Over 1,000 artists and Islington residents including Maxine Peake, Juliet Stevenson and MP Jeremy Corbyn, have issued an open letter to Sadler’s Wells, demanding the theatre end its sponsor relationship with Barclays due to the bank’s financial involvement in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The signatories, including Sadler’s Wells Associate Artists Seeta Patel, Oona Doherty and Dan Daw, criticise Sadler’s Wells for accepting sponsorship from Barclays, particularly as Barclays Group Chairman, Nigel Higgins also serves as Chair of Sadler’s Wells’ Board of Trustees.
According to reports, Barclays invests over £2 billion in, and provides loans and underwriting worth £6.1 billion to nine companies whose weapons, components, and military technology are used in Israel’s assaults on Palestinians.
Also joining the letter are actors Alex Lawther, Alfred Enoch and Khalid Abdalla, playwright April De Angelis, visual artists Eddie Peake and Oreet Ashery, singer/songwriter Dodie and Sadler’s Wells Young Associates Roseann Dendy, Sula Castle, and Elisabeth Mulenga.
Renowned dancers, choreographers, and performers such as Alexandrina Yewande Hemsley, Annie Hanauer, Belen Leroux, Bryony Kimmings, Clint Sinclair, Eleanor Bauer, Eva Recacha, Eve Stainton, Ffion Campbell-Davies, Florence Peake, Joe Moran, Keith Hennessy, Lucy McCormick, Sasha Shadid, Seke Chimutengwende, Theo Clinkard and Wet Mess are also among the signatories.
Artist and performance maker Eve Stainton has withdrawn from Sadler’s Wells East opening programme. In a statement made via Instagram they say:
“It doesn’t feel possible to perform this work with integrity, in such close collaboration and direct complicity with an institution who is receiving robust funding from Barclays Bank, a bank that is financially supporting the Israeli arms trade and actively funding the genocide in Palestine.
IMPACT DRIVER is important to us because it is born out of the resistance of the oppressed communities that we are part of. As a group of queer, trans and non-binary people with various intersections, precarities and lived experiences, we believe that there must be solidarity across all liberatory causes. We have a responsibility to the human beings in Palestine, as well as each other”.
London-based artist and choreographer Florence Peake says:
“I signed this letter alongside over 1,000 dancers, artists, and cultural workers because Sadler’s Wells has not joined the conversation, and even attempted to censor artists speaking out on this issue, all while allowing its reputation to be used to culture-wash Barclays’ financing of Israeli war crimes. I urge Sadler’s Wells to sever ties with Barclays and take a moral stand against the bank’s complicity in genocide and oppression”.
CWAG organiser and playwright Rida Hamidou says:
“Following the International Court of Justice’s ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, the obligations for states and corporations to “prevent and punish genocide” under the Genocide Convention have been activated.
As a result, Barclays’ financial support to Israel could potentially make the company and its directors liable for complicity in genocide under both national and international criminal law.
By accepting funding from Barclays, Sadler’s Wells enables the bank to engage in culture-washing, using the dance institution’s prestigious reputation to obscure Barclays’ role in financing genocide and 76 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid.
Sadler’s Wells has a commendable history of supporting and defending those in need, and we believe that its directors have an opportunity to set an example as a leading dance institution and to end complicity in oppression”.