For our second of two satellite events as part of Battle of Ideas 2024*, we’ve invited Freedom of the Arts co-founder Denise Fahmy to discuss how FITA’s 5-year project is going a year in and the possible impacts of the change of government.

Cancellation in the arts is now a familiar occurrence, from artists themselves being kicked out for their views, artworks being taken down or censorious boycotts from external activists. In October 2023, former Arts Council England employee Denise Fahmy and dancer and choreographer Rosie Kay founded the organisation Freedom in the Arts after their own experiences of arts-sector cancellation for their ‘gender critical’ beliefs.

The aims of Freedom in the Arts are to champion artistic freedom and support those who’ve faced censure, harassment and worse, for expressing beliefs that go against what could be termed the ‘critical social justice’ orthodoxy that seems to dominate the arts sector. FITA describes itself as ‘a five-year emergency project to tackle the culture of fear and intimidation facing artists’.

So why was an organisation like FITA necessary now? And has a change in government – from the Conservative Party’s weak and often contradictory stance on freedom of speech and expression to a Labour Party whose attitude to not just freedom of expression but freedom in general seems to range from discomfort to disdain – made a difference? How can we argue for artistic freedom in a world in which many artists themselves have given up on the idea?

Speaker: Denise Fahmy is co-founder of Freedom in the Arts, promoting freedom of speech and expression in the UK cultural sector. Denise has worked in the cultural sector for 30 years and specialises in visual arts. She worked for Arts Council England for 15 years, managing a portfolio of diverse arts organisations, from galleries to commissioning agencies.

*Battle of Ideas 2024 is two days of high-level, thought-provoking festival of debate organised by the Academy of Ideas, and held on Saturday 19th & Sunday 20th October at Church House, Westminster, London.