Activists are right to target Edinburgh Festival sponsorship

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

There's a lot there I disagree with, but there's one point on which I find myself in accord with Ms McDermid. 'There is no such thing as a clean sponsor,' she says. 'If you dig deep, everybody who sponsors an arts event has got something in the cupboard that you would be uncomfortable with.'
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Which surely cuts to the very heart of the matter and, I believe, undercuts Ms McDermid's argument. Because if there are no clean sponsors in the world of arts funding then surely you have a prima facie case proving that none of them – not 'unfairly pilloried' Baillie Gifford, not BP, not the Sackler family nor any of those other deep-pocketed corporate backers of the arts – was ever in it for reasons of genuine altruism but instead for reasons of cynicism and opportunism. To hedge against reputational damage. To indulge in what these days we call art-washing.
Or, in the words of Chris Garrard, director of the campaign group Culture Unstained, to 'attempt to access high-level decision makers, to secure the public backing of leading cultural figures and to craft a positive public image.'
Of course nobody wants to be in a position where all arts are state-funded (dream on, anyway: given the state of the nation's finances it's an entirely theoretical position). But just because there are no clean current sponsors of the arts does not mean there is no potential for them, no clean companies or wealthy individuals willing to front up cash in return for something as relatively benign as publicity or recognition. You just have to find them. Arts sponsorship is transactional, but nobody is asking you to sell your soul at the crossroads. All they do ask is for due diligence to be applied at the outset and, as societal attitudes shift and geo-politics intrude, for a little common sense to be brought to bear.
As an author, Ms McDermid engages with and explores moral complexity because that's what good authors do. Things aren't black and white, she is saying, so underpinning her comments is an associated belief in nuance. Back in August 2023, the bone of contention centred mainly on Baillie Gifford's involvement in the fossil fuel industry and the wider impact on the ongoing climate emergency. People applied nuance to that and often concluded things weren't as simple as they looked to the protestors.
A Palestinian woman mourns as she embraces the body of her daughter who was killed in an Israeli army strike on Gaza. at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in June. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi) (Image: Jehad Alshrafi) But since then the issue of Gaza and Palestine, and of Israeli's response to the Hamas attacks of October 2023, has joined the climate emergency at the battlefront and become an area of great concern for many who work in the cultural sector. And just as nature abhors a vacuum, so do many in 2025 now naturally abjure nuance as a result.
Why? Because nuance cannot be found in images of emaciated Palestinian children being starved of food. Because it's likewise hard to catch as you view satellite images of the post-apocalyptic wasteland Israeli bombers and American-made bombs have left behind in Gaza. Because today the climate emergency increasingly must be seen in terms of black and white. How else can activists and protestors critique the woolly 'adaptation' and 'resilience' mantras peddled by do-little (or do-nothing) governments?
How else can they attack the actions of the rent-seeking corporates who still seek mid-term advantage in fossil fuels or, yes, the private equity firms which take short-term advantage from the same and return sizeable profits to their clients?
Nuance be damned, I say, and I congratulate those artists, musicians, writers and other performers who say: enough is enough. Who say: sorry, not coming this year. Who blow the whistle and yell: everybody out.
Ironically, this is also the week in which even the University of Edinburgh – let's have that again for emphasis: even the University of Edinburgh – has announced that among other acts of reparation it will investigate divesting from companies which may contribute to human rights violations in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
The UN has found the university to be one of the UK's most 'financially entangled institutions' in that regard, with over £25 million invested in four companies central to Israel's 'surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.' The 200 or so pro-Palestine protestors who disrupted 24 graduation ceremonies this summer will be applauding. Less so those who criticised and derided those same students for their actions.
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Moving on, the Baillie Gifford case appears settled. But as the digital archaeologists, hacktivists and activists sift through social media posts, company accounts and financial documents, there are many sets of cross-hairs alighting on many more targets and the effects could be felt among the UK's arts organisations and arts bodies. Watch out for mention of Sequoia Capital in the months ahead. They recently invested $100 million in UK-based art-house movie streaming platform and film distributor MUBI, but they also have investments in Israeli defence-tech start-up Kela which is developing AI-enhanced battlefield systems. Last week, Chile's Valdivia Film Festival announced it was refusing to show films managed by MUBI as a consequence. Will there be more such actions? It doesn't seem unlikely.
And while you may never have heard of US-based private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) or even of Superstruct Entertainment, the company it bought in 2020, you will have heard of some of the 80 music festivals Superstruct Entertainment owns. Among them are UK festivals Field Day and The Mighty Hoopla, live streaming platform Boiler Room, and Barcelona's massive and massively prestigious electronic music festival, Sónar. Not so big this year, though: 70 acts pulled out of the June event in protest at KKR's Israeli military contracts and its links to manufacturers of weapons and surveillance technology.
I look at all this and I don't see virtual signalling or hypocrisy or bandwagon jumping. I see artists doing what they should be doing and what our politicians are not: displaying moral courage, often in the face of criticism and (just as often) their own financial self-interest. Will it affect anything? Maybe not. But change starts with uncomfortable questions being asked, and for that you need 360 degree scrutiny. If action follows, so be it.
Barry Didcock is a Herald arts writer