“Carmakers and financial institutions, airplane manufacturers and the energy industry … have voiced anxiety about how much negotiation remains to be done” in the U.K. following the Brexit deal, writes Andrew Dickson in Saturday’s (8/4) New York Times. “Plenty in the [classical music] sector are unsettled…. In December, the Association of British Orchestras produced a detailed study, pointing out how many ensembles relied on multinational touring and numerous other benefits that flowed from European Union membership. In July, the House of Lords … released a report warning that … there could be grave repercussions for the cultural sector…. If British ensembles are required to organize visas for every concert in, for example, Amsterdam or Berlin, as well as licenses to travel with their instruments, they would find it harder to tour…. It would be much harder to make touring financially viable.… There are myriad other concerns: … the fate of thousands of students from other European Union countries in British music schools, Pan-European regulations on intellectual property, and cultural funding that flows directly from the bloc’s institutions…. John Whittingdale, a Brexit-supporting member of Parliament and a former minister who ran the culture department, said that such anxieties were alarmist.”
Posted August 7, 2018
