Paradoxes and politics

Munira Mirza has been described as both “a breath of fresh air” and as an “ideologically driven, monoculturalist zealot”. She works for London’s Tory Mayor Boris Johnson, but has been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. She’s a British Asian Muslim working as Mayoral Advisor on Arts and Culture, but criticises diversity arts policy for damaging true cultural equality. It’s fair to say, that she presents something of a contradiction.

STRATEGY AND SOUNDBITES
“It’s no secret that I have a left-wing background and political views”, starts Mirza, before asking, “Is this going to be an interview based on my views on multiculturalism?” Mirza is, understandably, guarded and terrifically on-message about what she is here to promote – London’s cultural strategy. But she has written and commented extensively on race and the arts, often stating that ‘diversity’ is divisive and no group or sector should be afforded “special treatment” when it comes to making and accessing art. It’s only fair then that we discuss how her views shape the capital’s cultural policy.
“I don’t think race [in the arts] is necessarily the most severe prejudice. It’s not a level playing field insofar as society isn’t. BME schemes [often] effectively exclude large numbers of people who are also disadvantaged.” Mirza vehemently believes that “diversity initiatives can make black artists feel ghettoised and, as some cultural commentators have argued, bear ‘the burden of representation’”. There is of course some truth to this: it’s the expected flipside to the “tick box measures” that Mirza so loathes. But it seems considerably perverse that while she acknowledges that the cultural sector “has seen a phenomenal change in the past 20 years, particularly in London”, she discredits the policies that brought it to bear. By her own measure, “the arts is more diverse than it used to be”, but to claim this is largely due to sociodemographic change and an apparent decline in racism seems a prohibitively narrow view.

NARROW MINDED?
When we meet, before she speaks publicly on the city’s artistic plans for 2012, Mirza is focused and uninterested in discussing much beyond her fixed remit: “London’s strategy is called ‘2012 and Beyond’, because obviously 2012 is a major moment for us and a lot of what we do is building up towards that. There are five priority areas, the first of which is to maintain London’s position as a world capital culture.” What does that translate to in tangible terms? “Well, London already has a very good reputation, a very diverse rich landscape but it’s important to advocate for the importance of culture. There’s advocacy that the Mayor can do to business audiences and local government – which he does – but we also publish research, and we have networks that we constantly talk with.” On what the Mayor’s office does to improve London’s cultural offer, she is a little clearer: “The London Development Agency [LDA] funds major cultural activities but in the Olympic park, for instance, We recently commissioned Orbit [the Anish Kapoor tower], and we fund a number of projects like the Black Archives of Brixton … things that we think will enhance the cultural sector in London, we will fund directly.”
Born in Oldham to a factory-worker father and stay-at-home mother, Mirza’s own appointment to the £82k role at city hall in 2008 was met with more than its fair share of (often jealous?) sniping and derision; she was the third senior member of Boris Johnson’s team to be headhunted from Policy Exchange (those accusations of cronyism again, AP220), and enthusiastically toes the Johnson line on rejecting cultural relativism and upholding the value of “traditional” cultural experiences; ballet, classical music and theatre say, being of a greater cultural value than emerging digital cultures and contemporary visual arts.
“[City Hall’s] general approach is that we want to encourage all different kinds of cultures, work and artforms. One of the very great things about London is that it is so diverse and very welcoming to artists and we would like to keep it that way. In terms of strategy, we want to address lots of inequalities in the cultural sector,” she says. Like? “Unpaid internships, which are a big barrier to everyone regardless of their race… we’re working, for example, with a museums hub in London on developing guidelines and pilot projects on how we might encourage bursaries for internships with more accessible routes into the arts.”
So how much money does the GLA have to make that work? “It’s difficult to come up with one figure… because it comes from lots of different pots. We tend not to think in terms of a single budget for culture, because you think about all the different things LDA funds, a large number will be for generic projects that will have a cultural element – which is the way we actually feel it should be. Culture is a business for lots of people and so business support that helps organisations isn’t always accessed from a single culture budget.” Right.
There’s a distinct coolness of manner to Mirza, heightened perhaps by us picking apart such a contentious topic so early on in our conversation. Yet, for all our lack of rapport, there’s little doubt that she is a smooth operator – she is largely articulate, ambitious and elegant; it wouldn’t be surprising to see her embark on a career in parliamentary politics. As we conclude, I ask her to name her cultural highlights of the year so far (she attends four to five events a week). As she ponders, I go for an easier line – is anything she’s hated recently? She folds her arms and rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, I’m bound to tell you that aren’t I?”