“Floored by this, I burst into tears, immediately aware of the implications of this decision on my work, life and financial security. I can’t work without appropriate support, so this email from a stranger was in effect telling me that my entire career is at risk. I feel a surge of panic and the prick of tears every time I think about it.”
Jess Thom co-founded Touretteshero“ as a creative response to the increasing impact that my tics were having on my life.” and to create art. What she does is create.
Way back in the day, I can’t remember when, I saw her perform Breathe by Samuel Beckett. It was filmed and it was not a performance that I saw live, but a television documentary as she attempted to get through an entire performance of Breathe. It is the first time that I have ever seen any of Beckett’s work and felt that it worked. I’m not a great fan, in fact very much the opposite, but for the first time I saw just exactly how deep the philosophy that Beckett was attempting to imbue could be taken on by somebody who had an alternate view of almost everything. It turned my head, and it changed my thoughts.
Now, because of the decision that has been made to put through a 60% cut of her Access to Work support from the government she is now unable to work in the arts.
Prevented by the state from working in the arts.
Prevented by a Labour government from working in the arts.
Of course, she could continue to do work voluntarily and like many creatives do continue to develop their ideas into performances without a regular paycheque.
But why should she?
Many people – and I am not going to categorise them as Reform/ Liz Truss supporting bigots because many people of all political hues have jumped on the benefits bad bandwagon – don’t understand what Personal Independence Payments help, or how the Access to Work payments are vital to actors who need to go to auditions, require support when they go into medical appointments, require support when they’re getting on and off public transport, require support for almost every aspect of their daily lives because they have been born with, something that they never requested.
In fact, we’re all born with things we never asked for.
But as a society, we should be looking to those who have an alternate view of how they live their lives and asking them to contribute creatively as to how we should develop our lives, not just to take account of their needs, desires, wants or whatever, but also to improve how we behave as a society.
And we can’t do that without being overly inclusive.
And so, Thom now must think of how she is going to be able to continue to be an artist but do so once again on the margin of society, potentially with poverty, as an absolute and total prerequisite of being that artist.
We are back to poor, starving artists.
Why?
Should we not value people like they do in France, where there is a minimum amount of cash and income that people are given by the state to allow them to develop into the contributing community artists or just contributing community activists that they should be?
There are many on the other side of my political spectrum who would say that that would be a waste of time and would encourage people not to work. They would end up work-shy on benefits and just simply be sitting back, clicking on the Netflix and refusing to participate.
Let’s be honest, there would be some.
There would probably be quite a lot.
There would be enough to fill a Daily Mail column on a weekly, if not a daily basis.
They could add to that the number of people who’ve come here searching for work from other parts of Europe or the rest of the world that we’ve sent bombs into and suggest, again, that we have some sort of crisis.
And we do, but it’s not a crisis economically.
It’s a crisis of conscience.
The world is turning not upon the wealthy who can afford to have money taken from them, but once again, targeting those that are the most vulnerable and the least able to support the wildly ambitious movements that are going on around the world. And it is not a “beautiful thing.”
It’s a crisis that many people who have already got money say that we should be buying into.
I hope that Thom fights this and I hope that she wins.
I hope that other disabled people are not waking up and reading what’s happened to her and thinking, oh my God, if it can happen to her, then it’s likely to be around the corner for me.
Artists need support.
Without it, we don’t have the next Netflix show.
Amazon Prime won’t be able to deliver as often as it can.
The BBC will begin to atrophy.
And so, I certainly hope that the right of deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists to create, to lead and to have agency in any room they are in should be taken on seriously. And we should all lend our shoulders to the wheel for that. If not, we will all be poorer for it as a wave of cheaper imports which just cheapens us all.
