What we're calling for.
FITA's recommendations across governance, legal clarity, sector coordination and collective action — based on two years of research, sector roundtables, and 483 testimonies across two confidential surveys, 45 in-depth interviews, and a senior leaders' roundtable. The case for action is addressed to leadership: boards, funders, governance bodies, policymakers.
The four areas
A single architectural ask.
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GovernanceRecommendation 01
Boards equipped with scenario planning, legal literacy and clear protocols for decision-making under pressure. Boards should be required to adopt explicit statements of artistic purpose, and a commitment to protect freedom of expression as a condition of public funding.
What this would change: reputational management ceases to substitute for governance. The institution that knows what it stands for is the institution that holds the line when pressure arrives.
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Legal clarityRecommendation 02
Accessible guidance on equality law, contractual obligations, and the legal thresholds for exclusion — available at the point of crisis, not after the damage is done.
What this would change: the current legal vacuum readily filled by fear is replaced with a clear, consistent framework. Decision-makers under pressure have something to point to that is not their own nerve.
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Sector coordinationRecommendation 03
Cross-sectoral networks of organisations committed to resisting boycott logic and sharing resources. Transforming the incentive structure from compliance to resistance.
What this would change: institutions stop folding because they feel alone. Isolation is a key driver of capitulation; coordination is the only intervention that addresses it directly.
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Collective actionRecommendation 04
Mechanisms for the silent majority to act together — and protection for individual expression. The boycott crisis is at its core a crisis of collective action failure.
What this would change: the silence breaks. Without intervention, the self-reinforcing dynamics documented across the research will intensify. With it, they reverse.
Evidence the work is being done
Live, not aspirational.
The recommendations are not a document set down for someone else to act on. FITA prosecutes them — through formal responses to government policy, and through casework defending artists removed on protected-belief grounds.
The ACE Review.
FITA's response to the Arts Council England review argues for explicit governance reform across the four areas above — and for a public-funding commitment to freedom of expression as a condition of grant. The submission draws directly on the research evidence; it is not a campaign letter. This is the recommendations addressed to the body in a position to act on them.
Read FITA's ACE Review submission ↗FITA Legal.
Eleven legal cases between August 2025 and February 2026 — artists, academics and sector workers facing exclusion or contractual sanction on protected-belief grounds. One named case: University of Leicester, where FITA Legal supported the legal challenge that has become a reference point for sector practice. The casework is the recommendations made operational at the point of harm.
FITA Legal casework ↗The open letter.
More than two thousand sector workers, artists, leaders and supporters have signed the letter calling for these reforms. The letter is the single ask any reader can act on today, and the institutional ask a chair can take to a board.