#defundculture — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #defundculture, aggregated by home.social.
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Some images from the You Are Here event at the #SouthbankCentre on Sunday:
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/you-are-here/
Co-created, directed and designed by Danny Boyle, Carson McColl, Gareth Pugh and Paulette Randall, with Sabrina Mahfouz and Natasha Chivers, it was billed as a 'journey through 75 years of British music, dance, theatre, fashion and film'.
This review pretty much captures it: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/may/03/you-are-here-review-danny-boyles-postwar-pop-culture-tribute-lets-it-all-hang-out
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Like this line from The Revolution Will Not be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex, edited by INCITE!
‘Do you think the system is really going to fund you to dismantle it?’.
Should be adopted as a motto.
#DefundCulture #culture
#resistance #funding #nonprofit #notforprofit -
The recording of my discussion about Defund Culture on Breaking Culture Live is now up on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QbYJ2JwSn4
Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal is available open access on a CC4r basis in a variety of formats: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
'Drawing on contemporary debates around platform capitalism, cultural #elitism, #openaccess publishing and the crisis of the #humanities, Defund Culture makes the case for a bold rethinking of how cultural production is organised and resourced. Rather than defending existing institutions in their current form — or merely calling for incremental reform — it proposes a strategy of defunding as redistribution: redirecting resources, authority, and legitimacy toward more community-led, experimental, and socially responsive forms of cultural practice.'
#DefundCulture
#culture #class #UKPolitics
#copyright #theory #culturalstudies
#culturewar
#WorkingClass -
The recording of my discussion about Defund Culture on Breaking Culture Live is now up on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QbYJ2JwSn4
Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal is available open access on a CC4r basis in a variety of formats: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
'Drawing on contemporary debates around platform capitalism, cultural #elitism, #openaccess publishing and the crisis of the #humanities, Defund Culture makes the case for a bold rethinking of how cultural production is organised and resourced. Rather than defending existing institutions in their current form — or merely calling for incremental reform — it proposes a strategy of defunding as redistribution: redirecting resources, authority, and legitimacy toward more community-led, experimental, and socially responsive forms of cultural practice.'
#DefundCulture
#culture #class #UKPolitics
#copyright #theory #culturalstudies
#culturewar
#WorkingClass -
The recording of my discussion about Defund Culture on Breaking Culture Live is now up on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QbYJ2JwSn4
Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal is available open access on a CC4r basis in a variety of formats: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
'Drawing on contemporary debates around platform capitalism, cultural #elitism, #openaccess publishing and the crisis of the #humanities, Defund Culture makes the case for a bold rethinking of how cultural production is organised and resourced. Rather than defending existing institutions in their current form — or merely calling for incremental reform — it proposes a strategy of defunding as redistribution: redirecting resources, authority, and legitimacy toward more community-led, experimental, and socially responsive forms of cultural practice.'
#DefundCulture
#culture #class #UKPolitics
#copyright #theory #culturalstudies
#culturewar
#WorkingClass -
The recording of my discussion about Defund Culture on Breaking Culture Live is now up on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QbYJ2JwSn4
Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal is available open access on a CC4r basis in a variety of formats: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
'Drawing on contemporary debates around platform capitalism, cultural #elitism, #openaccess publishing and the crisis of the #humanities, Defund Culture makes the case for a bold rethinking of how cultural production is organised and resourced. Rather than defending existing institutions in their current form — or merely calling for incremental reform — it proposes a strategy of defunding as redistribution: redirecting resources, authority, and legitimacy toward more community-led, experimental, and socially responsive forms of cultural practice.'
#DefundCulture
#culture #class #UKPolitics
#copyright #theory #culturalstudies
#culturewar
#WorkingClass -
The recording of my discussion about Defund Culture on Breaking Culture Live is now up on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QbYJ2JwSn4
Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal is available open access on a CC4r basis in a variety of formats: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
'Drawing on contemporary debates around platform capitalism, cultural #elitism, #openaccess publishing and the crisis of the #humanities, Defund Culture makes the case for a bold rethinking of how cultural production is organised and resourced. Rather than defending existing institutions in their current form — or merely calling for incremental reform — it proposes a strategy of defunding as redistribution: redirecting resources, authority, and legitimacy toward more community-led, experimental, and socially responsive forms of cultural practice.'
#DefundCulture
#culture #class #UKPolitics
#copyright #theory #culturalstudies
#culturewar
#WorkingClass -
I’ll be taking part in the next episode of Breaking Culture Live this afternoon, broadcasting on their YouTube channel at noon NYC time (5 pm UK): https://www.youtube.com/@BreakingCultureLive/streams
We’ll be discussing my new book, Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal – available #openaccess on a CC4r basis in a variety of formats (https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal) - addressing what serves as its sub-subtitle: “Why the #arts are so white, male, and middle-class, and what we can do about it.”
‘Breaking Culture Live is a Cultural Studies Association affiliated program hosted by Past President Sean Johnson Andrews. Every Wednesday we spend our lunch hour breaking down the breaking news with cultural studies scholars and activists, discussing their work ... ‘
Subscribe to the Breaking Culture Live YouTube channel and tune in at 11:00 am Chicago, noon NYC time, 5 pm UK: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakingCultureLive/streams
#DefundCulture #culture #class #copyright #decolonisation #UKPolitics #theory #culturalstudies #culturewar #WorkingClass
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Great to hear from Eva Weinmayr and Femke Snelting that the Collective Commitment to Reuse (cc2r) now has its own dedicated site, thoughtfully designed and developed by Sarah Magnan and Ludi Loiseau.
Take a look: https://cc2r.net/
There’s also a downloadable PDF you can print as a 12-page booklet.
#copyright #IP #culture #FreeSoftware #SettlerViolence #feminism #decolonisation
#DefundCulture -
That was fast. My discussion on Monday about #DefundCulture with Seth Wheeler for the Minor Compositions #podcast, hosted by Stevphen Shukaitis, is already online.
Minor Compositions Podcast - Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Defund Culture by Any Means Necessary'
https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1885
YouTube: https://youtu.be/mk-j2uh9cdk
'In this episode we are joined by Gary Hall and Seth Wheeler for a conversation on cultural #funding, radical #publishing, and the changing conditions of collective #knowledge production.The discussion begins with Hall’s recent book Defund Culture, which challenges conventional calls to increase #arts funding by asking a more fundamental question: what – and who – is cultural funding actually for? Hall proposes the current #crisis in arts funding might be an opportunity to rethink the entire landscape, redistributing resources away from entrenched, upper-middle-class infrastructures toward more collective, plural and relational forms of cultural production....'
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Great conversation last night about Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal with the independent #artist and researcher Seth Wheeler for the Minor Compositions #podcast, hosted by Stevphen Shukaitis.
At a time of #political upheaval, institutional #crisis and growing disillusionment with #liberal #democracy, Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal argues that the problem is not simply that #culture is underfunded - but that it is funded in the wrong way, by the wrong structures, for the wrong ends.
So we explored the #politics of cultural funding and what a more radical (less white, male and #middle-class) approach to creating culture might look like.
Should go live soon. In the meantime, the book is here:Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
And you can listen to the Minor Compositions podcast series here: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?page_id=1102
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'Being a #celebrity, it can be easy to forget that the constant interviews and accolades are not an indication that you are genuinely important or even worth listening to; more that the industry platforming you is benefiting in some way from your public presence.' - George The Poet
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Looking forward to launching a more politically and environmentally responsible set of badges.
They’re designed as a creative and critical response to the extractive, exploitative and dehumanizing logics that lie behind the idea of putting a logo on #books to certify they were written by #humans - such as the new scheme launched by the UK’s Society of Authors.
Rather than reinforcing a simplistic human vs nonhuman divide, the project asks what kinds of #labour, resources and #infrastructure are being obscured by these kinds of labels.
#DefundCulture #SettlerViolence #environment #ai #societyofauthors
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‘Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” #book to protest against #AI firms using their work without permission.’
Yet #copyright itself has long been criticised as part of broader systems of enclosure and #SettlerViolence. So the assertion of copyright is not a victimless crime, any more than is the training of AI #chatbots and image generators on vast #datasets (often scraped without permission from the open web, digital repositories and shadow or #pirate libraries containing copyrighted books).
So what exactly is being defended here? Do the authors protesting against the training of AI really not know the long history of critique of copyright? Or do they know perfectly and are just too selfish and are profiting too much from it themselves to want to challenge it or think of something different?
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'#Labour is spooked… somewhere in its collective soul it knows we have reached the belated end of the political 20th century… “Politics needs to change in some huge way, doesn’t it?’ I.”' — via The Guardian
This is why I argue we need to make the case for defunding now - because the ‘undermining of certain #liberal institutions (rather than the familiar left-liberal move of protecting or gently reforming them)’ may be what’s needed if we’re serious about reconstructing a better world after #brexit, #COVID19, the second coming of Donald #trump, and the wars in #ukraine, #Gaza #israel and #Iran.'
More here: https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
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‘The real takeaway from this #film for me, is about who gets to make art, whose voice matters, and what they choose to disregard, in this #creative climate. For all its attempts to be shocking, Fennell’s film has stripped away all that is #radical about #WutheringHeights, and even aesthetically her attempt to out-weird a #Bronte falls flat, feeling to me like a two-hour-16-minute-long perfume advertisement for watered-down eau de Tim Burton.’
This review of the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ film really captures why we need to #defundculture - not to destroy it, but to radically redistribute resources and opportunities. It’s not just about what gets made, but about who gets to make it, and how cultural power quietly filters out anyone or anything genuinely different and disruptive.
Defunding #culture in this sense, isn’t only about budgets; it’s about how institutions systematically defund risk, anger and unruly voices.
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‘The real takeaway from this #film for me, is about who gets to make art, whose voice matters, and what they choose to disregard, in this #creative climate. For all its attempts to be shocking, Fennell’s film has stripped away all that is #radical about #WutheringHeights, and even aesthetically her attempt to out-weird a #Bronte falls flat, feeling to me like a two-hour-16-minute-long perfume advertisement for watered-down eau de Tim Burton.’
This review of the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ film really captures why we need to #defundculture - not to destroy it, but to radically redistribute resources and opportunities. It’s not just about what gets made, but about who gets to make it, and how cultural power quietly filters out anyone or anything genuinely different and disruptive.
Defunding #culture in this sense, isn’t only about budgets; it’s about how institutions systematically defund risk, anger and unruly voices.
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‘The real takeaway from this #film for me, is about who gets to make art, whose voice matters, and what they choose to disregard, in this #creative climate. For all its attempts to be shocking, Fennell’s film has stripped away all that is #radical about #WutheringHeights, and even aesthetically her attempt to out-weird a #Bronte falls flat, feeling to me like a two-hour-16-minute-long perfume advertisement for watered-down eau de Tim Burton.’
This review of the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ film really captures why we need to #defundculture - not to destroy it, but to radically redistribute resources and opportunities. It’s not just about what gets made, but about who gets to make it, and how cultural power quietly filters out anyone or anything genuinely different and disruptive.
Defunding #culture in this sense, isn’t only about budgets; it’s about how institutions systematically defund risk, anger and unruly voices.
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‘The real takeaway from this #film for me, is about who gets to make art, whose voice matters, and what they choose to disregard, in this #creative climate. For all its attempts to be shocking, Fennell’s film has stripped away all that is #radical about #WutheringHeights, and even aesthetically her attempt to out-weird a #Bronte falls flat, feeling to me like a two-hour-16-minute-long perfume advertisement for watered-down eau de Tim Burton.’
This review of the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ film really captures why we need to #defundculture - not to destroy it, but to radically redistribute resources and opportunities. It’s not just about what gets made, but about who gets to make it, and how cultural power quietly filters out anyone or anything genuinely different and disruptive.
Defunding #culture in this sense, isn’t only about budgets; it’s about how institutions systematically defund risk, anger and unruly voices.
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Voted ‘Britain's ugliest building’ when it opened in 1967, the #brutalist Southbank Centre has finally been granted listed status:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d5je92j2ro
It would be good to think a certain book cover — which proudly features said slab of uncompromising #modernism — may have played a small role in its #architectural rehabilitation.
https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
You’re welcome, Southbank.
#BrutalistArchitecture #SouthbankCentre
#london #DefundCulture #culture -
If you’d like to sign the petition calling on the UK government to amend the Equality Act 2010 to make social class a protected characteristic, you can do so here:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/752554
#class #SocialClass #EqualityAct #ClassMatters #UKPolitics #classwar #ClassCeiling #DefundCulture #WorkingClass
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The print copes of Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal arrived today:
https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
The #book is published by mediastudies.press, and is available #openaccess under the CC4r (Collective Conditions for Re-Use commitment), so you don’t need to pay to download and read a copy.
It's also feels particularly timely in light of recent discussions around #class and #representation including the Class Ceiling report that came out the other week:
https://www.riseassociates.co.uk/downloads/ClassCeiling-Digital.pdf
And the #BBC review by Anne Morrison and Chris Banatvala, which highlight how it remains London-centric and skewed towards #middleclass
https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/thematic-review-of-portrayal-and-representation.pdf
#culturewar #classwar #ClassCeiling #DefundCulture
#ArtsAndCulture #WorkingClass
#media #london #universities
#he #academic #academia -
The Class Ceiling report warns that, as entrenched inequality and exclusion continue to shape the UK’s cultural output, what it calls a growing ‘class crisis’ poses a unique threat to Greater Manchester:
https://www.riseassociates.co.uk/downloads/ClassCeiling-Digital.pdf
‘Bit by bit, the rungs that helped a galaxy of working class talent climb to the top in years gone by, have been kicked out of the ladder. Bursaries, grants, affordable space, grassroots venues and a commissioning mindset that championed working class talent are all under threat.'
Grim.
#ClassCeiling #DefundCulture #ArtsAndCulture #Class #classwar #GreaterManchester #WorkingClass
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The BBC is still seen as London-centric and skewed towards middle class, according to a new report
Who’d have thought it? Oh, wait…!
https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
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My argument in Defund Culture is that structural inequality cannot be remedied by means of social mobility initiatives that endeavour to include more diverse groups in a system that has historically excluded them and that was constructed in advance, although not by them. If we do attempt that, then our predominantly upper- and middle-class culture will continue to prosper. There’ll just be more working-class people involved in creating and disseminating it, regardless of whether they identify as upper- or middle-class or not.
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‘We wish to platform working-class individuals and groups in this conference, so ask if you are submitting something that you identify as working-class.’
Might have liked to contribute to this event. But, with regard to the above statement, I’m not sure if identifying as working-class is not almost as much part of the problem as part of the solution:
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Annual statistics on young people's participation in higher education released by the Department for Education show that the proportion of disadvantaged teenagers going on to study at university by the age of 19 declined for the first time in the academic year 2022-2023.
It’s true that 'selective' universities have raised their intake of A-level students to 38.2%. But this increase has been outpaced by an even faster rise in the proportion of private school students, who were almost twice as likely as state school students to secure places at these institutions.
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1/2 As recently as 2017, research revealed that half of Britain's poets and novelists came from private schools, with 44% having attended Oxbridge. Addressing issues of EDI and social mobility, however, isn't just about rethinking how places at private schools and Oxbridge are allocated.
For instance, Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman in their new book Born To Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite, suggest reducing the proportion of privately educated UK undergraduates at Oxbridge from the current 30% to a more representative 10%. But this approach risks continuing to uphold the prestige of these institutions. As A Stubborn Fury: How Writing Works in Elitist Britain argued, such measures might also merely lead to Britain’s elitist, anti-intellectual culture persisting – just with more women, northerners and people of colour now being able to participate in it.
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/a-stubborn-
#education #class #classwar #culture #defundculture #writing #publishing
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Others are now echoing the call to defund the arts and culture. Not feeling quite so lonely now:
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Just published the fifth part of 'Defund Culture' on my Open Humanities Notebook/blog. It's titled 'Invest in the De-liberalisation of Society'.
http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/?SSScrollPosition=0
Versions of the first three parts of 'Defund Culture' appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of the journal Radical Philosophy.
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/defund-culture
The rest I'm making available for the first time on my blog.
#defundculture #defund #culture #liberalism #liberal #pluriversal #decolonisation #theory