Mike Phipps notes the demise of the barely visible ‘Festival of Brexit’

A festival to celebrate British creativity in the aftermath of Brexit has tanked… due to its associations with Brexit.

The head of the £120m Unboxed festival says the scheme had been undermined by being nicknamed the “Festival of Brexit”, a title originally coined by arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg. Other Conservative MPs also complained that the official title wasn’t actually “The Festival of Brexit”. “A great opportunity missed,” said Craig Mackinlay, MP, a former UKIP activist.

Martin Green was chosen to lead the festival because of his role as director of ceremonies at the London 2012 Olympics. He has struggled throughout his tenure to separate the festival from the original idea of celebrating Brexit. Former Hue and Cry singer Pat Kane signed on as a creative adviser, having previously said the idea sounded like “a fête worse than death”.

Ministers had hoped that the festival, which runs from March to October of this year, would attract 66 million people. But with just two more months to go, four of the events have so far only drawn 238,000 visitors, according to official figures. Those who have attended events have been largely unimpressed. Social media accounts for the festival have just a few thousand followers.

Earlier this year, a scathing report from the cross-party Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee concluded that the festival was a waste of public money and set for failure – even before it opened. The project was heavily slated by MPs who said ministers did “not know what it was”.

It apparently took ministers three years to come up with the event’s name. The Committee cited a senior civil servant admitting that the event only got a name last October because the government could not make up their mind about what it was.

Julian Knight, the Conservative Chair of the Select Committee, said the festival’s “muddled approach” was a “sure-fire recipe for failure.” The eight-month long celebration of creativity following the UK’s exit from the EU was dubbed “an irresponsible use of public money”, especially given the government’s own admission that it did not know what it was for.

The idea for the celebration was first announced by Theresa May when she was prime minister. It was set to be marked with a number of science, art, technology and engineering exhibitions across the country.

May launched it at the 2018 Conservative Party Conference, where it was met with polite applause. Outside, the idea was less well received and led to threats of a boycott.

The festival was described in Frieze magazine by Tom Morton as being “The Spectacular Emptiness of Boris Johnson’s ‘Festival of Brexit’… To expect the progressive, internationalist art world to participate in a celebration of Brexit is to fire a volley into the culture war.”

The art group Migrants In Culture wrote an open letter to the festival calling it a “Nationalist Exercise” and “Culture Washing”. It explicitly rejected the use of culture as nationalistic branding. The letter was signed by several hundred UK artists.

Gaby Hinsliff suggested in The Guardian in 2020 that “as a nation we’re going to be rubbishing the festival right up until the day it opens, and will then surprise ourselves by grudgingly quite enjoying it.” In fact, the British public has largely ignored it – but will still be footing the bill for this misconceived fiasco.

Mike Phipps’ new book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

Image: UNBOXED 2022, licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication