So what’s the problem, I hear some say. You’re not cancelling shows, you seem to be holding your nerve?

We have recently booked “Britains most Cancelled Comedian” Andrew Lawrence. This was something however where I personally had to intervene to ensure it was booked. First it was – he’s not funny. Then it was - what about a backlash? Then it became - what about the staff? It has also become: what about the audience of deplorables – what if THEY abuse the staff? It was abundantly clear that this was being presented to me as just too mush hassle, let’s just leave it. And that is what angered me, and made me think…

We could be I and suspect we were declining shows pre-emptively, and thus we were censoring ourselves and some acts without it even being known. No paper trails, no proof. And that, to me, whilst not the crime of the century, is insidious.

I decided that’s just wrong. Already a free speech advocate, to me, quietly swerving a show means we’ve already surrendered or lost the argument for free expression because it’s assumed – pre-ordained even -  that such a booking will end up causing so much grief, that it’s just better not doing it in the first place. The Art that never happens?

And it also struck me that similar conversations may have also been happening within my business without me knowing. I simply can’t be across every enquiry, every judgement call. That shows could just quietly be being swerved, quietly declined, based solely on behind closed doors whispers and, let’s be honest, political prejudices, struck me as quite beyond the pale.

Look, as a private business we are fully entitled to book what we want. But we are also gatekeepers, and as such I feel we have a responsibility to the wider arts world to ensure that we don’t just swerve and avoid controversial or alternative shows because of fear of backlash, or HR hassle.

And this is where Freedom in the Arts comes in. Let me be clear, I don’t think it was a case of my management team going out of their way to deplatform people but they too were (indeed they are) paralysed with fear. Fear of activists, fear that the public would disapprove in some way, fear for harming our reputation, and also fear we would simply be entering an HR hellhole. I can tell you as a small business, we have little time for endless HR, let alone costly PR for reputation management.

So when I saw that FITA had really thought this through, and done serious legwork in terms of intellectual underpinnings, practical advice and actual tools to assist venues, to me it was a no brainer. Most people in my sector are tiny businesses operating on shoestrings, both financially and in management bandwidth and thus to have practical guidance and institutional backing is critical.

I’m going to go a step further and say that in my opinion, seeing venues signing up to a FOE agenda (like this) is also exactly what the public want and expect. My sense is that people are fed up with the thought police, as well as the taste police either overtly (or in my case covertly censoring) so called “problematic” acts OUT of the cultural sphere. I hope and expect that venues which DO positively champion FOE will be rewarded by their customers, and that venues that opt out of FOE will suffer accordingly and deservedly at the box office, as well as reputationally, for their reluctance to embrace TRUE diversity – namely diversity of thought and opinion, whether legally protected or not. To me this is good business as well as the right thing to be doing.

In summary, I think cancel culture has made swathes of the arts (mine included) hugely risk averse, and in comedy, if you don’t take risks, it gets dull, it gets safe, it gets a bit boring. For me this is about regaining the confidence to take risks again, bringing the public with us (which I think we can do) and in the end winning a bit of trust back from consumers, some of whom I think believe comedy has just become too safe, and operating within boundaries set by the groupthink of the bubble it has become comfortable in. I want to bring back the sense that in a comedy club – almost anything goes, and funny is just that – funny.

But Behind all these decisions and pressures is the artist, and the question of what kind of culture we are asking artists to create within. So it is with great pleasure to hand over to a legend – Roisin Murphy.