As the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill makes its way through the House of Lords, Amah-Rose Abrams considers the potential implications for the art world.
If the UK has enjoyed a period of relative calm over the past decade, the protests over Brexit in 2018, Extinction Rebellion in 2019, Black Lives Matter in 2020 and Kill the Bill in 2021 have changed all that. The art world has become a space for conversation and debate, with a rising number of artists tackling socio-political issues and protest in their work. Several have gone on to successfully fight for their causes as activists.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSC) currently making its way through the House of Lords has been promoted by the government as aiming to restrict rights to protest. This wide-ranging bill seeks to criminalise noisy, disruptive protest and applies to both group and one-person demonstrations. It also seeks to criminalise the incitement of protests, and to remove the defence of unknowingly breaking this law, passing responsibility of interpreting this to the police on the ground.
“The PCSC targets the very qualities that make many protests effective—the ability to make a noise, disrupt the status quo, and annoy those in power,” says Charlie Holt, the UK campaigns adviser at human rights organisation English PEN... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper.
If the UK has enjoyed a period of relative calm over the past decade, the protests over Brexit in 2018, Extinction Rebellion in 2019, Black Lives Matter in 2020 and Kill the Bill in 2021 have changed all that. The art world has become a space for conversation and debate, with a rising number of artists tackling socio-political issues and protest in their work. Several have gone on to successfully fight for their causes as activists.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSC) currently making its way through the House of Lords has been promoted by the government as aiming to restrict rights to protest. This wide-ranging bill seeks to criminalise noisy, disruptive protest and applies to both group and one-person demonstrations. It also seeks to criminalise the incitement of protests, and to remove the defence of unknowingly breaking this law, passing responsibility of interpreting this to the police on the ground.
“The PCSC targets the very qualities that make many protests effective—the ability to make a noise, disrupt the status quo, and annoy those in power,” says Charlie Holt, the UK campaigns adviser at human rights organisation English PEN... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper.