Cultural world waits in fear to feel Brexit impact

THIS time last week I was on the pier on Eigg, waiting to return to the mainland after an all-too brief stay at the island’s excellent Sweeney’s Bothy. The pier was built with the help of EU money (£8 million). Luckily the pier looks pretty robust, because that source of funding for our outlying islands, and all they contain, looks set to be shut off.

The new Prime Minister said “Brexit means Brexit” but for the arts and cultural world, it seems the future outside the EU is clear as mud. It seems, right now, all that can be guaranteed from the new dispensation is dislocation and further hurdles to creative endeavour.

This week I was at the press view for a fine new exhibition of self-portraits, Facing The World, at the National Portrait Gallery, which is a collaboration with two European galleries, Lyon and Karlruhe. It opens today. I know gallery directors across the land are assessing the potential impact of leaving the common European community on such loans, collaborations, and the loss of European funding for co-ventures.

I think it is probably a fair guess most artists, writers, and those involved in the arts in Scotland voted to Remain.

Certainly in my own interaction with companies, institutions, employees and artists in the last two weeks, the mood has been a general one of angst, dismay and despair. Particularly worried are those who are EU nationals working in the cultural world in Scotland. Their personal futures feel uncertain.

Howard Sherman, writing in The Stage, points to the sudden fluctuations in the currency markets thaty has both benefits and negatives for theatrical productions arriving in or leaving the UK. He says Brexit will make it harder for productions and performers to be seen in the US because of the currency issue. He adds that Brexiters, a word that, to me, sounds a too jaunty for the profundity of what they sought and achieved, “may well have isolated the UK artistically as well, not just with the EU, but with the world at large”.

The Brexit vote has come not long before the Edinburgh festivals, when Europe and the world descends on our capital and cultures and artists meet and mix. Implications, consequences, fears and maybe a couple of hopes will be discussed in forums both public and private all over the city in August. The Edinburgh book festival, which has increasingly become Scotland’s primary public symposium of thought and writing, will be a particularly interesting place to be.

But like many who voted to Remain, the cultural world is waiting and watching as the consequences of the vote unfold. Those in the arts world who hope Scottish independence will keep the nation in the EU also know that is not a quick or even easy road to a resolution.

As in the body politic itself, the consequences for the cultural world could take years to manifest clearly. What is clear is that an enabling and open environment of free movement looks set to be disrupted. And a central European helping hand of funding is to be, at the very least, dislocated, if not completely amputated.

‘‘ Gallery directors are assessing the potential impact of leaving on loans and the loss of European funding for co-ventures