Performance and the Critique of Resilience in Culture (England, 2004–2020)

Abstract

In the wake of Brexit and COVID-19, this article looks back at resilience-building agendas in English publicly funded cultural production. The analysis examines the history of ‘resilience’ in arts policy debates prior to 2012 before analysing Arts Council England (ACE)’s resilience-building programmes called Catalyst and discussing a performance-based Catalyst case. With Catalyst, ACE and collaborating agencies sought to incentivise private investment and entrepreneurialism in culture to minimise risks linked to potential financial loss in the wake of the 2007–2008 financial crash and subsequent budgetary cuts. The argument of this article is that, in this context, resilience discourses and practices, which aimed to rationalise, legitimise, and effect a further move away from older funding practices, reproduced a distinctly cultural ideological form. Through the performance-based case, this critique also examines how certain styles of discourse and practice were more critical and made space for figuring alternatives to the politics of resilience.