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‘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