Our manifesto

Note: we first wrote this manifesto when we launched in 2012, to challenge BP’s sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). In the following years, our rebellious theatrical activities spread and developed to include other oil-sponsored cultural spaces. Then in October 2019, we achieved a major victory: the RSC finally dropped BP (and the National Theatre ended its Shell partnership two days later)! However, even though Shakespeare is now freed from the taint of Big Oil, we have chosen to honour our roots and leave this manifesto in its original Shakespearean language…

Further Note: In June 2023, we had confirmation that BP sponsorship of the British Museum’s annual blockbuster exhibitions had come to an end and was not being renewed! It joined the National Portrait Gallery and Royal Opera House, whose BP deals ended in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Unfortunately, in December 2023, we learned that while the British Museum’s exhibitions would no longer be BP-branded, the museum had decided to continue working with the oil giant in a different way – by accepting BP sponsorship for the museum’s 10-year redevelopment plan. This presumably means that – while the BP logos have, happily, come down from the exhibitions – the oil company still has access to the museum’s facilities and will no doubt expect a certain amount of profile and PR in return for its £50 million of refurbishment spending.

So while nearly all the oil sponsorship deals of UK cultural spaces have now come to an end, the final struggle to kick Big Oil out of the arts continues – with the British Museum, the London Science Museum and the Aberdeen Art Gallery as the last major UK arts institutions to still have a relationship with an oil company.

At a time when the world should fear much more the heat of the sun and the furious winter’s rages, BP is conspiring to distract us from the naked truth of climate change, and by pursuing a future powered by more and more extreme fossil fuels, like tar sands, deepwater drilling and Arctic exploitation, with its daring folly burn the world.

Something is rotten in the state of Albion

The British Museum and Science Museum have chosen to put BP’s money in their purse. Yet he’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf. BP is doing everything in its power to let not the public see its deep and dark desires – fossil fuel expansion and ecological devastation. BP is the greenwash monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on, and these cultural leaders have made themselves complicit in its crimes. If this were play’d upon a stage now, we could condemn it as an improbable fiction!

Enough! No more!

Times are tough. Ay, there’s the rub. But all that glisters is not gold. And whilst comparisons are odorous, we do well remember that Tate, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery have all recently ended their oil sponsorship deals and continued to thrive, freed from the grasp of these smiling damned villains. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!