EC PAPERS NOVEMBER 2017

2

Liberating Arts

By expressing political ideas with beauty and emotion the arts can be the most profoundly transformative campaigning tools available to activists, trade unionists and political campaigners.

From these ideas the Organising Group defined the following objectives:

1. Develop and expand cultural workers/activists appreciation of how politically informed cultural work can contribute to a movement that takes us beyond the crises that government, media, and ‘experts’ impose on us today; 2. Facilitate the building of a network of such politically informed cultural workers/activists; 3. Build a deeper awareness of how trade unions could support such cultural workers/activists’ efforts to develop a ‘positive fighting spirit’. To pursue these aims the Art Of The Trade Union Day conference was organised in Bedford in Dec 2016. This relatively low-key event brought together 52 academics, creative activists and professional political artists with representatives from GFTU affiliate trade unions to discuss the relationship, if any, between the arts and trade unionism. From this successful event a meeting of an expanded Organising Group was called in January 2017 to decide how to proceed. At this meeting the Organising Group proposed a 3-day Liberating Arts festival for 2017. The proposed Liberating Arts festival would include performances and media screenings, exhibitions, discussions/lectures and networking events. However, it became apparent that neither the GFTU nor the members of the Organising Group had the capacity to organise a 3-day festival on this scale and it was decided to appoint a paid Programmer to get the ball rolling. Subsequently on Jan 23 rd a freelance Programmer, Chris Jury, was appointed by the GFTU but it soon became apparent that a Programmer would not be sufficient and that a Producer was required. Chris Jury was then recontracted as the Producer of Liberating Arts in February 2017.

2 Producer’s Report 06/11/2017