Mick Hartley

In December 2021 choreographer Rosie Kay was forced out of her dance company for stating that you can't change sex. She's since co-founded Freedom in the Arts,

She's interviewed at Spiked by Brendan O'Neill:

The art world definitely has a groupthink mentality. It feels very much like a bubble, regurgitating the same ideas with the same people. That makes artists terrified of being ostracised by the group for having the wrong opinions.

In the long-term, the arts will become a very destructive place. It’s going to continue alienating independent thinkers and driving away new ideas. That will only alienate audiences, too….

Gender, in particular, is one of those hot-button topics. But, more broadly, the arts are full of ideological landmines. Everyone is expected to have the same fashionable beliefs, such as transwomen are women, transmen are men, capitalism is bad, ‘Free Palestine’, and so on. Affirmative action is the norm. You’re not supposed to be in favour of meritocracy or hierarchies. You have to be anti-excellence, anti-skill and anti-expertise. Everything has got to be ‘accessible’. It’s got to have ‘community engagement’ at its core.

The big issue that’s also coming through in the arts right now is climate change. The Arts Council is already involved a little bit in that one – calling it ‘environmental responsibility’ – and has been for a few years. Artists are being told that we can’t fly anywhere anymore, which really harms international cooperation and touring. And now green ideology is being forced into the work itself. We’re told we need to start putting messages about climate change into our work – and those messages are being written into the missions of arts organisations themselves.

I recently came across one arts organisation that’s entirely rewriting its mission. Why? Because there’s a new round of funding and everyone has been told that, in order to succeed, climate change has to be their No1 priority. But how are we going to tour internationally? By rowboat?

These organisations need to be aware of the contradictions in their mission. But there just seems to be too much blindness and hypocrisy. I’m worried about how this is going to impact both art and artists. When you push creative people to put a particular message in their work, you end up with propaganda. And propaganda, by definition, isn’t art.