Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  63 / 175 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 63 / 175 Next Page
Page Background

‘There is an urgent need for progressive artists to be

involved in the Movement.’ This opening remark from

GFTU’s general secretary Doug Nicholls at The of Trade

Unions event in Bedford December 6th 2016, was

organised by the General Federation of Trade Unions

and its open network of arts’ union members Liberating

Arts.

An audience of trade union activists and officers,

academics and artists watched performances and

presentations that had one agenda; how cultural

workers can better serve and celebrate, working class

struggle. In short, change things.

It is clear how this might have happened in the past.

Novels like the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, the

work of Dickens and Jack London, helped change

consciousness to pave the way for the welfare state, but

are safely lodged in the past – and of course, we’ll never

get back to those days. Won’t we? Ken Loach’s recent

masterpiece I, Daniel Blake reveals the vicious effects

of neo-liberalism on working class people. It’s how art

works with and through us during this time of change

for the working class today that is the challenge.

Academic and activist Rebecca Hillman talked about

collaborations between theatre makers and trade unions,

how it can be used to challenge oppressive structures,

and how art can be used as a political tool.

This was a theme taken up by Dave Smith of Blacklisted,

who spoke of ‘propaganda by the deed,’ and the

campaign to expose the recent blacklisting of union

activists in the construction industry which had been

supported by various art forms from documentary film

to song.

Peter Marcuse from the artists’ collective Brandalism

discussed their campaign against the corporate control

of outdoor adverting – how it pollutes our minds.

Advertisements were taken down and replaced with

different images by this art collective.

After a call for graphic artists to attend AA meetings

(Advertisers Anonymous), intrigued designers turned

up, keen to take on the toxicity of consumerism and

adopt the manifesto ‘Advertising shits in your head.

When asked about the legality of the campaign, Peter’s

answer was.

‘They didn’t ask if they could put their images in our

faces, so we didn’t ask them if we could take them

down.’

‘What got you going?’ I asked him later.

“We were motivated by the dominance of commercial

images in our cities, and the idea that those with the

most amount of money can display their messages in

front of us without our consent. Advertising regularly

re-asserts problematic cultural values that appeal to our

sense of status, individualism, wealth and power - rather

than socially beneficial values like equality, community

and solidarity…Confronting the advertising industry

means organizing…. and challenging one of a key

drivers of neoliberal consumer capitalism.”

Another ‘artivist’ was Theresa Easton of the Artists’ Union

of England, talking about her work with communities

engaged in activism – a hidden art force putting the

paper images into a campaign, notably the Durham

Teaching Assistants strike, when their employers tried to

cut their pay by 23%. Did those employers really expect

them to lose £5k a year?

Sean Dey of Reel News was involved too – showing his

film of highly energised protests, mostly women, at the

Durham demonstrations of November 2016, and eighty

picket lines of newly empowered workers. You don’t get

that back in the bottle so easily.

Reel News is a video activists collective who know how

to use social media well, how, paradoxically, to use it

to build that old fashioned idea of getting people in a

room talking together.

Art in education was a big theme of the GFTU

event. Poet Jess Green – all staccato movement and

Kate Tempest intensity - expressed through her

performance, the imperative of education – Latin -

educare - to lead out – about the folly of excessive

testing of children and the pointless bureaucracy

imposed on young teachers. ‘Let kids be kids not a

national average statistic.’

Banner Theatre, who have been working with

trade unions since the early 1970s, did a

great performance and music piece on the

recent Chicago teachers strike, and the formation

of Coalition of Radical Educators (CORE) a group that

transformed their sluggish union into a fighting force

ART AND THE MOVEMENT

Art and The Movement

| Page 48

Article by

Jan Woolfe,

WGGB

Member and

writer and

artist.

Photos courtesy of John

Harris, ReportDigital