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Accepted Paper:

The Presence of Oil and the Absence of Crisis: Museums, Sponsors and a Social License  
Chris Garrard (Art Not Oil )

Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the disruptive role oil companies play in the perception of climate change through their strategic sponsorship of cultural institutions. It will also consider the value of transparency in scrutinising these sponsorship deals and institutional cognitive dissonance.

Paper long abstract:

Cultural institutions, from art galleries to museums, provide valuable spaces in which the debates around climate change and climate justice can take place, both as research hubs and visitor attractions. However, major oil companies, such as BP and Shell, play a disruptive role in the presentation and perception of climate change through their sponsorship of elite cultural institutions. This disruption takes place directly, with influence over curatorial decision-making at the Science Museum and the informing of security protocols at the British Museum, and indirectly, through the strategic promotion of brand identities within iconic cultural spaces, allowing the sponsor's "social license to operate" to be enhanced and sustained. This corporate strategy aims at shaping the political imaginary in order to distort the narrative around climate change and curry favour with policy makers.

This paper will outline how the presence of oil sponsors within cultural institutions reflects an absence of a holistic understanding of climate change. Drawing upon direct experience of investigative work, it will assess the value of transparency and accountability for scrutinising sponsorship agreements and the role of Freedom of Information legislation in making visible the motivations behind those partnerships. Several arts-based campaigns against oil sponsorship will also be considered and their capacity to make present within cultural institutions the often "invisible" voices of frontline communities, before asking whether this juxtaposition of climate change realities within a cultural institution exposes a fundamental cognitive dissonance. If so, can this be overcome and climate change made fully present within a cultural institution?

Panel P11
Now you see it, now you don't? Presence and absence of the climate crisis through ethnography
  Session 1