We are Arts Workers for Palestine, Scotland. We are a group dedicated to supporting the Palestinian people’s call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel. We are calling for arts and cultural spaces across Scotland to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people, and make a distinct, uncompromised, and principled stance against the ongoing apartheid regime as enforced by the state of Israel in Palestine.
We are intervening in a culture wherein it is acceptable for arts organisations to aestheticise a radical politic of decolonization and use it to gloss over their tacit contributions to systematised violence and imperialism. People are drawn to art because of its liberatory power, and arts and cultural institutions which have varying degrees of complicity with apartheid are cynically failing their audiences, workers and artists.
All across Palestine Israel’s brutal settler-colonialism continues to murder, dispossess and humiliate Palestinians. Arts workers and organisations in Scotland need to raise their voices in solidarity with this suffering and in support of the Palestinian resistance. We want to highlight the difficulties Palestinian artists and cultural workers face and the consequence this has on production and expression of their art.
We aim to circulate information regarding complicity with apartheid Israel within the art world, especially within Scotland. We want to learn from Palestinian artists, highlighting how important the arts are to connect audiences with Palestinian experience. We hope to create a movement across the arts sector in Scotland in support of Palestine and aim to build alliances with Scottish arts organisations to achieve this.
For more information:
Instagram: @artworkersforpalestinescotland
Email: [email protected]