GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

could move on and it was decided to do some sort of actual arts festival. This

had been discussed for a while and there had been various versions of this,

some sort of summer festival, a sort of mini leftie Glastonbury, Glastonbury left

field type thing, possibly at Quorn. We did then set out to try to do a three day

festival which was a hybrid between that model of the summer festival, an

academic conference and a trade union conference, so we set out to try to

achieve that. I was then brought on to organise it as a producer, because it

was realised that to organise an event like this requires dedicated staff, it

cannot be done just as an add on. So we started to put it together.

Part of our funding model for this was trade unions buying delegate tickets and

almost no one, no trade union anywhere in the country, bought any affiliate

tickets and that seriously hindered our ability to make a three day festival pay

and as a result we transferred it over to a one day festival and made that work

by just charging members of the public a much reduced fee and made it work

for the GFTU for the audience and then as a result we sold out this one day,

200 odd people. There were 25 to 30 arts groups and various people doing

speeches and discussions and it went on into the evening. The feedback was

absolutely amazing for the day. Some of the feedback you can see on the

website in the testimonials. So it turned out to be a great day.

We then talked about what we could learn from this event and I might, a little

controversially, suggest that our biggest problem was the failure of the trade

union movement to engage with this idea at all. As I say, no union at all in the

country, apart from the Musicians’ Union, sent any delegates, none of our

affiliates, but no one else either, none of the big unions. When we went to the

TUC Conference that autumn it was suggested that a number of unions were

going to send delegates, but they did not. So that is a question – how do we

engage that audience of the trade union bureaucracies, but also trade union

members, how do we engage that audience, but the second question is should

we? What is the point of it? I would say this is sort of part of the discussion

about the service model or the political model, the campaigning model of trade

unions. If we are a service union simply providing technocratic services to our

members, then perhaps supporting an arts festival like Liberating Arts is neither

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