Funding.

Or why it's not okay to make a song and dance while they're burying someone up the road

I’ve never been a fan, actually, of grants. Let it be known that I’ve only ever once made a funding application, and that was under duress, at the request of a brilliant actor at The Freedom Theatre who probably thought I was able to do this task, but alas, it was rejected despite my perfect English. I have no f’n idea how to apply for grants, and I’m allergic to the entire concept, to be honest.

I am an artist who has never applied for funding. I wasn’t aware initially about the soft power of national cultural institutions, and used to naively think it was free money for artists for some ‘culture’ reason. I still didn’t apply. The bureaucracy put me off. Smell of orderliness and governments was not good to this anarchic nose. What they offered I didn’t want. I actually couldn’t, the forms don’t work with my neurons.

Now, in Palestine, it all makes a lot more sense. Soft power. I see it, and I don’t want it.

There’s a lot of foreign money sloshing around for the arts if you engage with the arts funding octopus. British Council, EU, Goethe Institute, Institut Francais, Arab Fund, bloody loads of them. No doubt, China and Japan are coming soon.

You could just take the cash, but the conditions are substantial, and more than this, I am increasingly aware of the subtle velvet handcuffs that are slipped onto the artists. Maybe it’s simply the selection criteria that chooses de-fanged artists over ones with keener political expression, or maybe it’s a self-censorship motivated by ambition, as artists make tiny creative choices to steer away from shit that’s going to derail them, in terms of the next grant in a place where there’s no other revenue source to exist as an artist. Barista jobs here are a serious, full-time pursuit, and teaching arts to kids is severely limited since Oct 7th and the tightening of everyone’s belts, financially.

That’s why I got to see a brilliant musician on stage, surrounded by his peers, but first preceded by a speech by the main leader dude from the EU who said something iffy about “European friends, like-minded friends from Europe” and trying to work more and more together. “Belgium don’t understand why culture - why do we do it? It’s like breathing. It’s our soul and identity.”

He wants to steer the soul, to pick which of Palestine’s bits of identity to expand and nurture. British Council was incredibly proud of the special relationships with Goethe and EU, according to their leader lady. Grateful to the municipality also, i.e. the PA.

That same PA who we’ve talked about before. “Not just to be enjoyed in Palestine, but abroad,” she said, as a reminder that this work is intended to open international arts partnerships. British doing a British thing, this is fair enough. It’s British taxpayers’ cash, and she is stating it clearly, if one only has ears to listen - it’s FOR THEM.

That’s why nobody even blinked for a second to go ahead with the show, despite the massive public mourning procession from the nearly Al-Amari Refugee Camp earlier that day, with an 18 year old man raised on the shoulders of his friends, draped in his flag and keffiyeh, a martyr killed here in Ramallah. This is the kind of day that would ALWAYS have postponed a music concert, even a couple of years ago, but somehow the absence of cultural events since Oct 7, and the fake ceasefire we’re in now, this is why the well-heeled end of Ramallah was like - it wasn’t even a decision. The show must go on, and we will see nice young folks with nice hair doing a little bit of dabke that reminds me of Malibu kids doing hiphop, whatever the color of their skin.

I’m not going to apply for this cash. This is my statement of why I cannot do it. This is why my organization has to do things differently, no longer out of respect for clients who won’t touch the conditional cash, but because we, ourselves, know it’s tainted, a trap for artists to fuck themselves. To present a WOMAD version of themselves, and their anticolonial struggle. You cannot seriously show up, in my opinion, as a valuable and valid artist making art for these times in this place if you’re taking colonial funds.

Now it looks and sounds very radical, seeing everyone taking the cash and trying to a thing with that cash that helps the struggle. But, as someone who has lived a little, I’m really adamant and certain about the pitfalls. Like I said, it’s actually not wrong for a taxpayer to want something in return for their money. It makes sense. You’re taking EU money? You’re delivering an EU-suitable creative product. The EU public are the ultimate target audience. It’s all fair enough.

I’m just not interested in funding shit for the Western gaze. I am happy for audiences outside these walls to engage with the creative work from Palestinian artists, and I’m doing everything I can to be a conduit for this, but - without bending Palestinian arts. The primary audience MUST be Palestinians inside the West Bank - arts for them to explore, crunch, build and heal their own cultural needs, primarily.

And in the process, I really do believe the stuff they make is more interesting and also commercially-viable, for the West, as a happy accident.