Support for artistic freedom of expression at senior management and board level is absolutely central to developing an ethos that is able to defend artistic freedom when challenged.
Censorship and self-censorship This report distinguishes between censorship and self-censorship. Self-censorship is the suppression of ideas by artists or institutions. It refers to work that has not yet been made. Censorship is used to describe the silencing of work that has been made.
This includes the removal of work that is on display or in performance or the vetting of finished work before it is displayed or performed. The conference discussed and debated how best to defend and push back the boundaries to free expression across the arts in the UK and how to build and reinforce support throughout the arts sector in defence of the fundamental right to freedom of expression. The conference was held mainly on the record with the goal of opening up debates within the arts sector first and then to take the debate to a wider public audience in the future.
Backlash around challenging work from audience members, board members, funders, sponsors, general public and media can be hard to handle and can leave those in the eye of the storm feeling isolated. We will persuade the media and the public that this is an arena in which we have the right to determine how we operate. The conference painted a picture of contemporary censorship in the arts, made up of a wide range of constraints and pressures on arts organisations, and the audience heard how other cultural and media players experience and manage censorship.
It also addressed practical means to tackle the pressures that can lead to censorship with the final panel looking at what practical steps are needed to address the problems raised.
We hope the conference itself and this report will prove of value across the sector. The day-long conference was attended by an audience of people from the cultural sector, law, funders, and religious groups.
Full details of the programme and the audience evaluation are in the appendix. In this report, we present the range of opinions and ideas voiced during the conference at the panels, plenaries and in the breakout sessions.
The report considers the discussion under a series of headings, drawing together themes of debate, rather than following the format of the programme itself. In the opening section the report looks at a key issue — which generally gets assumed rather than talked about sufficiently — what is artistic freedom of expression and what status does it have in contemporary culture? The report then looks at the whole gamut of constraints, controls and suppression of artistic freedom that were identified during the day before drawing together the different strategies needed to reinforce support across the sector.
The final section summarises some of the key conclusions including ways to take the debate forward. The premise for the conference was that whilst everybody in the arts would probably support artistic freedom of expression as an essential tenet of our cultural life, there has been little or no cross-sector discussion or debate about it and therefore no shared idea of what it is, or the many and complex challenges that are inherent in actively supporting it.
Discussion of artistic freedoms inevitably opens up complex debate about competing rights and responsibilities. A powerful yet vulnerable right Our freedoms are, as Nicholas Serota, director of The Tate, said in his keynote speech, hard won and the struggle to support them is necessarily on-going as the conditions in society constantly change.
It allows for artists to challenge stereotypes and taboos and, as playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti stressed, it requires considerable personal courage on the part of the artist and those who provide the infrastructure to present work.
The right to shock The right to freedom of expression is extended to opinion that is abhorrent, that shocks, disgusts and appals and causes offence. Some of the conditions in which artistic freedom thrives were described by various participants as: the willingness to embrace controversy and diversity of opinion, to maintain open debate and dialogue, to take risks and experiment.
Inequality of access to this right Several participants pointed out that access to this right is not equally distributed across society and that education, in particular of young people and audiences is very important to ensure that all people can access and exercise the right to freedom of expression.
One artist pointed out that community artists work in a different world from major venues and established artists, who have freedoms that the majority of artists do not. Kenan Malik warned against artists being given special privileges to be freer than other people as this would diminish the right of non-artists; any defence of freedom of expression should encompass any form of expression. The right to freedom of expression is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, and in various international declarations to which the UK is a signatory.
It is a fundamental not an absolute right, which is not without boundaries. In certain qualified circumstances, it can be argued that constraints should be placed on artistic expression. In the case of arts venues and institutions, judgments about where to draw the line are ultimately the responsibility of the artistic director.
Trust has to be developed with many different agencies, funders, sponsors, artists, audiences and it is important that an institution or arts organisation can demonstrate how it made its decision to present contested work, in good faith and for the public interest. The absence of direct state-sponsored, highly visible censorship, which prevails in many countries around the world, may contribute to the commonly held view that there is no censorship in this country and that it is not a problem.
The lawyer Anthony Julius, Deputy Chairman, Mishcon de Reya, differentiated between the age-old paradigm of censorship of the arts as the confrontation between the artist and the authoritarian state, and contemporary UK censorship, which sits within a liberal democracy. Human rights charters acknowledge the relatively narrow range of acceptable interventions on legal grounds — such as security and violence — but also open up a much broader set of public order and public morality issues which various actors and influencers can then use as justification when attempting to silence speech for social or moral reasons.
Institutional self-censorship, a term that was used for the first time in a public discussion at this conference, was seen as a key factor and accordingly a discussion of its causes and characteristics has a separate section devoted to it.
Legal limits There are UK laws, both criminal and civil, that outlaw hate speech and criminalise, but do not define, certain forms of grossly offensive expression. Recent guidelines produced by the Crown Prosecution Service, as Sir Hugh Orde, President of Association of Chief Police Officers told us, attempt to rein in the growing number of social media prosecutions and give some indication of where the bar is set in terms of legally acceptable expression that might cause offence at least online.
However as was pointed out several times, since there have been so few court cases concerning artistic expression, many agreed that the boundaries in the arts are controlled to a far greater extent by non-judicial considerations including public opinion and prevailing and changeable morality, taste, sensitivity.
Public Censorship CCensorship due to public influence happens when pressure on an art venue to remove work comes from members of the general public or special interest or religious groups. This can sometimes be the result of violent and disorderly protest or the threat of violence.
The media plays an important role in influencing opinion, with some within it on occasion stirring public outrage about an artwork with the aim of having work removed. David Abraham described how public censorship of this kind is often led by elements within the media who encourage members of the public to complain to the police or to come out in protest against work, often involving people decrying work that they have not seen.
The internet, social media and digital technology have made it easier for public outrage to gain momentum. This kind of moral outrage and public censorship, which can be hostile and sustained, is roused by work that is, for example, considered blasphemous, pornographic, appears exploitative of minors, or that portrays homosexuality especially in relation to religion. Some members of the public expect to influence decisions on what is acceptable, and public views on what is acceptable can have considerable impact on institutions presenting controversial work.
The police, as the arm of the law, have discretion to and can under certain circumstances intervene directly in the name of crime prevention, keeping the peace, or balancing the rights of other individuals or groups against the rights of the artist, to remove or stop artistic work.
Online governance The future of internet governance and the control of online content is a major subject for debate around the world and will impact inevitably on artistic expression. As a private company Google, which owns Youtube, has to operate within the law, but they do have quite a lot of power to set standards for their online spaces. According to Google, online censorship is on the increase around the world, as the amount of material uploaded increases year on year.
Bill said that with 72 hours of content being uploaded every minute some governments are increasingly looking to whether and how to control digital freedom of expression. At any one time, 30 of the countries where Google is used, 30 are blocking or censoring products, including YouTube, Blogger and Search. The ripple down effect of self-censorship is the elephant in the room.
See following section for more discussion on financial pressures. One speaker, in the break out session on this issue, voiced some concern that, increasingly, philanthropists are expressing the view that they would like to give money in return for some influence. Another speaker questioned how organisations can truly support freedom of expression when they are pressured to take money from major corporates with poor human rights records.
Censorship and fear of causing offence The fear of causing offence, in particular to religious sensibilities, can be a very powerful factor in controlling speech and artists who are trying to tackle uncomfortable truths relating to religious issues and find they encounter censorship. Svetlana Mintcheva, Director of Programmes, National Coalition Against Censorship, asserted that suppression of speech is often done to protect vulnerable groups, but it should nevertheless be treated as a free speech issue and challenged.
They were a crucial part of the story…We live in a fear-ridden culture. Self-censorship The group in the breakout session on self-censorship in the main accepted that a degree of self-censoring is part of everyday interaction in which we edit out expression that may be inappropriate, hurtful or offensive or out of a desire to be respectful or polite. Regulation and classification Channel 4 as a public broadcaster, is regulated by Ofcom. Channel 4 Chief Executive David Abraham believes this underpins their commitment to freedom of expression and increases public trust.
The arts cannot thrive in such a climate of fear. Art educators should be deeply concerned over efforts at any kind of suppression of works of art. Freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Constitution. Free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. Now, as always in our history, artworks—literature, theatre, painting, sculpture, music, and dance, are among our most effective instruments of freedom.
They are powerful means for making available ideas, feelings, social growth, the envisioning of new possibilities for humankind, solutions to problems, and the improvement of human life.
Professional learning from anywhere in the world! Access live and archived webinars, workshops, and more. Earn continuing education or university credit! The National Art Education Foundation NAEF invests in innovative initiatives to support instructional practice, research, and leadership in visual arts education.
While it is unclear what will happen next, it seems that at this point President Trump and his supporters have largely been silenced. Twitter's suspension of Trump, and the shuttering of Parler are just the latest issues that highlight the very deep divide plaguing our country and it is unlikely to change soon. One significant issue is that social media is still very much an evolving platform.
Twitter began really as a tool that allowed those in social circles to essentially "shout out" to one another, but it has increasingly become a broadcast platform to reach the masses.
In the case of President Trump it has been used at times as his primary way to reach his supporters. While there is no denying that the President has posted information that is far from truthful, the issue is whether that actually warrants his being silenced. The only time we saw our government make a historical intervention was charging tax on Internet purchases.
Few remember when anything you purchased on the Internet did not include state sales tax. As most experts agree, this isn't exactly a censorship issue because the government isn't trying to silence a news organization or otherwise stifle any First Amendment rights, but it could be argued that this is the first time the government has been essentially silenced by the media.
Social platform such as Facebook, whose primary business is open communication between its over 2. All conversations, all sides of that conversation. And, if the viewer disagrees or is offended by that conversation, then it is their right to simply close the window and walk away. What is remarkable added Safko is that this has been widely supported — whereas if the government on either side of the aisle to shut down such forms of communication it would be a major issue.
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