Freedom in the Arts Parliamentary Launch
Churchill Room, Palace of Westminster
27 April 2026

Rosie Kay on The New Boycott Crisis and the future of the arts

At the parliamentary launch of The New Boycott Crisis and the Art Beyond Boycott Toolkit, Rosie Kay set out why Freedom in the Arts was founded, what the report reveals about fear and exclusion in the cultural sector, and why the arts cannot do their best work under intimidation.

Rosie Kay is a choreographer, writer and co-founder of Freedom in the Arts. One of the UK’s most distinctive dance-makers, she has spent her career creating bold, original work that combines artistic ambition with serious social and political themes. Through FITA, she now works to defend artistic freedom and support artists and cultural organisations facing pressure, exclusion and censorship.

Churchill Room, Palace of Westminster, 27 April 2026
Speaking after Nigel Huddleston MP, Rosie Kay gave the central speech of the evening, explaining why FITA was founded, how fear and boycott pressure are reshaping the arts, and why the report and toolkit were created as both a warning and a practical response. As she put it, “The arts can survive criticism. They cannot do their best work under intimidation.”

Speech in Full

Link to full speech HERE

Thank you, Nigel, for hosting us this evening, and thank you for those generous words.

And thank you all for being here — Members of Parliament, peers, artists, arts leaders, friends, supporters, journalists, donors, and everyone who cares about the future of cultural life in this country.

It really does matter to see this room full.

And before I go any further, I do want to say a quick thank you for the coverage this work has already received in the press and on broadcast today and last night. We are very grateful to those journalists who have taken these issues seriously and helped bring them into public view. That matters, because too much of what this report describes has been allowed to happen quietly, or to be brushed off as just another arts row.

We are here tonight to launch The New Boycott Crisis and the Art Beyond Boycott Toolkit.

But really, we are here because something has gone badly wrong in the arts.

I am an artist first.

I did not set out to become a campaigner on this issue, and I am not here because I enjoy public conflict. I am here because I care deeply about the arts, because I have spent my life in them, and because I could see too many artists and organisations being left alone to deal with fear, pressure and exclusion.

The arts can survive criticism. They cannot do their best work under intimidation.

That, in many ways, is why FITA exists.

Freedom in the Arts was founded because too many people were being dropped, ghosted, quietly sidelined, or made to feel that they had become somehow too difficult, too risky, too politically awkward to support.

Artists were being left to make sense of that alone. Venues were trying to navigate it alone. Organisations were hoping that if they kept their heads down, the storm would pass them by.

But storms do not pass by if no one is willing to name them.

One of the most important things FITA has done is simply to recognise the issue — to say clearly that this is happening, and that the people experiencing it are not imagining it and are not alone.

That act of recognition matters more than people sometimes realise.

Because once fear becomes normal, people begin to adapt to it. They lower their expectations. They say less. They risk less. They quietly edit themselves. Institutions start making decisions not because anything has happened, but because they are frightened of what might happen. A possible backlash becomes enough. A rumour becomes enough. A handful of emails becomes enough.

And once fear enters the room, the room changes.

That is one of the central things this report identifies.

What The New Boycott Crisis shows is that what are often treated as isolated incidents are in fact part of a broader pattern: political pressure, cancellation, professional exclusion, harassment, compelled positioning, and a growing atmosphere of anxiety in which people feel they must constantly calculate risk before they speak, programme, publish, perform or even associate.

Artists experience that in lost work, silence, damaged relationships and self-censorship.

Venues experience it in fear, confusion, and decision-making shaped by panic rather than principle.

Agents and managers experience it by becoming the people who have to advise artists to stay quiet, pull back, or disappear for a while.

And audiences experience it too, whether they know it or not, because they end up with a thinner, narrower and more frightened culture.

That should concern all of us.

Part of what we have also had to do— is name clearly the extent to which antisemitism has become embedded, denied or minimised within parts of the arts sector.

Many people have been reluctant to face this honestly. But the report is very clear: Jewish artists and Jewish cultural life have become especially vulnerable to exclusion, scrutiny and silence.

And what is so disturbing is that this can happen in very quiet ways. Not always through a dramatic public row. More often through the slow withdrawal of support, the coded language of sensitivity, the feeling that Jewish identity itself has somehow become too contentious, too political, too difficult to deal with. Opportunities dry up. Invitations disappear. People become nervous. Institutions equivocate.

That is not a fair or serious way to deal with the issue.

It is one of the reasons FITA had to exist.

We exist to support artists and organisations under pressure.

We exist to document what is happening properly.

We exist to bring people together who might otherwise remain isolated.

And we exist to offer practical help, not just commentary.

Because we are not simply describing the problem; we are trying to build ways through it.

That is why tonight is not only the launch of a report, but also of a toolkit.

The Art Beyond Boycott Toolkit is there because people need more than sympathy. They need guidance. They need clarity. They need somewhere to turn when the emails start, when the pressure builds, when internal panic sets in, when boards get frightened, when staff are divided, when legal questions arise, and when institutions suddenly find themselves without the language or confidence to hold the line.

The toolkit is intended as a practical response: calm, lawful, proportionate, usable.

Because too many people in the sector have been trying to navigate all this without any map.

And I want to say very clearly that this work has only been possible because people trusted us. Artists trusted us. Arts leaders trusted us.

People told us things they had not felt able to say elsewhere. They described experiences that were often painful, humiliating and professionally risky to talk about. That trust is an enormous responsibility, and I hope tonight honours it.

I also want to say how fortunate we are tonight in the people speaking with us. Josh Breslaw, Mark Tughan and Róisín Murphy are not abstract voices or professional campaigners. They are the real deal — artists and arts leaders who know these pressures from the inside, and who care deeply about protecting the conditions in which real cultural life can flourish.

And I want to thank, too, the people who have helped make this work possible.

Thank you to the funders, supporters and friends who believed in this.

Thank you to the artists and arts workers who came forward.

Thank you to Professor Jo Phoenix, our co-author, for her rigour, courage and clarity.

And above all, thank you to my co-director Denise Fahmy, whose intelligence, steadiness and fierce commitment have been central to everything FITA has built.

We are making a real difference. But the scale of the challenge is greater than any one report, any one toolkit, or any one event.

If we want a freer, braver and more open arts culture, this work now needs wider backing — from allies, from institutions, from policymakers, from philanthropists, and from everyone who understands that artistic freedom is not a side issue. It is one of the conditions of a healthy and confident society.

So tonight matters because it names something real.

It matters because it offers support where there has too often been silence.

And it matters because it says, very plainly: the arts should be places of freedom, curiosity and risk — not fear.

The report gives shape to what is happening across the sector, but it is equally important to hear what this looks like in lived experience.

So I am now delighted to introduce Josh Breslaw of Oi Va Voi, whose experience brings home just how real and consequential these pressures can be.