A hostile environment for migrants

Post-pandemic, post-Brexit, Tory UK is a tough place to be a migrant. Its hostile environment policy, whose explicit purpose it is to make life as difficult as possible, has a huge impact on migrants’ lives. 

There’s also the new Nationalities and Borders Bill – including controversial plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing – and a hardening political climate in which refugees and asylum seekers are routinely vilified by politicians. These all contribute to creating a society which is daily more hostile towards outsiders.

The theatre industry in the UK is no exception. A recent Migrants in Theatre survey showed 88% of respondents thought being a migrant negatively affected their work opportunities in theatre. We know theatre isn’t reflective of society. 

Research by Arts Council England (ACE) from 2015 revealed only 5% of employees in certain London theatres were people of colour, in a city where more than 40% come from global majority backgrounds. 

And another piece of research, also from ACE, showed one of the biggest hurdles to global majority participants was “concern about feeling uncomfortable or out of place”. It’s clear then that many migrant artists face social and institutional barriers preventing them from crafting a successful career in the arts. 

‘Migrant’ or ‘international’?

If I say ‘international theatre maker’, what sort of person do you think of? Perhaps someone who travels a lot for work, creating shows for major European festivals; sophisticated, elegant, well-reviewed work. You might think of a director, French, maybe German, a white man, celebrated.

‘Migrant’ doesn’t quite have the sexy ring to it as ‘international’

You’re unlikely to think of a refugee recently arrived from Sudan with no formal training – someone who is a storyteller, performer and musician. You’re unlikely to think of a painter from Bangladesh who works in a care home to make ends meet and paints in her free time. 

You’re unlikely to think of a Brazilian human rights activist who has worked making theatre in the favelas and who is now a part-time supply teacher while trying to develop his theatre career in the UK; nor a Stanislavsky expert from Moldova currently working on building sites in East London to support his family.

There is a wealth of international artists living in the UK who have arrived in all sorts of different ways. They’re tarnished by the current political jargon: ‘migrant’ doesn’t quite have the sexy ring to it as ‘international’. But if we re-defined ‘international artist’ we might fundamentally revitalise our creative industries, making them more diverse and equitable while doing so.

Monetising creativity

There are many ways to be an artist. The usual distinction between professional and non-professional is that the former makes a living through their art while the latter does it as a hobby. But there are any number of reasons someone might not be able to monetise their creativity sufficiently to making a living. 

Perhaps there is no formal training for artists in their country of origin, or the training is not accessible. Perhaps there is a social stigma attached to being an artist, or political reasons why practising an art form, much less making a living from it, is not possible. 

Perhaps artists are excluded because of religion, economic status, gender, sexuality, even geographic location. Perhaps the experiences and skills acquired in their birth country are not recognised in the new home country. None of this has anything to do with talent and everything to do with opportunity, structural disadvantage and mere chance.

What if we expanded our idea of what an international artist is? What if we opened our (stage) doors to the enormous wealth of talent that has arrived in this country, and is still arriving every day, in small boats or on planes?

No thought experiment

At PROJEKT EUROPA, this is no thought experiment. As a migrant-led organisation, we are committed to celebrating the lived experience of migrants in the UK and to championing international perspectives from within the industry. 

From our community engagement activity to our migrant artist mentorship scheme, to collaborations with leading UK theatres and art institutions, we work to create opportunities for first generation migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to thrive, excel creatively, and diversify and internationalise both the theatre sector and our society overall.

The artists we work with are all international, having come to the UK at some point in their lives. They include some celebrated talent – such as actor and writer Arinzé Kene, artistic director Roxana Silbert, and stage designer Anna Fleischle – and exciting, emerging new voices in our mentorship programme cohort, PROJEKT EMPOWER.

Anti-migrant rhetoric

PROJEKT EUROPA was founded as a rebuke to the colonialist anti-immigration rhetoric that dominates mainstream media and in response to a sense of growing cultural isolation in the UK. The idea of the ‘other’ as a threat that must be eliminated is not new, but the impact it is having on our society is profound. 

In the excellent book The Next Great Migration, author Sonia Shah traces the current anti-migrant rhetoric to misinformation spread through the 18th century, arguing that migration – within any species – was never a threat, but an integral, necessary aspect of survival and evolution. 

As artists and makers – and as humans – we need new perspectives, difference and change. We thrive on encountering new ideas, new systems of thought, and contradiction. Without that, our practice as a collective industry will shrivel into insignificance and irrelevance. 

Internationalising theatre through a non-colonial, social justice lens enables us to see beyond old ideas about who gets to call themselves an artist. And that’s not just to ensure the healthy development of a thriving creative ecosystem – it’s essential to our evolution as human beings. 

Maria Aberg is Artistic Director of PROJEKT EUROPA.
www.projekteuropa.org
@ProjektEuropa