‘I am livid at this attempted censorship’: Inside a week of Arts Council England turmoil

The decision to ban a comedian from the Soho Theatre has brought the very notion of artistic expression into the sharpest focus

It was a few lines buried in a largely unheralded Arts Council England (ACE) document from late January.  But the warning was there, even if no-one initially noticed it. 
Political or activist statements made by individuals linked to ACE-funded projects – even if they were in a personal capacity and not directly linked to the work they were making – could cause reputational risk. These statements, said the document, could ultimately breach funding agreements.
Meanwhile, last weekend, London’s ACE-funded Soho Theatre – a hotbed of established and emerging talent in theatre, comedy and cabaret – had to deal with the fallout from a show by Belfast comedian and “dada punk-clown” Paul Currie at the venue, where allegations were made that he verbally abused an audience member who objected to him displaying a Palestinian flag.
In a statement, Soho Theatre said Currie aggressively demanded Jewish members of the audience leave and “such appalling actions are unacceptable and have no place on our stages, now or ever”. 
They are right – Currie went too far. But what if he’d “just” left it at displaying the Palestinian flag (he also displayed the Ukrainian one). Would Soho Theatre – which over the years has hosted political firebrands of every flavour, from Alexei Sayle to Jerry Sadowitz – have had to act then to protect their funding? This is the kind of febrile atmosphere that ACE provoked in their Relationship Framework update – with the shockwaves belatedly reaching the very heart of cultural life in England this week.
The whole notion of artistic expression, freedom of speech and perhaps most importantly, how the creative industries are funded, came into the sharpest focus.
That was because, initially at least, the inference from ACE’s Relationship Framework update – a document that sets out how it works with the organisations it provides grants to and what it expects of them – seemed pretty clear. Whether you’re on the Left or Right, if you’re in any way connected with Arts Council funding and want it to continue, you’d better keep your opinions to yourself.
Maybe the Paul Currie incident was the spark, but it took the online cultural journal Arts Professional to pick up on the framework update earlier this week for the issue to quickly turn into something of a public relations nightmare for ACE. Respected musicians, authors, film-makers and poets such as Feargal Sharkey, Matt Haig, Robert MacFarlane, Asif Kapadia and Nikita Gill were heavily critical. 
Later, Equity would also express that it was “deeply concerned” that the effects of ACE’s new guidance would be “to censor” work and “attempt to silence artists on stage and in their personal lives – especially those working in the activist or political space”.
Laura Brown, an award-winning arts consultant based in Liverpool, summed up the atmosphere of disbelief best on X, formerly Twitter:
I genuinely don’t think I’ve been involved in a single piece of art over 20 years where someone involved hasn’t made a political statement onstage and offstage, online and offline https://t.co/EMwlYv7rO8
She’s right. Art has always made political statements. Picasso’s Guernica was exhibited at the 1937 Paris Expo and became one of the most powerful anti-war paintings of all time. Under the ACE guidelines as they stood at the start of this week, there’s the distinct possibility that venues would have been asked to think carefully about displaying it. 
Brown’s post also reminded me of a recent gig at Manchester’s Albert Hall. Lankum, the Irish folk band nominated for the Mercury Prize last year, were incredible; spellbinding, transporting and sometimes very funny. They also draped the flag of Palestine over the drum-riser and in between songs used pretty industrial language in their calls for an immediate ceasefire.
All this in a remarkable venue which has in the past enjoyed Arts Council funding. By the rationale of ACE’s Relationship Framework update, Lankum could easily have been misconstrued as being activists (they were nothing of the sort – they were simply calling for peace), and any further funding for Albert Hall removed.
And if you think that scenario stretches the bounds of possibility, consider this. The band who actually beat Lankum to the Mercury, Ezra Collective, came out of – and still contribute to – vital youth projects funded by ACE. Their work and their public pronouncements are joyful, inclusive and sometimes political. Does that mean that those same youth projects they are connected to would suffer when it came to future funding decisions? Surely not, but the line wasn’t entirely clear.
In the same week, ACE was also under fire from some quarters as being overrun by activists itself. The old adage that if you’re annoying everyone you must be doing something right might have held some truth, but the fact is most people hated the update to the Relationship Framework. And even if there was the grain of something workable in it, the idea of some kind of Arts Council police keeping tabs on every single artist and organisation’s work and social media pronouncements was faintly ridiculous.
Many began to suspect that the real reason for its hard-line approach was the forthcoming full-scale review of ACE by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) – which will determine whether it should continue to operate in its current form. It came as little surprise when, on Thursday afternoon, ACE released a statement expressing regret that they had not been sufficiently clear in their communication around this issue.
“For a cultural sector to thrive, freedom of expression – personal, artistic and political – is indisputably vital,” they conceded. “It is right that our funding will be used to support work that will be perceived as political or controversial… the guidance does, however, set out a series of steps for organisations to go through, to ensure that if they, or people associated with them, are planning activity that might be viewed as controversial, they have thought through, and so far as possible mitigated, the risk to themselves and crucially to their staff and to the communities they serve.”Quite a mouthful for a clarification. 
I spoke to many people on Thursday morning who have worked on projects or in organisations that have been directly funded by ACE. None thought the clarification went far enough and, perhaps more tellingly, none were prepared to go on the record to say why. Put your head above the parapet in the current atmosphere and you run the risk of putting your much-needed funding in jeopardy, it seems.
The problem, most said, was that for all ACE had softened their stance on the politics of artists, the suggestion remained that future funding might still be impacted by a catalogue of contentious work or opinions. The Arts Council might also have argued that they were just providing guidance to help support organisations when they were considering programming difficult content. But simply put, in this new framework, would an ACE-funded gallery gamble their future by putting on a show by a politically vocal artist? Probably not.
One senior member of staff at an ACE-funded museums group said as much. He told me the funding models they have to work by “don’t really create the best conditions for work that pushes boundaries and challenges social norms”. An experienced arts professional working with ACE-funded clients told me that she spoke with three organisations and artists on Wednesday, all of whom were furious. “Personally, I am livid at this attempt at censorship, but I have to keep my head down too,” she added. 
I also spoke to a publisher who benefits from ACE funding. Again they were really keen not to identify themselves – particularly as they have in the past developed material which could, by some of ACE’s admittedly unclear measures, be deemed controversial. 
“My concerns when the original statement was reported were like many other peoples’: that ACE potentially removing funding for ‘political’ statements is a terrifying prospect that fundamentally misunderstands the inherent political nature of art,” he said. “Vague terms like ‘political’ and ‘activist’ leave a lot of room for interpretation and this lack of a clear ruling breeds fear and confusion.”
And that was the real issue here; there was no real clarity as to what was and wasn’t acceptable – even with the softening of some of the language by ACE – and who ultimately is the arbiter of correctness, even.
Yes, perhaps there was a small element of ACE’s new framework which could encourage people to be more mindful of the impact of strident views, particularly on social media. Indeed, every single organisation I spoke to understood why ACE must have some sort of guideline and expectation as to what their funding will be used for. As one put it: “You wouldn’t want to be funding an art installation that was in fact a step-by-step guide on how to home-brew napalm.” 
But getting involved in the details of specific artists’ views, even when disconnected from their actual work, seemed a step too far. Still, as the publisher told me, the clarification from ACE and renewed commitment to protecting free speech did settle nerves somewhat. “But it’s also hard to know exactly how these rules will apply so there is still an air of uncertainty and mistrust,” he said.
Uncertainty. Mistrust. Fear. Confusion. I was so struck by the depth of feeling across the creative ecosystem – even after the “clarification” – that I decided to tell Arts Council England how bad it was myself. So on Thursday afternoon, I passed on some of the opinions you’ve just read. 
You know how this story usually ends: “Arts Council England were contacted for comment.” Yet, 30 minutes later, I did actually receive an email. And instead of the usual non-committal statements, I was instead directed to a new pronouncement.
“In light of what we’ve heard this week, we’re looking again at some of the language we’ve used, and will clarify it to fully reflect our original intention. We’ll publish an updated version of the Relationship Framework as soon as possible.”
The whole Relationship Framework update had been junked. Frankly, when I passed this on to some of the organisations mentioned above, they found the whole episode laughable. Chaotic, even. Yet here, it is important to give ACE some credit. Rather than double down on a framework that they themselves admit was open to misinterpretation, they listened and hopefully will learn. Core to this area of the Relationship Framework – which, to reiterate, every ACE-funded organisation agrees needs to exist – should be that support is given to these organisations to produce, navigate and best present challenging, political or provoking work. Not that work remains uncommissioned because it’s a bit tricky. 
As ACE put it: “We know from our conversations with organisations that support around managing complex, risky issues is needed, and that is what the Relationship Framework is there to do.”
We shall see what happens next. In the meantime, it is worth reflecting that while this debate might have consumed ACE this week, it isn’t an issue specific to them. Because of the decrease in funding streams, there’s now a lot more corporate and philanthropic funding in the creative sector – which may or may not come with plenty of caveats.
Three weeks ago, The Telegraph reported on the United Arab Emirate’s network of influence spreading into the UK’s cultural institutions, including the British Museum. Meanwhile, one of the biggest ACE grants – £9.9 million a year – goes to Factory International in Manchester, a massive new “landmark cultural space”. But they also received £35 million from an insurance company to immediately rename it Aviva Studios. 
Of course, Factory have argued that naming rights make no difference to the work they commission. Nevertheless, when you sign up to deals like that, considering the reputational risk to all stakeholders in programming content does move up the priority list.
As for those still off-the-record contacts, I spoke to one again late on Thursday night to ask whether they felt a bit more hopeful at the end of this week than they did at the start. “Well, they’ve made the right decision,” he said. “But the big danger is that unless this version of the Arts Council gets a grip, they might be the ones responsible for the demise of public subsidy for the arts in England.”
As Arts Council England prepare for their date with DCMS, you sense that’s the real context here.