Corporate sponsorship of the arts: a fad doomed to fade?
Often people go for the least political artists, but we need to allow people to tell their stories authentically, awkwardly, and with complexities. There needs to be more variety in the narratives; you need to give people chances.
The panel discussed how many businesses are culprits of showboating “palatable provocativeness” – a kind of commercially permissible pushing of the boundaries. Businesses can then point to this as engagement with social activism as a free pass, without having necessarily made any internal changes or taken any kind of meaningful risk.
- Princess Arinola Adegbite, poet, writer, and filmmaker
In Princess’s words, “often people go for the least political artists, but we need to allow people to tell their stories authentically, awkwardly, and with complexities. There needs to be more variety in the narratives; you need to give people chances.” Managing risk is after all a corporate commonplace, but for artists it’s an emotionally demanding and unrelenting part of the day job: “there are so many parts to being an artist that people don’t see,” explained Princess. “So much unpaid labour, so much “good exposure” we’re expected to be grateful for. But let’s be real, what safety nets are there for artists to continue their practice?”
Not My Business?
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