From inside the experience.
Freedom in the Arts began in 2023, when two of us — Rosie Kay, a choreographer and founder of her own dance company, and Denise Fahmy, a senior arts leader and former Arts Council England relationship manager — found ourselves on the receiving end of the experience this project now documents. Rosie had stepped down from her own dance company in 2021 after voicing a gender-critical view; her colleagues either cancelled her, or slowly stepped away from supporting her work. Denise had taken Arts Council England to tribunal after a sustained campaign of harassment over the same belief — and won.
We started Freedom in the Arts because, after both experiences, it became clear there was no body channelling the concerns of arts leaders, no organisation prosecuting the case in front of the institutions in a position to act, and no infrastructure for the artists, venues and intermediaries who were quietly experiencing the same thing — the cancellations no one names, the invitations that stop arriving, the work that is never made and never seen. We are treating it as an emergency, because that is what it is. We hope that in five years' time Freedom in the Arts won't be needed.
"When my colleagues in the dance world either cancelled me, or slowly stepped away from supporting my work, the experience was brutal."
— Rosie Kay, Art Without Fear