How To Align With Our Values

a guest post from a very kind 'arts worker'

(A guest post by Mona Brayling, 24, Edinburgh arts worker * )

Back in ye olden days, before people knew that women were a boundless void and not a material category of human being; before we’d decided that the best way to advocate for a better world was destroying nice things that other people made for everyone to enjoy, like paintings and book festivals and stuff; before we knew that every cause in the world must be mooshed together into what our opponents have a tendency to dismiss as “an omni-cause clusterfuck of relentless, draining, anger” or similar wrong-think opposition to the new ways we advocate for, our music and arts venues apparently valued and prioritised making money through hiring out their spaces to a diverse bunch of musicians and performers.

Sounds quite strange to me, to be opposed to ‘clusterfucks,’ I have to say. They’re the best kind, aren’t they? I’m an intersectional feminist.

Anyway.

These venues would then use that money, plus the take from the bar and a percentage of ticket sales, to keep people employed, keep the venue clean, provide a good entertainment space even for people with bad taste sometimes (ie, people who don’t like ukuleles), and pay their overheads and buy stock and stuff. I think they called it ‘a sustainable business model.’

Sounds fishy to me, and I am sure it’s quite chucklesome to some of you fellow arts workers reading this guest post! There isn’t anything in there at all about safety and mental health awareness, or the use of the word ‘inclusive,’ which has to be put in everywhere now or people might think you’re a fascist or one of those weirdos who think lesbians don’t have penises sometimes or something.

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

Everyone today knows how appallingly careless this kind of business practice is, if it is not accompanied by - if not wholly infused with - values of social justice and inclusion, which, while old people might say so, does NOT equate to just welcoming any old git or potentially problematic individual to an arts venue or theatre show.

In the arts and music venue I am proud to work in as an arts advocate (mostly in drinks-mixing advocacy, though I also occasionally prioritise inclusive glass-collecting), it also might mean that my colleague Amaya, one of the truest souls I know, has to pour a pint for someone she would never have on her Facebook friends list. Pouring a pint is a really intimate act, don’t you think? Serving someone. To ask this of such a soul would be an egregious violation.

I work at the intersectional, inclusive, and award-winning events space, The Suck Club, just off the Cowgate. You’ve heard of us - we specialise in programming burlesque, poetry slams, musical saw orchestras, and intersectional drag act twerking competitions. I mean, the managers do allow other things (for now) like rock nights and even occasional small, alternative theatre things by old people over thirty, but I refuse to work at those events because it is my right to only work at events that I am sure align with MY values.

My ‘boss’ agreed after Dad helped with the lawyer’s letter.

Everyone knows this is basic worker’s rights. At any rate, since I started working here alongside Amaya (bestie!) we’ve helped The Suck Club’s reputation change from a sort of Edinburgh institution open to all, to becoming more inclusive by only letting our friends hire them. The rock nights aren’t very popular anymore since Amaya cut off that group of old man regulars for getting her pronouns wrong so they’ll probably shut down soon anyway.

At any rate, at the Suck Club, if we used ye olde ‘business practices’ like welcoming everyone, then our newest staff member, Jonny in the cloakroom, may have to hang up a coat with a badge on it indicating the wearer did not vote for the political party that Jonny does (the Scottish Greens, obviously!!)

And Jonny can be quite fragile. Sorry - not fragile - but he has a condition that we call ‘living with anger management issues’, which is why it’s so progressive, indeed, vital, that our bar manager didn’t fire him when he shouted at and refused to take the coat of that lady at the rock night who had a suffragette scarf on the other week. Those colours are triggering to the highly-kind-but- angry community.

(I mean, we did tell the bar manager that we’d stage a topless protest at the venue entrance if he took any action, but I think he was on our side way before he saw the placards we hastily assembled out of old Stella boxes.)

Anyway, did you know that back in the old days, sometimes, venues even expressed different opinions from those who hired them? I wasn’t aware of how common that was (it certainly wasn’t at the University of Edinburgh, from which I am a graduate) until the owner of this essay site, Jenny Lindsay, who I am grateful for platforming me, told me.

She told me that, in fact, given venues are made of bricks and cement and glass and stuff, they didn’t actually express any opinions at all other than ‘Hello, we’ve got some gigs, come get yer gigs, have a pint and enjoy yerselves! All are welcome to attend, to hire us, or be programmed by us directly, happy days!!’

This was the case even for those with political differences from the ones that we all know the only people who should be allowed to hire arts venues have today, which are our opinions - I mean, obviously.

In the old dark days, you might even get these really weird nights where there were multiple different bands or poets together on a stage and nobody said anything political at all really. Odd, right?? Perhaps that’s what is happening at the rock nights I refuse to work, but it just sounds potentially problematic to me…

And sometimes, the not-yet-animate-with-values venues hired staff whose views were different from the venue owners, and from fellow staff members!! I’d never have applied to work at Suck Club if Amaya hadn’t told me they’d just come out with a new Staff Code of Conduct she made them write, which states in no uncertain terms how inclusive they are, but truly inclusive, which meant banning TERF poetry events, ‘same-sex’ (yuck) lesbian discos, and any patron who we suspect has ever been in the presence of a Tory.

It’s amazing they got anything done in the old days really. Because surely if there are different views behind the bar on a busy club night, you’d have to leave the lime-cutting and commence a stand-off?? It’s why it’s just far easier to employ people who agree with each other entirely and are never confronted by other opinions: better limes for the mocktails and far superior ‘productivity’, as that still seems to matter to ‘bosses.’

Because everyone knows that politics is life and you must activist until everyone around you agrees with your stance, even if you don’t know what you’re talking about fully and have never had the time-privilege to crack a book on the subject.

Honestly, the time-privileged elitists who seem to think I need to know absolutely everything about the law to know that the TERFS who win lots of court cases are nevertheless wrong to their very bones, to give just one example of the barriers to my activism… It’s bloody ridiculous.

Thinking you need to know your subject before trying to educate and, if necessary, destroy people who don’t seem to agree with you wholeheartedly is so goddam elitist and so out-of-touch with what everyone thinks these days in my workplace, my Bluesky feed, and at my house parties, which is to say, the only places that matter.

It’s really weird to think about these olden day ‘values.’

Arts venue staff back then didn’t feel entitled to challenge their employers and events managers into banning and cancelling acts that were already booked in to appear who had expressed legal but obviously totally wrong things. It’s so shocking that arts workers back then were made to feel so powerless.

According to Jenny Lindsay (thanks again for the platform, J!), who worked in a nightclub and arts venues for much of her early twenties, they just got given a rota and then turned up to a shift and did their jobs. Without even complaining about it endlessly. Some even had fun and were grateful to be employed so they did a good job. Oddballs, as I say. (Sorry, Jenny, I don’t mean you of course! Thank you for giving me a platform for these reflections, which obviously means you’re one of the good ones or you’d never have asked me. Thanks, cister!!)

These backwards staff (not Jenny) didn’t realise that if they mixed a bourbon and coke for someone attending a ‘problematic’ music or poetry cabaret or whatever, that their entire soul would be tainted.

We know better now. Even if a performer’s political views are nothing to do with their artistic performance (is such a thing possible, amiright??) everyone knows that such people give off toxic fumes. So these staff members didn’t appreciate what we know now: even being in the presence of someone with different opinions is akin to ‘violence’ and ‘harm.’

Arts workers (they didn’t call themselves that back then, of course) were sometimes forced to work in venues on nights where people they didn’t agree with packed out the place with their admirers, fans, and friends. It must have been so difficult to serve the drinks without having a panic attack. Because those people they were serving presumably didn’t view the performer as the atrocious piece of shoe that nice people who disagree with them know they are.

(NB: In the olden days, it wasn’t yet viewed as progressive to call your political opponents inanimate objects, or vermin, like rats and cockroaches. There were some historical reasons for humans deciding that this was really bad chat, but I can’t quite remember what they are right now.)

It’s hard to believe this, as we’re all really kind now, but if an act that we’d all now agree is ‘problematic’ in some way was permitted to still appear at said venue, staff and managers didn’t even try to sabotage their appearance by projecting slogans on the wall behind them while they were speaking, or setting off smoke machines to terrify their audiences into thinking the stage was on fire.

We know now that it’s very important that such bigots get challenged, and since we can’t possibly be expected just to, like, have a chat with them or listen to what they say and ask questions during a planned Q&A like at the Joanna Cherry event at The Stand a couple of years back, we must just make the entire event as unpleasant for such a cockroach as we can, and be as rude as we can get away with to any fellow vermin-types who dare to attend their sell-out event that’s making our employer money.

Profit is so old-school when you should be aligning with new values such as kindness to people who are obviously in the right, like Amaya and Jonny. And myself. Anyone who disagrees? Well.

Everyone knows that activisting your way, relentlessly, without pause for research or daring to have your mind challenged from your goal, in every part of your life is the only way to joyful human flourishing.

What better use of one’s finite time on this supposed “beautiful rock full of interesting people and amazing things” (my Mum said this, but she’s totally wrong) than making those other people’s lives miserable as they should be?

I think this is particularly the case over things that people might not have much control over, like wars in other countries, and whose pleas to you to stop demanding they look at atrocity images, for example (who doesn’t want to look at atrocity images?? how can you possibly imagine the horrors of war otherwise??) will make you really angry, because obviously it means they are uncaring racists and bigots if they can’t handle seeing dead babies on their newsfeed for whatever reason.

They just don’t understand that, as well as activisting over things you CAN influence, it’s really important to be angry - and I do mean constantly or you’re not doing this right - about things you have little to no control over as well and that you find really upsetting.

Just ask Jonny, he’s the purest example of lived experience I know and I’m so grateful to him for teaching me how to do ‘angry’ better.

Is there any point in living if you are incapable of internalising all of the horrible things in the world and making them your permanent focus to the point where you struggle to even get anything done on most days? That’s true compassion, right? Shows you have empathy.

It’s also why, to counter that depression, you have to direct your powerlessness at other people!! Make them feel powerless too! That’s how change happens. I’m sure of it.

I know I can’t think of any better reason to get out of bed in the morning, frankly. It’s very energising to be permanently aggrieved and make other people sad as, of course, they deserve to be for not viewing us as incredible activists.

Which brings us to the reason that Jenny Lindsay contacted me to ask me to write this guest post. She said she had seen my Instagram campaign to get The Arts Hub Theatre shut down for saying that they welcomed the recent Supreme Court judgement and would direct trans people to use the single stall gender neutral toilets, while preserving the female and male ones as “single sex”. (YUCK)

This appalling bigotry led me to contact everyone I know in the arts last month, and send multiple highly persuasive and passionate emails to everyone booked to perform there, encouraging them to take a stand, ideally by pulling out of their forthcoming shows at the Hub.

And it worked! Well, there was one person who told us to sod off and that he, as a freelance performer, was reliant on ticket sales for his sold-out show there, but we published his reply to us on Bluesky and now he’s had his entire tour fully cancelled - isn’t that brilliant?!?

But apart from this privileged man who I would hope has now learnt his lesson, I think most artists and performers are kind eventually when they realise how inclusive the entire arts world is, and how quickly a tour can be cancelled if you don’t get in line with our kind values. It’s very motivating.

This is a clear example of the type of activism we arts workers advocate for on our doorstep having brilliant effect, even though there are some other issues we are struggling to solve with exactly the same tactics (like foreign wars and the climate crisis), partly because they aren’t on our doorstep, as if that should matter. Heads should roll regardless, right? And no artist should mind being inconvenienced by having their livelihood destroyed in the face of all of this anyway. Like, who do they think they are? So entitled.

Anyway, Jenny Lindsay has apparently heard all about the humbling work I do as an Arts Advocate, and wanted me to write a response piece for her site, after telling me how things used to be in the Edinburgh live arts scene, ‘back in (her) day’.

As well as working in clubs in her twenties (FYI, she’s now 43, so nearing retirement), she used to work in the live poetry, theatre, and music scenes, apparently, though I admit my inclusive values only permit me to really focus my research on live arts since 2023, as before around about then, nothing really interesting was happening anyway, was it.

Lindsay seems to mainly post cat pics on Instagram, and isn’t on Bluesky, so I don’t know much about her - which isn’t an insult to you, J, just noticeable! - so I assume she’s aged out of the performing world for natural reasons, like because young people are better than old people at all things, and the menopause and stuff.

But her former world does sound like quite a strange world to me.

Jenny has given me free reign with this piece, promised she wouldn’t change a word “even for the sake of accuracy,” and said she was just keen for me to “show the arts world the ways you and your fellow activists think your way of working in the arts actually improves things compared to the past”.

I was definitely the right person to ask to write this, so obviously I’ve accepted her fee, in fact, I should have approached her really because we activists should definitely start receiving wages for our activism at some point as we’re doing everyone - even soon-to-retire former poets with cats - a massive service, right?

She also asked me a couple of questions about my own artistic practice, which she said she’d include at the end of my piece when she publishes it.

But she did ask me to include one thing, which I guess I should actually write about now given it’s a paid commission and everything: my thoughts about the most recent act of supreme kindness in the UK performing arts world. She called it “the cancellation of Doozer McDooze’s album launch,” and the use of “cancellation” is a bit dog-whistly, but she is 43 and also paying me, so I’ll let it pass.

Lindsay knew that I wasn’t involved in this ‘cancellation’ (we prefer ‘rightful consequences,’ FYI) announced only yesterday. I certainly hadn’t come across it - my favoured musical genre is saw-orchestra, afterall - but I agreed to look into it and offer my insightful response given my expertise in arts advocacy.

I actually don’t know much about this man, though his tunes are very enjoyable, I am sure. While research is elitist, as I said above, I thought I should probably listen to at least one verse or something to see what his views on things are.

Obviously if he voted for Brexit, or was once in a room with a Tory or something really evil like that, that could maybe explain why the venue he had hired, the Portland Arms, have cancelled his planned launch on the 28th of June, which he has already paid the hire fee for.

I couldn’t find anything about his political views at all though, as he doesn’t appear to be overtly political (does that make him suspect in and of itself, though?). But a friend directed me to this post from his partner on Twitter/X, who goes by ‘The Famous Artist Birdy Rose’. She designs posters and mugs and various other things, and also has a YouTube channel.

I tried to listen to her latest post on YouTube but I quickly realised that she was EVIL INCARNATE!! She also has the audacity to have a book on her bookshelf behind her that looks like the front cover has a poor fox on it!! LOOK! Can’t really make out the author’s name, but I’ll bet they went to Eton and enjoy eating swan sandwiches too.

The Famous Artist Birdy Rose

She obviously is a Tory who supports fox-hunting, so that’s just disgusting. I could only look for three seconds, it was so disturbing.

Here’s what she posted on X. (NB: I am no longer on there because of Musk and because Bluesky is much nicer, but I have an account so I can screenshot the evil artists in Edinburgh and repost their bigotry on Bluesky when necessary, ie, when I am bored, or would like them to stop earning a livelihood by tagging in any of the people or venues who still work with them to get them to educate themselves out of such actions.)

Oh my GOD, these old-school artists are just SO BACKWARDS! Of course his gig was cancelled!

Alongside being pro-fox hunting (presumably), Birdy Rose is, it turns out, a TERF. I mean, come on, everyone knows what TERFS deserve! And this guy LOVES her?? Pft. Nobody can deny that deserves a hounding.

Birdy and her fellow TERFS might keep coming out with the ‘oh, but our views are LEGAL’ but so is wearing socks with sandals and eating avocados from Israel, it doesn’t mean anyone kind and nice would ever DO such heinous things!?! (Which is what I told that old lady in Marks and Spencers the other day before removing them from her trolly and stamping on them as she cried her old white lady tears saying she ‘didn’t understand’ why I was doing that. Educate yourself, bigot!)

This Birdy person should have the decency to dump herself (anywhere she likes really) if her boyfriend isn’t willing to tell her to sit down, shut up, never express a political opinion again, and ideally just go lock herself in a room somewhere for the rest of time.

I know some have said on X that this isn’t a feminist stance, but sometimes we have to get real here. Women don’t have a right to just say whatever the hell they want with no consequences for them, people who love them, their cats, other pets, their children, and maybe even their postman if he is bringing them a copy of The Spectator every Friday or something.

All of these things are wilful bigotry enabling. If Birdy Rose has a cat and it isn’t biting her on the daily it should probably be put down. I do mean that.

The very least Doozer should do is leave her, if he values his career anyway. And this is all about what you value, right? If he values a loving, stable relationship and sticking up for his partner’s right to ‘express herself’ (massive eye-roll) over hanging out with kind people in the inclusive green room of permanent grievance, then that’s on him.

The kindest (ok, genuinely now) advice I can give Birdy, as the intersectional feminist that I am, is that she should just accept that she must live alone on mung-beans and fresh air, and if her partner decides to stick by her it’s the fate he deserves too.

Her god-awful, '“perfectly legal” views (give me a break!) that she’s been proven correct on time and time again in both life and in the highest court in the land are incompatible with the Portland Arms ‘values.’ And so is the highest court in the land’s so-called ‘values’ and ‘legal expertise.’

And that’s all that matters. The Portland Arms are just expressing THEIR freedom of speech by contributing to making it nearly impossible for Doozer McDooze to earn a livelihood. Should have dumped her, man!

Birdy’s on X saying it’s unclear what the ‘values’ of the venue are, or what Doozer has supposedly done or said to deserve this. But everyone knows our values in the arts now.

Permanent grievance but also permanent agreement with anyone we allow to work in the arts.

It’s why we have to keep finding new ways to cancel people and new issues to cancel them over. Gotta keep that fire burning. Checking our privilege not by appreciating how lucky we are, but by destroying any privilege we have, or that anyone else may have in the UK, in its entirety. No. Nice. Things!

Simple, really, right?

That’s why it’s important to destroy literary festival infrastructure like Fossil Free Books did last year in support of Palestine and the climate; because until everywhere has book festivals, we shouldn’t have them, and obviously because one day our entire solar system will cease to exist, what’s that compared to a book festival existing?

That’s precisely what Amaya pointed out when she was on stage performing her epic poem ‘Sun Dies/ No Point,’ at her paid booking at the poetry slam at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last year after we all successfully got their funding that they use to pay fees to those like Amaya removed permanently, and they obviously still had to pay us because obviously people like Amaya most definitely deserve to be there, because The Arts World is our own workplace. Result! Arts Workers rights!

Look: I know old people find the new ways difficult because of their oldness and, I dunno, their menopause and stuff, but if I can sum it up, it’s like how burning your own house down is a good way to show solidarity with the homeless. That makes sense, right? Makes sense to me, though I might keep my flat in Marchmont. But once Mum and Dad go, perhaps a symbolic disavowal of my inheritance can be enacted in Kensington. I’ll see how I feel in a few years.

Anyway, back to Doozer McDooze and his album launch: even if he dumps his fox-hunting partner, I have a feeling he’s cooked his career here. It’s like how, when Amaya and I found out that our flatmate Tristan actually used to date that Tory politician’s daughter and even though he protested that she was supportive of the Greens, we had to throw him out the flat and throw every mug he’s used into the rubbish bin.

We were going to burn his mattress too, but Amaya said that wasn’t ethical so we sold it and put the money towards flights to the activist gathering in Vancouver next summer where we are going to learn how to do activism without hypocrisy, which is just so, SO important, right?

As for this Birdy Rose. Well. She just needs to get with the programme if SHE wants to continue her career in the arts too. It’s just not the way we do things now. And we own the entirety of the arts as we are arts workers, this sector wouldn’t even exist without us, and therefore we’re very important people. Artists of all kinds need to realise that it is our bodies, and our labours, and our lime-cutting that sustains them.

This is how it is. And it is how it will remain. Because the entire arts establishment from venues to institutions, funding bodies to independent programmers, keeps letting us get away with this.

I mean, obviously they do. We’re evidently really kind people who totally understand the point of the arts.

In conclusion: thank you to Jenny Lindsay, who, though I’d not corresponded with or heard of prior to her email to me yesterday, is obviously keen to highlight our important work, and give us a platform. I thought it would be nice to quote her views to conclude my piece too. I asked her what she, as a very old person now, felt about the new artistic landscape.

She said: “I am extremely glad that I remember a time before such people had so much power to cause this level of harm, hurt, and destruction, not only in the arts world, but to social cohesion and liberal democracy itself...”

I quite agree. This Doozer McDooze and his Birdy Rose lady must not be permitted to continue their harmful, hurtful, destructive stance, of expressing freely, loving each other so openly, and having the audacity to make a living in the arts.

(Mona Brayling, she/her, Scorpio.)

***

• (Editor’s Note: I asked Mona Brayling to tell me what her artistic work involved. What made her an ‘arts worker’ other than working in an arts venue? She told me that she ‘aligned towards flash fiction, but identified more as a performance artist,’ and that her main artistic focus was ‘creative campaigning’ and ‘arts advocacy’ for those ‘unwilling to confront injustice.’ )

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