Oil City, Art & ethics, Azerbaijan, Aberdeen and Istanbul

17 May 2013

We’re launching a new theatre piece (although ‘theatre’ doesn’t really do it justice!) a new study guide, and we have some updates from Aberdeen, Istanbul and Azerbaijan. Look out next week for our new briefing on BP and Shell’s arctic activities.

Oil City

Tickets have gone on sale for Oil City, a new piece of site specific, immersive theatre by Platform. A spy thriller for the post-occupy era that takes the audience from the underbelly of London’s oil economy to the frontline of the fight to stop the expansion of the Alberta tar sands. We’d love it if you came – and please pass these links on to your networks.

Oil City is part of Arts Admin’s Two Degrees festival of arts and climate change. You can read the full programme and buy tickets here. Performances are 3x daily on weekdays from 10th-21st June. Explore our interactive map at www.oilcity.org.uk on location in London and Calgary. Or look into the real world of the story via the maps from anywhere in the world.

Take the Money and Run? Some positions on ethics, business sponsorship and making art

Is any money free from exerting an influence on the artist or art it enables? Is all money equally ‘good’ or ‘bad’, regardless of the source? Jane Trowell presents some key texts that are useful in helping to position yourself ethically with regard to financing or supporting artistic practice through business or corporate sponsorship.

There are lots of guides for artists on how to earn a living from art or how to raise funds to support making it, but few which help us ask what the ethical implications are of the routes we choose. Download the guide here.

Enter photo credit here
Even oil dictators need a social license to operate

What do the Louvre, Strasbourg Cathedral and Labour pressure group Progress have in common? They’ve all benefitted from the oil revenues managed by the corrupt Azeri regime in Baku. Emma Hughes was over in Azerbaijan in May to meet human rights activists in the run up to the October elections. Read her account of how British oil companies and politicians are propping up the repressive regime.

UK oil companies don’t get subsidies

Apparently. This was news to us when the chief exec of an oil industry lobby group made this statement at an energy conference we attended in Aberdeen. Read what Anna Galkina had to say about the battle of definitions of what constitutes a fossil fuel subsidy.

BP is planning an new $40 billion pipeline

Mika Minio Paluello was in Istanbul for the recent European Bank for Reconstruction and Development AGM, where BP executive Al Cook was getting pretty excited at the size of the proposed Trans Anatolian Pipeline. But why are we locking ourselves in decades more of new fossil fuel infrastructure, and why are we subsidizing it through the EBRD. Read Mika’s account of it all.

A slide from the EBRD AGM showing the route of the pipeline
How you can help

To help fund Platform’s work please donate here. If you can, a regular, monthly donation is especially useful as it helps us to plan our future work with confidence. If you’d like to chat about the work we do or discuss how you’d prefer your donation to be spent, we’d be happy to talk to talk to you. You can contact any of our team on +44 (0)20 7403 3738 or email Tanya Hawkes.

Platform has always relied on the generosity of individual people to help support our work, especially when we have to take risks and work on controversial issues. On June 18th we’ll be hosting Conversations with Platform and will be inviting friends of Platform to come and talk to us about why they support our work and get ideas on how we can reach more people who might be interested in our work. If you’d like to help with this, we’d love to hear from you. Thank you for your support and taking an interest in Platform’s work- we really appreciate it.