Eliza Carthy's News of the Whirl (April 2024)

Now if you were anything like me you may have spent at least some of lockdown shouting into a void, also known as trying to engage with Tories on Twitter about the value of the Arts to the UK. It wasn’t just lockdown, of course. Old Oliver Dowden MP got it in the ear from me about UK artists being able to tour the EU post-Brexit, as did many others in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Then the pandemic happened, and, when asked if he was telling artists to change profession, Rishi Sunak replied, “That is a fresh and new opportunity for people,” adding that it’s “what we should be doing.” According to one government advert, ‘Fatima [a ballerina]’s next job could be in cyber,’ and many keyboard warriors told us arts workers to ‘get real jobs.’ Trying to justify the cultural, historical and ethnomusicological aspects of being a UK touring folk musician often feels like a hiding to nothing. When will those in power see what we bring to good old ‘Cool Britannia’?

We’ve had recent support, in addition to recent petitions for EU visa-free travel to reduce the damage done to UK touring acts. In August 2023, the Independent Society of Musicians published their report on the music sector after Brexit, which showed that almost half of the respondents had ‘less work in the EU after January 2021 than they did before Brexit,’ that over a quarter had none and some had left the industry altogether. There have been similar reports in The Guardian about the struggles UK musicians face (‘Why Many Musicians Can No Longer Afford to Tour’ by Michael Hann), Jeremy Corbyn writing an open letter in Kerrang! magazine (‘The Government Must Act Now to Support Grassroots Music Venues’), and Melvyn Bragg speaking in the Lords, where he lamented that art “is still considered the cherry on the cake.”

So, 21 years after the creation of the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage, the UK government is looking to do its own research into whether we in the UK, Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies have any intangible cultural heritage, whether it’s worth ratifying and whether our ICH needs ‘safeguarding.’

Upon reading the government’s blurb for this consultation I had questions. Ultimately, I should be very excited. Their list of goals is a little vague but reads like a wet dream of mine from 1998: everything I wanted the people in charge to understand about traditional music and culture from these islands and beyond and with no distinction between the Celtic nations, world music and the English.

Three DCMS-mounted roundtable discussions took place these past weeks of particular note, these focused on England, Oral Traditions and Expressions (including Folklore), and Performing Arts. They invited grassroots practitioners (though the way they went about it was somewhat problematic: our Goathland Plough Stots sword team only got word a week or so in advance) to declare their interest and what they thought made them eligible for inclusion in the database.

The buzzwords in the UK’s UNESCO guidance say that this is culture that should: be ‘owned by people themselves,’ ‘community-based,’ ‘bottom-up,’ ‘inclusive,’ ‘respectful’; ‘help with intercultural dialogue’; have ‘evolved in response to [its] environments’ and ‘contribute to giving us a sense of identity and continuity, providing a link from our past, through the present and into our future.’

All this made me happy to start, but my cynicism and jadedness kicked in as I read on. Slogans from the UK government like ‘commitment to the purpose of the Convention’ make you feel fantastic until you read the sentence at the end that states ‘ratifying the Convention does not signal a commitment for any immediate action from the UK government, the devolved administrations, local government or associated public bodies,’ and that they won’t list what they find with UNESCO.

Peter Craik is the Marketing and Communications Director at the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), and I asked him to help me sort through it all. Is it a lot of prelude to a dissatisfactory non-answer? If there is no commitment, what is the process for? Will this have any impact on traditional events, professionals, cultural ambassadors, academics, anyone? What do we gain beyond a database? Will there be funding for amateur groups, promoters or clubs?

Peter says we simply don’t know yet. He thinks it’s unlikely that this is a political attempt to be a salve for Brexit, to win votes from people like us for a government on its last legs. I was hoping to be talked out of my knee-jerk negativity, but Peter had the same response. He did point out a couple of things we can take from this that may point to a positive future, however.

Firstly, the whole call for people to contribute is yet to come, the consultations were not the end of it. Peter’s comments paraphrased here: “They seem to be open about their lack of expertise in this area. And until everything is in, we won’t know the goal beyond having a database, which will in itself be useful, especially if it’s a grassroots thing… The goals of safeguarding do not have boundaries; those countries that have ratified have often recognised the lack of physical borders in traditional cultural practice, so the best results have often come from countries that have collaborated with their neighbours.” (Here I spit to myself about the B-word and the hostile environment.)

So, this is not a fait accompli: potentially it is the tip of a very interesting iceberg. They want to hear from us.

Eliza Carthy is playing solo shows across the UK in April and May, including a show at Cecil Sharp House, London on April 25 (tickets here)

This article appears in the April 2024 issue of Songlines (#196) magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today

Want to DISCOVER the WORLD through MUSIC? Subscribe to Songlines' FREE newsletter here