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Shell Classic International: A musical mask and a social licence
A guest post from musician Chris Garrard. Tonight, the new season of the Shell Classic International concert series will open at the Southbank. The first piece of this first concert is Benajmin Brittenās āplea for peaceā, the Sinfonia da Requiem. The unpleasant irony is that Shell, the sponsor of these concerts, have now spent in…
3 Oct 2012 Kevin -
Tate’s (near) deafening silence on #AskACurator day
Wednesday 19th September was Ask a Curator day, with museums and galleries all over the world taking part, including Tate. The overwhelming majority of questions put to Tate curators were about it’s controversial sponsorship with relationship with BP, but Tate curators made only a single response. To be fair, it’s not the curators that are…
19 Sep 2012 Kevin -
āOut damn logo!ā A week of oil-sponsorship controversy in the theatre world
Phew! There’s been so much going on this last week in terms of various interventions and speaking out on the controversial subject of BP sponsorship that at times it’s been hard to keep up. Here’s handy timeline to help keep people in the loop. Things had already been simmering away following renowned actor Mark Rylance…
2 Jul 2012 Kevin -
Blowing the whistle on Sunderland AFC’s oil sponsorship deal
At Platform weāve been very focused on looking at how oil companies use cultural institutions to plaster over their controversial operations, but just yesterday a UK-based oil company moved into the sports sector. The Guardian reported that Premier League Sunderland AFC had secured āpioneering African sponsorshipā with Invest in Africa. The article makes Invest In…
26 Jun 2012 Kevin -
Mark Rylance, BP & the Olympics
It was heartening to hear Mark Rylance on the Today Programme this morning talking about his involvement in the Olympics opening ceremony and his discomfort about BP (and McDonalds) sponsorship. The award-winning actor, theatre director and playwright said that he’d been asked to take part, and the interviewer suggested he could have said no, to…
20 Jun 2012 Kevin -
Take the money and run? New piece by Platform on arts and corporate sponsorship in Arts Professional.
Read the piece here. We welcome any comments. Arts Professional is a leading national bi-weekly news and analysis magazine for arts managers, fundraisers, and policy-makers. AP invited Platform to write this after reading the Study Room Guide of the same name which Live Art Development Agency commissioned from Platform earlier this year.
11 Jun 2012 jane -
Tate Modern removes oil from its new galleries
What wereĀ āThe Oil TanksāĀ at Tate Modern have now been rebranded asĀ āThe TanksāĀ within recent Tate press communications it has been noted by campaign group Platform [1]. It appears that the forthcoming launch of its new space has prompted Tate to remove the word āoilā from the name of its new galleries that are now referred to…
17 May 2012 Mel -
Standing up to BP: The Way of Water on stage
We’re very pleased to host this guest blog by Caridad Svich, playwright of The Way of Water,Ā which you can witness at a reading 3pmĀ thisĀ Sunday 13th May for FREE at Rosemary Branch Theatre, London. Over the month of April, over 1000 audiences from Occupy Ashland in Oregon to the National Theatre Institute in Waterford, CT, from…
9 May 2012 Mel -
Twenty years ago today: ‘Still Waters’, Day 1
May 1stĀ 1992 marked the first day of Platform’s project ‘Still Waters’: a month of street-based actions, walks, talks and art-interventions to unbury the Fleet, Walbrook, Effra and Wandle, three sewerised and one neglected river in central London. ‘Still Waters’ reframed London as a watershed. We aimed to reclaim London’s rivers from their hidden state, create…
1 May 2012 jane
