Zita Holbourne
Photo copyright Mark Anthony Springer
c. Josimar Senior, Black Writers Guild
I would like to start by congratulating Ardent on their ten-year anniversary.
I am a multidisciplinary artist, creating as a performance poet, visual artist and writer. I am a socially engaged artist and central to my creative practice are equality, freedom, justice and human rights. I am a socially engaged artist, and education and history are also a part of my practice.
But I first connected with Ardent in my role as an activist and campaigner, specifically in relation to my role with Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) which is the successor organisation to the Anti-Apartheid Movement, attending an early reading of Tracy Ryan’s fantastic play STRIKE!. As a lifelong trade unionist, (former National Vice President of the Public and Commercial Services Union and currently National Co-Chair of Artists’ Union England) as well as a former campaigner against the apartheid regime as a student activist, the story of the Dunnes strikers really resonated with me. It was an important untold story in the history of the anti-apartheid movement. This is the power of theatre, that untold stories of everyday sheroes and heroes can be brought to wider audiences and told with passion, truth and humour.
During 2023 to 2024, I worked with Ardent to facilitate workshops for school and university drama students and some history students on the power of drama and arts in advocating for change, communicating issues and amplifying voices that are marginalised, using Tracy’s play STRIKE! and my lived experience in the anti-apartheid movement and as a multidisciplinary artist and campaigner against racism and injustice today, as the basis to explore the history. We encouraged the students to go on and tell their own stories and those of their families and communities. It was so rewarding working with the students, encouraging them to share their own creative talents but also to see them tackle difficult topics impacting on their lives. It demonstrated the importance to me of the arts in breaking down barriers and opening up conversations, rather than suffering in silence.
Following the programme of workshops, Tracy and I were commissioned by Ardent to write an education pack which is now available for schools and further education colleges to use and deliver for students studying drama and history. It is thanks to the vision of Ardent and their ability to secure funding that this resource is available.
Over ten years of austerity and cuts, a global pandemic and now a cost-of-living crisis have had adverse impacts on access to arts and culture with disproportionate impacts for those who already faced discrimination and marginalisation in the sector. Theatre and other arts play such a crucial role for all of us and should be accessible to all with sufficient resources and funding to nurture new talent and for young people to pursue the careers in arts they desire. Arts bring joy, relaxation, healing, therapy, education, awareness and so much more, enriching and essential to life, yet those of us who work in the creative sectors face low pay, precarious work, discrimination and have to navigate hugely competitive funding applications in order to do what we do, which benefit society but also the economy. We need a reversal of the devastating impacts of the past fourteen years of cuts on the arts, and central and public funding for the arts must be put in place as well as funding for arts education in schools so we can support new talent coming through.
Arts are for everybody and everybody benefits from arts.
Well done Ardent, not only for birthing a new theatre group in this period but also for navigating the challenge of austerity and the pandemic - surviving and amplifying the voices and stories of working-class creatives and communities.
ABOUT ZITA
Zita Holbourne is a multi-award-winning multidisciplinary artist, creating as a performance poet, visual artist and writer / author, an educator, community activist, human rights campaigner and trade union leader.
She is a trustee of ACTSA, National Co-Chair of Artists’ Union England, Co-founder and National Chair of Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) UK, elected to the National Executive Committee of the General Federation of Trade Unions and Joint Chair of Public Services International Education Support and Cultural Workers Network.
She is the winner of the Olive Morris Award, Legacy Foundation Equality Champion Lifetime Achievement Award, Jessica Kingsley Writing Prize, Caribbean Global Award for Outstanding Arts and Culture, an honorary fellow of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the UNESCO Coalition of Artists For the General History of Africa.