The Home Office imposes restrictions on international artists and academics visiting the UK for talks, temporary exhibitions, concerts or artists’ residencies. Visitors have to submit to a series of arduous and expensive proceedures to get their visa, and then more bureaucratic controls when they are in the UK. Many concerts and residencies have been cancelled.
The Manifesto Club works in alliance with artists, musicians, academics and students to oppose these suspicious restrictions – and to affirm the vital contribution made by global artists and scholars to UK cultural and intellectual life.
LATEST: This campaign won major concessions and a change in UK visa rules. See our briefing on the changes.
(A guest post by Manick Govinda, leader of the Manifesto Club Visiting Artists Campaign). It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with…
Jemima Yong, a talented young photographer and performance maker, was recently detained in London Heathrow Airport, denied entry and sent back to Singapore, 18 hours after arriving in the UK. Jemima is a Malaysian citizen and a permanent resident of Singapore. She studied and lived in the UK for five years. Jemima had not done anything illegal on arrival but the Home Office believed that she might break immigration laws whilst she was here. She reveals to the Manifesto Club the deeply flawed system employed by the UK Home Office to justify a decision made on individual discretion. Her crime? Jemima only…
A guest post by artist and Visiting Artist Campaign supporter Kristina Cranfield, about her project Manufactured Britishness. ‘Manufactured Britishness’ is a project derived from the compulsory and very real ‘Life in the UK’ test created to assess individuals’ eligibility for UK citizenship. The project critically explores the government’s program and displays a future manifestation of the test. In this dystopian future, we see immigrants as an exploitable material – a living currency, compelled to sustain national identity in order to maximise profitable agendas. The themes underlying this project were driven by my own experience as a UK immigrant, where, in the final…
In spite of the Manifesto Club’s victory in winning reforms to the visa system for visiting artists, it seems that the news hasn’t reached border officials on the ground. Under the permitted paid engagement route artists visiting the UK for a concert or talk are exempt from the heavy-handed ‘points-based visa system’. Yet the star organist Cameron Carpenter – booked to play in Birmingham – was detained for seven hours in an ‘Orwellian’ ordeal, before being deported back to Berlin. Once he found out about the new visa route he was able to return to the UK – with only a short…
We’ve written before about the problem of final-year architecture students under threat of deportation. The House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee has issued a call for evidence, on the effect of immigration rules on international students. The deadline is 20 February. Do contact them with any case studies. We are looking for other architecture students in the same position as Roxanne Walters – under threat of deportation in their final year. If this is you, do get in touch. Tweet
Manifesto Club, English PEN & Artsadmin invite you to join us to celebrate recent gains for our campaign against visa restrictions on visiting artists. Speeches; drinks (pay bar); conversation; next steps… Venue: Arts Bar & Café, Artsadmin, Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street,…
Visual and physical theatre artist Anna Masing invited her friend, a dancer from Malaysia, to collaborate and participate in a performance which would contribute to Masing’s PhD study. The dancer Maryline Semba Mani was detained, treated with suspicion of being an “exotic dancer” and deported back to Malaysia. She was not being paid a fee for this engagement, as the relationship was based on a close friendship with Masing. She was not informed by the UK consulate about the new Permitted Paid Engagement visitor route. In fact, the consulate couldn’t see a problem about her coming to the UK as a tourist…
Statement by Manick Govinda, on a cancelled tour by a US pianist The Manifesto Club was informed of a cancelled recital by the US pianist Christopher Atzinger who was billed to perform in Woking on Saturday 14 April. The recital is promoted by the Breinton Recital Society a non-profit, member society passionate about hosting top class musicians to perform in an intimate, informal and enjoyable surrounding. Atzinger was forced to cancel his UK tour due to “a tightening of UK immigration rules.” Lionel Smith-Gordon, Secretary & Treasurer of the Breinton Recital Society informed us that that “Christopher Atzinger had come to the…
The Manifesto Club’s Visiting Artists Campaign page has successfully gained an important change to red-tape immigration rules. The Home Office announced today that temporary visitors would no longer have to go through the burdensome ‘points-based immigration system’, and would have the option…
Post by Manick Govinda, head of the Manifesto Club visiting artists campaign… The myopic immigration cap is still having a damaging effect on the UK’s cultural life, not to mention the economy, people’s personal and social lives. The UK Border Agency’s piecemeal offer to save the UK from cultural and intellectual isolation was to introduce 1,000 visas to award non-European Union nationals with exceptional talent in the arts, sciences and humanities who wish to stay in the UK for 3-5 years. http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/working/tier1/exceptional-talent/ Professional bodies would assess and endorse applications to this route and in the case of the arts, Arts Council England…
The film-maker Meghan Horvath has written a beautiful and moving testament about the uncertainties of her visa situation – an excellent combination of personal narrative and the de-humanising facts of bureaucratic points-based scoring… You could say exploring the world beyond my own is in my genes. My grandfather, with his mother and his accordion, caught the last open wave of immigration from Eastern Europe to America in the 1920s. His name is engraved on a wall on Ellis Island, New York City, which was once the bustling welcoming centre for all those who braved the journey across the ocean. And so I…
Visiting Artists’ Campaign, latest news… An audience member at an artist’s talk that took place on Tuesday 6 December, expressed her huge disappointment about the absence of Malian artist Abdoulaye Konate. The artist was invited to give a talk about his new commission for Rivington Place, but faced visa problems. Lara Pawson contacted the Manifesto Club hotline with the following statement: “Huge disappointment last night when long-awaited Q&A with superb Malian artist, Abdoulaye Konate, could not take place due to his immigration problems in Paris. Shame and irritation are what I feel. Theresa May is a fool. We can only benefit from…