As both the Edinburgh festivals and Tanz im August wind down this week and colleagues across the globe gather for the International Tanzmesse in Düsseldorf, Claire Cunningham Projects echo the deep concerns of many artists and artworkers responding to recent announcements about the closure of the Open Fund for Individuals in Scotland and the proposed federal and Berlin based funding cuts to the independent performing arts scene in Germany.
We are thinking of everyone who is now navigating the immediate, and long term, impact these changes will have upon livelihoods, upon artistic practice; on dance, choreography, arts and culture. As ever, we are particularly concerned about what these shifts mean for disabled artists, disabled arts professionals and disabled audiences and for our peers also fighting for social justice of the global majority and diaspora, from LGBTQ+ communities and from older and younger generations, especially amidst the larger, interconnected, world and systems crises at this time.
As a self-identifying disabled artist it is plain fact that I would not have been able to develop my practice and create the work I have done without continued support from Creative Scotland’s Open Fund for Individuals. This strand of funding has been central to my growth as an artist and disability activist throughout my twenty plus years career. It is also true that whilst I am known as an independent choreographer, dancer and singer- a solo artist – nothing I do or have achieved professionally ever happens entirely alone.
Every piece of work, production and period of research I have undertaken has come about in collaboration with a team of deeply committed individuals who have been able to work with me as creative companions because of this fund. This recognition of interdependency – the importance of our existing and working with and alongside one another – together in creative relationship with many people has been core to my practice and to my flourishing as a disabled person in an ableist world.
This vital resource for artists has crucially contributed to me continuing to connect out into an international performing arts landscape, leading to my current tenure as Professor of Dance, Choreography and Disability Arts at the HZT in Berlin.
Likewise the level of crucial support, encouragement and highly considered, critical engagement and exchange I have experienced working with the independent scene in Germany and through the network of international producing houses – with key long-term partners including tanzhaus nrw (Dusseldorf), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), HELLERAU Europäisches Zentrum der Künste (Dresden), Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt a.M.), PACT Zollverein Essen, alongside Sophiensæle, Tanz Fabrik, Ufer Studios, Making A Difference, No Limits and the HZT – has been truly vital to Claire Cunningham Projects ongoing artistic enquiry, impact and accomplishment.
Without these funds, these organisations, the people who have carefully steered and facilitated them over the past decades and my many artistic colleagues, I and so many of my peers would not be making the work we are today. It is so, so important that this kind of investment in arts and artists, in access and audiences, from all kinds of lived experiences continue to be properly recognised and resourced, now and for the future.
We are with our many colleagues in calling for a stop to these cuts not only to avoid the loss it risks to the richness of every artform and the precarity into which it throws artists and arts workers, but to ensure that decades of progress is not wasted, resulting in new generations having to start from scratch, and fight yet again simply for their right to exist.
Please do sign, support and lobby in whatever ways feel possible with/in your own bodymind in the next weeks, months and days to come.
In solidarity.
Claire and all at Claire Cunningham Projects.
Scotland
Germany
EDN Petition: Against Cuts in Independent Performing Arts
Petition: An urgent message to Germany’s Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media