Good News: the Royal Shakespeare Company has just announced it’s going to end its partnership with oil giant BP following public pressure. The RSC said it could not ignore the strength of feeling against the deal. The youngsters who took to the streets in huge numbers across the UK in the school climate strikes, said they would boycott the RSC unless it severed its ties with big oil.
BP uses sponsorship deals to try and clean up their public image, spending millions of pounds a year on deals with some of the biggest art and culture institutions in the UK.
The National Portrait Gallery, The British Museum and The Royal Opera House all take money from BP. They’ll be working out their next move. There’s no reason they can’t follow the RSC’s decision. Getting these art institutions to drop BP as a sponsor won’t solve the climate change emergency overnight. But every little thing we can do to hold the world’s biggest polluters to account helps.
