Heralded by this weekend’s Glastonbury, the summer of arts festivals is upon us. Manchester international festival opens next week. In August, the Edinburgh festivals – the international festival, the fringe and the international book festival – will bring together artists in theatre, dance, music and literature. Over the following months, the Yorkshire Sculpture International is presenting exhibitions. These are all very different festivals, but the clue to what they have in common is in their names: they all are international in flavour.
In Yorkshire, the director of the Hepworth Wakefield, Simon Wallis, argued for the importance of the arts’ natural desire to look out beyond national boundaries for inspiration, especially just at the moment, when British culture can seem in danger of folding in on itself. He is right: when the narratives can be narrow and backwards-looking, new stories – more complicated stories, expressed in new ways – are urgently needed.
Different outlooks bring new perspectives. They can also be excellent teachers of humility – at least for those who are minded to learn it. The author Mary Norris wrote of how “you have to humble yourself, admit your ignorance, be willing to look stupid” when you acquire a new language. The same is true when encountering and engaging with different cultures. In confronting narratives from beyond our immediate surroundings, we learn to revise our assumptions, put ourselves in the position of other people, and learn empathy. As Iris Murdoch wrote: “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”
To put flesh on such ideas means facing up to an often unseen harsh reality: it can be excruciatingly difficult for artists from certain countries, especially those in Africa and the Middle East, to obtain the necessary visas to visit Britain, even when responding to invitations from respected arts organisations. This is partly a result of a hostile immigration culture, and partly the result of a needlessly complex and expensive system that is time-consuming, demoralising and humiliating for those applying. Some artists are downright refused visas, often on mere technicalities; others end up giving up on the process out of sheer frustration at the endless bureaucratic tangles. Such difficulties are not confined to artists: this week the Guardian reported that a senior Unesco official has decided not to stage conferences in Britain owing to the difficulty of obtaining visas for visiting academics.
An open letter last year, signed by directors of arts festivals from Hay to Womad, offered a series of simple, practical proposals to ease the process, including direct contacts for applicants within the immigration or visa application centres, and a reduced cost. The government must listen to these entirely sensible suggestions and act on them. At this moment in time, the reputational damage caused by this harsh regimen is something Britain can ill afford – nor can it afford to narrow its cultural horizons.
