UK visa rules in post-Brexit era a disaster for arts

Outgoing Edinburgh International festival director, Fergus Linehan, has described post-Brexit UK visa rules as a ‘disaster’ for the arts and has urged the government to secure visa-free travel for British artists in order to ‘solve the logistical challenges of touring’. Linehan will direct his last Edinburgh festival in August.

He has called for UK visa and export rules to be ‘significantly simplified’ to allow musicians and artists to travel overseas without complications. Linehan said: “The UK post-Brexit visa rules have been a disaster for the arts and for artists by stifling collaboration and making it harder for British artists to tour abroad.”

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, Linehan called on the government to ‘introduce visa-free travel for artists and solve the huge logistical challenges facing companies importing touring equipment into the UK’.

Difficult for Brits 

Linehan said: “It’s much more difficult for Brits to get visas to work overseas than it is for international artists to visit the UK. Also, freight costs are just crazy now. Meanwhile, Europeans who once would have applied for arts jobs in Britain are now hesitant about UK visas and their right to remain in the country, especially if they have families.”

“Clearly, when musicians go to perform [overseas], they’re not going to set up home. That’s not what it’s about. So, we need visa-free movement for people. We’re part of an ecosystem. The idea of discouraging collaboration is a disaster in our industry. If there was just one thing, a silver bullet, I would say it would be that.”

Linehan expressed his astonishment over the government failing to foresee and plan for the impacts of a hard Brexit on the UK labour market, and argued that things could have been phased in more slowly so that UK residents could be trained in many of the jobs typically occupied by migrants.

Migration a hot topic

According to Linehan, migration is a hot topic among artists ahead of this year’s Edinburgh festival. He said: “It [migration] just keeps coming up.” 

One of the Edinburgh festival’s key themes this year is refuge and cultural exchange, largely because festival founder, Rudolf Bing, was a refugee.

Linehan said: “I expect August’s festivals will produce a ‘cathartic charge’ for audiences and performers, in part because of Brexit and the continuing problems posed by COVID and the Ukraine crisis. These moments of collective joy, feel like they have a kind of resonance and an importance that is very, very real.” 

“The surge in costs and labour shortages were internal and logistical challenges, which had to be managed. The people need to see the current economic crisis in context: in 1947, there were few hotels in Edinburgh and audiences had very little money,” he added.

Linehan went on to say that the banking crash of 2008 ‘wrecked lives and the economy’, while the 2016 Brexit vote was quickly followed by populist upsurges orchestrated by Donald Trump in the US, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

“It’s remarkable how the festivals are so resilient through these particular moments. In moments of great uncertainty we sometimes hang on to the big celebrations, [and] I think Edinburgh in August is strengthened during times of great uncertainty. I don’t think that it feels frivolous or less relevant, because we’re going through all of these things,” he said.

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