Does the arts need a Euro 2020 moment?

TARGETED: Why has Ballet Black been subject to a torrent of hate-filled, racist online abuse?

WHEN FOUNDER Cassa Pancho was studying at the Royal Academy of Dance, she decided to write her dissertation on Black women in ballet. She couldn’t find a single one to interview, and that was the starting point for her creation of Ballet Black.

We know who the real ‘vocal minority’ is – and it’s not those seeking greater understanding and inclusion for all in society.

Amanda Parker – Director and founder of Inc Arts UK

Twenty years later Ballet Black rubs shoulders with the UK’s major dance companies winning Oliviers, Sky Arts Awards, National Dance Awards, and performs regularly at the Royal Opera House and Barbican.

The company members are not only internationally renowned for their artistic excellence, but they’re also industry leaders in helping the wider dance community understand how to engage diverse audiences.

Whilst promoting their current tour, Ballet Black has been subject to a torrent of hate-filled, racist abuse across their social media feeds, some of which questioned why the company even existed.

Seemingly unaware that the majority of the UK’s ballet companies have very low levels of ethnic representation, the trolls asked if a ‘ballet white’ would even be allowed.

‘Ballet white’ is what ballet usually looks like in the UK – and it’s what motivated Ballet Black’s artistic director all those years ago.

Ballet Black wasn’t the first of the UK’s ethnically diverse-led arts companies to be attacked.  

In December last year, Talawa Theatre Company was targeted by a far-right organisation which shared inflammatory videos about the company’s work and also questioned the theatre company’s right to exist. Those videos are still online despite several requests for their removal.

Like Ballet Black, Talawa are no newcomers to the stage.

Talawa was founded in 1986 to promote theatre from African and Caribbean diaspora artists and creatives. It’s the UK’s premier Black theatre company and has toured more than 50 award-winning productions from African classics to works from the Western classical theatre canon.

Amanda Parker

Almost every Black actor and creative in the UK that you care to name has worked with Talawa Theatre Company at some point in their career.

What do we do when the trolls come for the arts companies making internationally recognised Black and Asian art? The natural reaction is to reply – but that won’t solve anything.

It’s unacceptable that the UK’s leading Artistic Directors are subjected to hate mail regularly. Nor should they have ‘EDI lead’ as an unofficial additional part of their job description.

Ballet is a particularly demanding discipline, and whilst all arts leaders have experienced enormous challenge in the past year (the sector is one of the hardest hit by pandemic), ethnically diverse leaders have duties of leadership that their peers do not: of experiencing racism and managing the emotional toll it takes on company members  – whilst also creating outstanding work.

Allyship has taken a completely different form since the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the globe last year. Quotes from radical thinkers, infographics and catchy lines have become the norm.

But we can take our support further and shine a light on the world-class work already being produced by companies like Ballet Black.

The UK’s creative and cultural sector, prior to the pandemic, was an area of phenomenal growth: growing employment, bringing in revenue and raising our game on the national stage. In 2019 it contributed £10.47bn to the UK economy and created 229,000 jobs.

The sector is vast. You can be a creative of 30 years plus experience as a jazz musician and never cross paths with a world class sculptor, or the go-to person for training dancers, or a playwright. And when it comes to ethnicity, it’s atomised even further.

And while we don’t necessarily need one cohering voice at the helm, we do need joined-up, collective advocacy.

What’s been missing in the arts and cultural sector is a collective voice that celebrates, champions and advocates for the rights of all of us to be here: whether it’s about socioeconomic background, sexual preference or ethnicity, arts and culture is simply too important to all of us to be left out of the picture when we are calling for equity, justice and inclusion.

Gareth Southgate has supported players and fans in taking an active stance against racism as it plays out in the terraces. We know that football is fraught with difficulty; the FA would be the first to concede that they are not best-case exemplars for inclusion – but what the England manager and the team has successfully done over the tournament is break the circuit of conflating national pride with anti-immigration diatribe, pushing back to racists online and ambivalence expressed elsewhere about players’ decision to take the knee.  

It’s time the arts and cultural sector had its own Euro 2020 moment.

That’s why at Inc Arts UK we are asking allies, advocates, creatives and everyone who loves music, dance, museums, writing, poetry, any creative production at all – to join us in saying loudly and clearly: not only does culture need diversity, but culture needs collective action to dial down the volume on racism.

We know who the real ‘vocal minority’ is – and it’s not those seeking greater understanding and inclusion for all in society.

And before we get there, the sector can help dial down the volume by championing our creative talent, advocating for greater funding to diverse creators, and donating to ensure that we are supported financially to continue making a vital contribution to social cohesion and economic growth.

Amanda Parker is the director and founder of Inc Arts UK, a national collective that champions the creative, economic and contractual rights of the UK’s African diaspora, Asian diaspora and ethnically diverse workforce in the arts and cultural sector.

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1 Comment

  1. | Marjorie Thompson

    Interested to know what I as a member of the concerned public can do to help as I do not sit on any funding or grant making committees and I am not in the sector. Obviously going to performances is one thing but I am keen to do more.

    Reply

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