How we kicked BP out of the British Museum

In 2012, The Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny launched a series of plays spon­sored by the oil giant BP. In response, a small group of actor-vists began invad­ing the RSC stage with rebel per­for­mances before the plays began: live­ly skits in a Shake­speare­an style, high­light­ing seri­ous issues with BP spon­sor­ship. These first BP or not BP? per­for­mances (or Reclaim Shake­speare Com­pa­ny, as we were known back then) cul­mi­nat­ed in a Shake­speare­an flash­mob at the BP-spon­sored Shake­speare: Stag­ing the World exhi­bi­tion at the British Muse­um, fea­tur­ing hun­dreds of people.

Eleven years lat­er, we have held almost 70 protest per­for­mances in 11 dif­fer­ent oil-spon­sored insti­tu­tions – all of whom (except the Sci­ence Muse­um) have now part­ed ways with their sponsors. 

We have always been satir­i­cal and coor­di­nat­ed, smug­gling in any­thing from a pop-up Viking long­ship to a giant krak­en that could be dis­man­tled and stuffed under our clothes. There were times when we were out­ra­geous, wheel­ing a four-metre-high Tro­jan horse into the fore­court of the British Muse­um and bring­ing over 1500 activists to the muse­um to protest, chant and sing against the insti­tu­tion’s BP spon­sor­ship deal. Every action cre­ative­ly respond­ed to an array of BP-brand­ed exhi­bi­tions (some of which felt almost too on the nose: Sunken Cities any­one?!) but our resound­ing mes­sage was clear: we weren’t going anywhere.

It’s the British Muse­um that we kept com­ing back to the most. It was the tough­est nut to crack, the jew­el in BP’s spon­sor­ship crown, and a space where we could draw pow­er­ful con­nec­tions between oil spon­sor­ship, colo­nial­ism and work­ers’ rights. BP spon­sor­ship com­prised less than 0.5% of the museum’s income at £375,000 per year. In com­par­i­son, BP spent over £800,000 on social media adverts in 2022 alone. They walked away from a promised 40% pro­duc­tion cut, con­tin­u­ing to pur­sue extrac­tion while spout­ing vague ​‘net zero’ promis­es. Through it all the British Muse­um stood behind them. They backed BP and gave it legit­i­ma­cy while it part­nered with repres­sive gov­ern­ments, spilled oil into the Gulf of Mex­i­co and poured bil­lions of dol­lars into extract­ing new oil and gas. They ignored their own work­ers when the PCS union passed motions to remove oil spon­sor­ship, and their own trustees when one stepped down over the issue. The muse­um man­age­ment refused to lis­ten, drag­ging their feet and con­tin­u­ing their colo­nial lega­cy by sup­port­ing harm­ful extrac­tion in the Glob­al South, all the while refus­ing to return stolen objects or pay work­ers fair­ly.

BP used its 27-year spon­sor­ship of the British Muse­um to help deflect atten­tion from its pol­lu­tion, lob­by­ing and back­ing of cli­mate dis­in­for­ma­tion. To com­bat these kinds of deeply entrenched rela­tion­ships, we found cer­tain pri­or­i­ties were vital to our art activism. 

The first was to fos­ter a cul­ture of sol­i­dar­i­ty with front­line com­mu­ni­ties that are most harmed by both BP and the British Muse­um. In the ​‘Stolen Goods’ tours of 2018 and 2019, we sup­port­ed a series of speak­ers who chal­lenged the muse­um to return stolen objects from Indige­nous Aus­tralia, Iraq, Pales­tine, the Pacif­ic Islands and Greece, and demand­ed an end to BP spon­sor­ship. In 2020 we joined a day of action called by Gwich’in and Iñu­pi­aq-led Indige­nous groups in Alas­ka demand­ing an end to Arc­tic drilling, which BP has pur­sued for over 60 years. 

Oth­er cam­paigns we part­nered with includ­ed the Free West Papua Cam­paign, Obser­va­to­rio Petrolero Sur (Argenti­na), COSPACC/​Congreso de los Pueb­los (Colom­bia), Save our Song­lines (Aus­tralia), the Dako­ta Access Pipeline Resis­tance, Lon­don Mex­i­co Sol­i­dar­i­ty, the cam­paign for Gilber­to Tor­res, a Colom­bian trade union­ist who was kid­napped and tor­tured for stand­ing up to oil com­pa­nies, and Rod­ney Kel­ly, whose ancestor’s stolen shield still remains in the muse­um today. These part­ner­ships were nec­es­sary from a moral per­spec­tive, and also helped to build the cam­paign beyond the usu­al UK envi­ron­men­tal­ist circles.

The sec­ond pri­or­i­ty was to know our audi­ence. Muse­um-goers and cul­tur­al audi­ences don’t enter these spaces as pro-BP rep­re­sen­ta­tives; they come because they’re inter­est­ed in the exhi­bi­tions and shows. Per­haps they’ve nev­er thought to ques­tion a spon­sor­ship that’s been around for so long or won­der why that might be uneth­i­cal, and our work could do that while also chal­leng­ing the institution’s man­age­ment. By keep­ing our actions cre­ative, visu­al­ly impres­sive and inter­ac­tive as well as dis­rup­tive, we often gar­nered sup­port­ive audi­ences who agreed with our mes­sage, and want­ed to be able to engage with cul­ture with­out co-sign­ing on uneth­i­cal choic­es from man­age­ment. This sus­tained sup­port helped shift the nar­ra­tive and turn the tide of pub­lic sup­port, lead­ing to what is now a near-whole­sale rejec­tion of fos­sil fuel fund­ing from the cul­tur­al sec­tor. Insti­tu­tions have realised it’s not what their audi­ences want, and BP have realised they will always get push­back when they try to art­wash the severe harm they cause.

This leads on to the final point: per­sis­tence. These cam­paigns haven’t been won overnight, but we have seen stag­ger­ing changes in the last decade. The British Muse­um now joins over 14 insti­tu­tions that have dropped fos­sil fuel fund­ing, includ­ing the Roy­al Opera House, Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, BFI, Tate and, of course, the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny. All of these wins were achieved by the deter­mi­na­tion to keep com­ing back with direct action until man­age­ment was forced to lis­ten. It’s only through the res­o­lu­tion and resilience of many, many peo­ple that these wins could be achieved.

There is still more to be done. The British Muse­um must now remove BP’s tox­ic name from its lec­ture the­atre, and lis­ten to calls for glob­al repa­tri­a­tion. But this is a major win after tire­less work from count­less cli­mate activists, cul­ture cam­paign­ers, arts work­ers, youth strik­ers, front­line groups and the wider Art not Oil coalition. 

This seis­mic shift should be seen as a wake-up call for cul­tur­al organ­i­sa­tions still part­ner­ing with fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies⁣, in par­tic­u­lar the Sci­ence Muse­um as it main­tains its com­plete­ly iso­lat­ed endorse­ment of BP, Equinor and coal-giant Adani. The museum’s own web­site states that we must act now to avoid ​‘severe and irre­versible impacts’ of the cli­mate cri­sis, but it hasn’t seemed to grasp that cut­ting ties with giant fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies is an obvi­ous first step. It’s time for muse­um man­age­ment to read up on the sci­ence them­selves and show these spon­sors the door.

Though we’re not quite done with the British Muse­um just yet, we find our­selves with a lot more time on our hands since they dropped BP, so you nev­er know where we might go next…

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