Tag Archives: bp

Oil, art & human rights links

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Shell sponsorship: there's something unsettling about the Shell branded baby blankets in this hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Nevertheless, corporate sponsorship and community projects cannot absolve oil companies like Shell for creating a health crisis and human rights tragedy in the Niger Delta.

EU oil companies including Shell and Total will be banned from importing and purchasing Iranian oil by new sanctions, reported Reuters. As Iran threatens to retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery of global oil shipments, the UK foreign minister William Hague downplayed the likelihood of war.

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Climate scientists support Request Initiative’s appeal for GWPF to reveal funders

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Below is a blog cross-posted from Request Initiative, who support charities and non-profit organisations to use freedom of information laws. This Friday, the group will ask the Information Rights Tribunal to expose the seed funder to a climate sceptic think-tank (GWPF) with suspected links to BP, Shell and other energy companies. For the original blog post, see here. Words by Brendan Montague.

Climate scientists will call on a British judge to disclose the identity of the seed funder to Lord Lawson’s climate sceptic think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Guardian reports today.

Professor James Hansen, adjunct professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute and one of the first scientists to warn of catastrophic climate change, is supporting a Freedom of Information request, saying the public interest will be served by ending the secrecy around the financing of Lord Lawson’s London based charity. Continue reading →

How John Browne, BP and the Old Boys Network keep the arts well-oiled

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I’m in the Members’ Room at Tate Modern, it’s 10.30am on a spectacularly sunny winter’s day.  The room overlooks the Square Mile – London’s financial district – and the view symbolises the growing pressures on artists and arts organisations to seek funding from the private sector, specifically from business.

Looking once again at the panel which honours a long list of Tate’s private supporters, I ponder the different ways of reading it:  you could feel pride in the civic engagement of all those individuals and companies;  or be struck by the generosity of the givers; or be amazed at the successful brand that Tate has made itself into; or feel moved to become a contributor yourself.

Or you could be mournful for the shift to the private sector of a public institution; feel angry at the dramatic shift in ideology from welfare state to the marketisation of the public arena that has underpinned all this. You could reflect that over the 30 years since Thatcher’s first assaults, our state arts policy has been increasingly pursuing a survival-of-the-fittest model favoured by the USA’s Republicans. Witness Arts Council England’s latest ￡100 million strategic fund to promote assist arts organisations in accessing private philanthropy. Continue reading →

The Corporate Occupation of the Arts – Sat 14th of Jan

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The Corporate Occupation of the Arts. -OccupyLSX / The Bank of Ideas
Earl St. EC2A 2AL – Sat 14th Jan 2012.  2- 6pm

We’re taking part in this afternoon of presentations and discussions at the Bank of Ideas, an abandoned office block purchased several years ago by the bank UBS and squatted by Occupy LSX. More info about it all below
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UK government backs risky offshore drilling

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Despite serious environmental concerns, the heightened risk of major accidents and inadequate regulatory oversight, the UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change has awarded 46 new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, including in the ecologically sensitive West of Shetlands area. Speaking to BBC News, Adam Ma’anit of Platform condemned the move:

“There is insufficient data with regards to the complexity of the marine environment in these areas…It is highly irresponsible for [the Department of Energy and Climate Change] to sign off on any concomitant oil and gas expansion in the region.” Continue reading →

Tate has lost integrity over BP

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'Thankyou BP', Ben Jones, 2011

It’s like family members bringing big news to the winter break dinner table and not knowing who’s in on the secret already. Yesterday morning BP announced it was ‘pledging’ (like a self-sacrificial marathon sponsor) £10m over five years to four of London’s biggest cultural institutions. Platform and Liberate Tate handed over 8000 signatures direct to Tate director Nicholas Serota at the Tate Members’ AGM just eleven days ago, at which point Serota said the decision was indeed “coming soon.” But to slip it under the radar during the Xmas lull after some serious concerns were raised about BP by an artist on the Tate Board shows a lack of integrity in considering the issue fully, and begs the question, who else at the table knows about this already, and what are the debates that have gone on behind closed doors?
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BP Portrait Award exhibitor speaks about BP

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Raoul Martinez is a portrait artist who has twice been shortlisted as part of the prestigious BP Portrait Award. We hooked him up with a journalist for an upcoming article about the ongoing controversies around arts sponsorship, such as the news in the Guardian about Tate’s review of BP sponsorship, and Alice Oswald withdrawing from the TS Eliot poetry prize. This is the full text of what Raoul had to say about his participation in an event sponsored by BP.

Howard Zinn - A People's Historian (1922-2010) by Raoul Martinez

As you’ve been shortlisted twice in the BP National Portrait Award, do you agree with BP’s sponsorship of the award?

No, I’m not in favour of BP sponsorship of the arts. When it comes to sponsorship, everyone believes a line must be drawn somewhere. Most, for instance, would not think it acceptable to receive sponsorship from arms manufacturers or foreign dictators. So the issue is not whether we draw a line, but where we draw it. In the case of BP, I believe there is a strong case for placing them on the wrong side of that line.

Oil companies in general, including BP, have a history of using PR tactics to discredit climate science while lobbying governments not to reduce CO2 emissions. With other leading oil companies BP was part of the Washington based Global Climate Coalition which staunchly opposed reducing greenhouse gas emissions late into the 1990s. To give an idea of the resources this group commanded, it spent $13 million on one anti-Kyoto campaign.

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Tate Director Nicholas Serota says decision on BP-Tate sponsorship to be made soon

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Photo: Charles Glover

Pressure mounts on Trustees to reject extension of relationship with BP as more than  8,000 Tate Members and visitors sign open letter calling on the art museum to break links with oil company

5 December 2011 – For Immediate Release

The decision about whether or not to renew an increasingly controversial sponsorship contract with oil giant BP is due to be made “soon” according to comments made by Tate Director Nicholas Serota at the Tate Members AGM Friday (2 December).

The comments were made in response to an open letter delivered to Nicholas Serota at the Members AGM signed by over 8,000 Tate Members and visitors, demanding that Tate disengage from BP as a sponsor due to the devastating impacts BP has around the world. The Open Letter has been organised by a coalition of organisations including Liberate Tate, Platform and Art Not Oil [1].

In the text of the letter, signatories underline that they have “enormous respect for the cultural contribution that Tate makes to the world”, but are also “greatly concerned by the damage being caused by BP to ecosystems, communities and the climate”. [2]

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Read online now – Not If But When: Culture Beyond Oil

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Now available to read online – click on the Issuu link above, or you can download the publication as a pdf here.

For hard copies by post visit this page for a range of payment options or you can purchase it from the Live Art Development Agency online shop here.

December 2011: Art collective Liberate Tate, arts and research organisation Platform and activist group Art Not Oil release a new publication, ‘Not if but when: Culture Beyond Oil’, on oil sponsorship of the arts.

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