More than 300 artists, curators and cultural workers have signed an open letter to Home, an arts venue in Manchester, UK, demanding that an event dedicating to Gazan literature be reinstated following its cancellation.
The event, Voices of Resilience: A Celebration of Gazan Writing, was scheduled to open on 22 April. “Our concern for the team at Home, our audiences and artists, and their safety is paramount. In the face of recent publicity around Voices of Resilience, we have cancelled this event,” a statement on the venue website says. Home was contacted for comment.
The open letter, signed by artists such as Phil Collins and Gavin Wade, says: “To cancel an event based on the ethnicity and nationality of its participants is discrimination, which directly contradicts Home’s stated commitment to ‘anti-racism, equality and diversity’.” The signatories also demand that Home outlines what steps will be taken to “repair its commitment to anti-racism, including anti-Palestinian racism”.
According to The Guardian, the event was cancelled after the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester (JRGCM) wrote a letter to Home claiming that a participating writer, Atef Abu Saif, who is also the Palestinian Authority’s culture minister, is antisemitic.
The event’s organiser, Comma Press, which has also published works by Abu Saif, called the allegations against him “baseless and libellous” and said it was considering legal action. “Both Comma Press and the author absolutely refute the allegations of antisemitism,” says a statement from Comma Press who were contacted for comment.
The JRGCM also complained about the use of the word “genocide” in publicity for the event. According to the organisation’s website, the council has been “responsible for representing, protecting, uniting, defending and serving the Jewish community of Greater Manchester and the surrounding regions for over 100 years”. The JRGCM was contacted for comment.
Last December more than 1,000 cultural figures—including the artists Ben Rivers, Brian Eno and Tai Shani—refused to work with the Arnolfini contemporary arts centre in Bristol, UK, after the institution cancelled two events as part of the city’s Palestine Film Festival.
The events cancelled at Arnolfini included a screening of Farha (2021), a coming-of-age film by the Jordanian-Palestinian writer Darin J. Sallam, which was due to be followed by a panel discussion featuring the Palestinian writer and doctor Ghada Karmi.
UPDATE: According to the BBC, around 100 artists have removed their work from a display at Home in protest at the decision to cancel the Voices of Resilience event. The artist Mollie Balshaw said: “The decision that they’ve made is political and it’s a decision that I disagree with, as do so many other artists in the show and it felt like the right thing to do.”
UPDATE (5 April): The subheading of this article was amended to reflect that the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester represents a part of the Jewish community.
UPDATE (5 April): In a statement, Home says that “the Voices of Resilience event will take place at Home, created and curated by CommaPress”. The statement adds: “Home has always been a space for all voices, with a commitment to championing equality and diversity at the heart of our work. This commitment has never changed, and we recognise that there is work to be done now, to restore the well-earned confidence that our audiences and artists have always held in Home. We are committed to continuing these conversations with all affected by recent events.
“We stand with all innocent victims of this conflict and call for a humanitarian solution. Details of the upcoming Voices of Resilience event will be announced shortly.”
