(on Tate’s reaction to Platform’s Freedom of Information request to see the minutes of the ethics committee for the meeting where the decision on renewing BP’s sponsorship was taken) Art Monthly news piece
Download as a pdf At the end of 2011, BP announced a £10 million sponsorship deal for four of London’s flagship cultural institutions over a five year period. The Culture Clash infographic shows pie charts of the four institutions – Tate, British Museum, Royal Opera House and the National Portrait gallery and breaks down their…
The Euro Caspian Mega Pipeline is a massive infrastructure system designed to suck gas out of the Caspian into Western Europe. Construction of the pipeline involves politics and finance as much as it does concrete building materials, and the conference I’m about to go to is one in a series of events attempting to make…
“I came to realise that I needed “Hey-White-Boy-don’t-keep-putting-your-hand-up-training”. Yotam Marom, who came to the attention of the US media in 2011 through his role in the early days of Occupy Wall Street, is explaining his views on how to be a ‘leader’ in a ‘leaderless organisation’. He’s a young White man from Hoboken, New Jersey.…
UK foreign policy aims to lock North African natural gas into the European and British grids and is heavily influenced by arms and fossil fuel interests. As a result, the Conservative government has courted the Algerian regime and supported arms sales between British companies and Algeria as well as encouraging an expanded role for BP.…
Last week we took part in an interesting afternoon of discussion at UCL called Rich Seams or Dark Pools? Fossil Fuel Funding and Research. The event was following in the wake of an internal controversy within UCL over Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton giving US $10 million to fund two new research bodies: the Institute…
Mika Minio-Paluello, Anna Galkina and James Marriott travelled in North America as part of a tour over September and October to promote The Oil Road – Journeys from the Caspian to the City of London. The eighth of a series of blogs on the journey comes from New York… It was Maurice Bridgeman who really…
Today the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development is voting on a $50 million loan for oil drilling in Egypt. This is the first major loan by the bank in Egypt since the military takeover in July 2013. The EBRD seems eager to ignore the principles in its founding agreement promoting “initiatives in countries committed…
Since I joined Platform in July, I have seen the high-spirited Farzana passionately preparing for the “Shake! – Young Voices in Arts, Media, Race & Power course”, organising its different activities and coordinating with other facilitators (Ed, Zena and Sai) in order to make it even better than the previous sessions. The third course was…
Last week I joined Science Unstained for a trip to the Science Museum. Science Unstained worries about the corporate sponsorship of science communication – everything from BAE’s sponsorship of the unfortunately titled Big Bang Fair – an event for young scientists and engineers – to Atos designed degree courses. When they’ve had enough of worrying…