Developing creative responses to BP’s sponsorship of Hull City of Culture 2017
When: 7-9.30pm Wednesday 7th September 2016
Where: The Hive @ The Annex, Community Enterprise Centre, Cottingham Road, Hull HU5 2DH
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1677508049241588/
Let us know you’re coming by emailing info@bp-or-not-bp.org or Sam at sjdonaldson@hotmail.co.uk and please spread the word!
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Are you concerned that Hull City of Culture is being sponsored by one of the world’s most notorious and unethical companies, BP? Just as major arts organisations like Tate and the Edinburgh International Festival are severing their links with Big Oil, we are about to see BP’s logo plastered all over our city’s incredible arts and culture scene – for a whole year.
The movement to end oil sponsorship of the arts has snowballed in recent months, with major names in the worlds of arts, science and politics adding their voices. An explosion of creatively disobedient performances have turned famous oil-sponsored spaces such as the British Museum’s Great Court, Tate Britain and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery into sites of radical storytelling, guerrilla education and colourful resistance.
Now it’s Hull’s turn!
This meeting is organised by a group of Hull-based artists and activists who want to develop creative ways to raise concerns about BP’s sponsorship next year. We will be joined by two ‘actorvists’ from theatrical protest group ‘BP or not BP?’ who will contribute ideas, information and inspiration to a discussion about how artists, culture sector workers, activists and culture-lovers in and around Hull can take fun and creative action to counter BP’s ‘artwashing’ campaign in our city.
About BP or not BP?:
BP or not BP? emerged in 2012 with a series of Shakespearean stage invasions before BP-sponsored plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company, gaining support from members of the cast and company. This growing troupe of ‘actorvists’ now perform regularly in museums, galleries and other oil-sponsored spaces in London and Edinburgh. Their performances have ranged from rampaging BP vikings to powerful performance art, via pop-up exhibitions by rebel curators and, most recently, a bevvy of BP-loving merfolk taking over the British Museum with their siren songs…
All their performances have the aim of entertaining, educating and engaging audiences on the issues around BP’s destructive business practices, its dodgy political manouvering and the urgency of climate change. They have also worked to highlight questions around personal and organisational ethics and the importance of active solidarity with frontline struggles against BP and the rest of the fossil fuel industry.
BP or not BP? 