to work about race and religion and the majority of artists involved in work that has been foreclosed are from black and minority ethnic communities.
Looking through the lens of freedom of expression, each case of censorship gives a valuable opportunity to view a specific snapshot of relationships within society and to analyse the power dynamics operating there, both directly around the censored work — whose voices are and aren’t being heard in the work itself, and in the field and context in which the work is taking place and again looking at who is in control, who decides what voices are heard. I don’t have time here to go into an analysis of each case, but what emerges is that freedom of expression is, as it stands, a biased affair in the UK and I believe will remain so while our society and our culture are not equal.
As well as these new cases of censorship that we have seen since the 2013 conference, we have also seen new government policy, legislation and regulations which place increasingly explicit controls on what we can say and have a chilling effect on many areas of expression and communication, and interaction with government.
Many campaigners and charities see the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 as designed to deter charities from intervening in judicial reviews — the most important legal channel we have to call authorities to account; the Investigatory Powers Bill, better known as the Snoopers’ Charter gives the surveillance state more powers; the Prevent Strategy requires us to police each other – surveillance and policing our neighbours — two nasty authoritarian tactics, and most recently the anti-advocacy clause would effectively ban organisations from using government funds for lobbying — stifling dissent. It was due to come into law on 1 May but the consultation period was extended and it might be kicked into the long grass.
The government has made it clear that it wants us to see ourselves predominantly if not exclusively as businesses and in response we have successfully made the case that the arts contribute massively to the economy.
But we know we are so much more. The arts are a vital, at best magnificent and effective player in civil society — especially when you define civil society as “a community of citizens linked by common interests and collective activity”.
With our core values and freedoms under attack, the arts and other civil society bodies are responding. The discussion about the role of the artist in taking on the big issues in society — from climate change to the refugee crisis — has, from where I stand, definitely intensified and gone up the agenda over the past three years, both here and internationally, as the pressure on our freedoms and values also intensifies domestically and internationally.
To fully participate in society and to create art that calls power to account, we need to continue to identify, analyse and tackle the causes of self-censorship within the sector, and stand together to enter into dialogue with the various agents of control that we identify in the process.
Art can help us imagine and bring about a more equal and just future.
