Resilience and adaptation of the UK’s arts sector during the process of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU

ABSTRACT

Since the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, the European Union (EU) and the former EEC (incorporated in the EU in 1993) have been vital organs of solidarity and investment for the cultural system of the UK. The UK’s arts sector has also benefitted from the single-market and visa-free work and travel. However, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU means that the country, and its arts and creative sector, must adapt to a new context. By using interpretative argumentative techniques to analyse 30 interviews, and policy analysis, this article focuses on the manifold emotional, creative, and financial resilience strategies developed and trialled by the UK arts and cultural sector following the referendum result in June 2016. Those strategies suggest that some long-standing partnerships with EU countries will continue in the years to come, although not without issues.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• cultural policy
• Britain
• Brexit
• resilience

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the University of Manchester’s Collaboration Labs programme (2020), funded by the ESRC NPIF Accelerating Business Collaboration scheme, that supported the original report upon which some of research for this article is based. Further funding from Creative Manchester (2021) also provided important support to carry out this research. I am grateful for the support of Dr Rosalinda Quintieri and Hannah Murray (University of Manchester) and Tom Fleming at Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy. I would also like to thank the individuals who took the time to be interviewed for this report. Finally, many thanks to Itay Lotem and Craig Griffiths for the comments on the final versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Collaboration Labs programme (2020) at the University of Manchester, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Knowledge Exchange. Impact Acceleration Accounts Grant [grant number ES/T501979/1]. Creative Manchester Grant.

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Faucher

Charlotte Faucher is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manchester. Her first monograph Propaganda, Gender, and Cultural Power: Projections and Perceptions of France in Britain c1880-1944 is forthcoming with Oxford University Press and she has published an article on gender and French soft power in Historical Journal and a piece on cultural diplomacy during the Second World War in Journal of Contemporary History.