Posts Tagged ‘play’

End BP’s British Museum Greenwash – 2015

Wednesday, December 20th, 2023

End BP’s British Museum Greenwash – On Sunday 20th December 2015 I went with ‘actor-vists’ from ‘BP or Not BP?’ to photograph the play they were staging uninvited in the British Museum’s Great Court depicting ‘BP executives’ giving a farewell party to departing Museum director ‘Neil MacGregor’.

End BP's British Museum Greenwash

Climate activists were calling on the British Museum and other art institutions to stop accepting sponsorship from BP and other companies whose activities are accelerating global warming. This protest came just a few days after the Paris climate talks in which some were arrested for protesting inside the Louvre over its sponsorship by major oil companies Total and Eni.

End BP's British Museum Greenwash

It was a part of a whole series of protests in the UK which eventually led the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries Scotland, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House all to end sponsorship by BP. Their protests continued later in the British Museum, which in June this year (2023) finally appears to have decided to end its agreements with BP after 27 years. The only major cultural institution still partnering with BP is now the Science Museum’s education academy.

End BP's British Museum Greenwash

BP’s contribution to the Museum’s budget was relatively small, a fraction of a percent, but on my first visit for some years around ten years ago I was surprised and rather shocked by the engraved message on the wall of the rotunda in the Great Court and the many times the BP logo appeared on display texts. It also featured prominently on the publicity for the museum’s major exhibitions, including Vikings, Ming, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, the Mexican Day of the Dead and Sunken Cities, the last two perhaps particularly unfortunate as BP has been given the largest corporate criminal fine in history of $18.7 billion for the underwater Deepwater Horizon oil spill which caused huge pollution of the ocean around the coast of Mexico.

End BP's British Museum Greenwash

I’d got to know the British Museum quite well in the 1970s when my wife worked for a couple of years in the British Library which was then based there, writing entries for the catalogue and serving readers at the desk there. What had been rather dark lobbies around the central hall had been transformed into a large open area, but also the Museum had become very much a space promoting the “World’s Biggest CORPORATE CRIMINAL.’ The open space did however in December 2015 provide a great theatre for ‘BP or Not BP?’

Around 20 performers had made their way into the museum carrying props and banners in bags, under coats and in pockets, and grouped in the Great Court in front of the Rotunda, close to where the message of thanks to BP is engraved in the wall. I think there was not a great deal of security although the performance had been quite widely advertised probably because many Museum staff are also opposed to or embarrassed by BP sponsorship.

The play then began with the cast, dressed as BP executives, having a party and singing a song about departing director Neil MacGregor giving BP “cheap branding and a social license to operate through all the oil spills” to the tune of Robbie Williams’s ‘Angels’, then leaving the stage to three ‘BP executives’ who were shortly joined by the actor playing Neil MacGregor, who they thanked effusively for his support, listing and commenting about some of their activities including the various exhibitions.

‘MacGregor”s reply to their thanks included various revealing quotes from e-mails he had written to BP staff which had been revealed by Freedom Of Information requests, and he was plied with oily champagne and a cake representing the world until he collapsed drunk. The BP executives then discussed how they would “befriend and bribe” new director, Hartwig Fischer, with “even more lavish dinner parties! … Business meetings! … Opening nights! … VIP Previews! … Exhibitions! … Screenings! … Drinks!” before ending with a toast and singing together to the tune of Auld Lang Syne a song whose chorus was (with some slight variations):

For all the OIL and lies, my dears,
For all the OIL and lies,
We gave a tiny sum of cash
Meanwhile the planet fries.

The group had been approached by a Museum security officer as they began the performance and had assured him it would be fairly short and they would then leave and I think the museum decided not to call the police. As the play ended they cleaned up the floor and marched out singing, pausing briefly in the foyer and then giving a second performance on the portico outside before we went to a nearby pub where I made a hasty edit and handed over pictures to them.

You can still see a video about the performance on the on the BP or NOT BP? web site, along with several of my pictures. I had taken a large number of pictures and those on My London Diary are largely the out-takes from the large set for the performers.

More pictures at End BP’s British Museum Greenwash.


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Festival Edinburgh

Sunday, August 13th, 2023

Festival Edinburgh: I’ve only stayed in Edinburgh a couple of weeks over the years and only one of these was during the annual festival. Ten years ago in 2013 we were invited to share a flat for a week a short walk from the city centre with half a dozen of the family of my younger son’s wife who I think were all Scottish.

Festival Edinburgh
Tourists photograph the sign saying J K Rowling wrote some of her first Harry Potter book here. I’ve not read it.
Festival Edinburgh:
Old College, the University of Edinburgh
Festival Edinburgh:
Nam June Paik show in the College gallery

I’ve written a little about the week on My London Diary with rather a lot of pictures. We did go to a lot of events and performances, some together rather more on our own as our interests are different and there were so many things to choose from. But we also spent a lot of time walking around the city and surrounding areas.

Festival Edinburgh:
Street theatre

It was a busy week and we enjoyed it. But I’ve not felt it something I particularly wanted to do another year, once seemed enough.

Festival Edinburgh:
Calton Hill

The pictures here are from one day of that week, Tuesday 13th Aug 2013. It wasn’t a typical day as there were no typical days for us that week.

Canongate Kirk

Here’s the short text from My London Diary about what we did that day:

“I walked to the Nam June Paik exhibition, the visual arts high note of the festival, while Linda went to a concert. After that I went to hear poet Danny Chivers giving a great fringe performance. Linda and I grabbed some lunch from a street stall and then walked up Calton Hill and across to Arthurs Seat, rushing back to see a one-man play on the fringe, and after taking a few pictures along the High St before dinner.”

The quick path down from Arthur’s Seat

But I think the pictures probably make it rather clearer, certainly if you look at the larger set on My London Diary.

More on the street
Victoria Street

Many more pictures from the week at Edinburgh & the Festival and from the Tuesday here.


Good Friday 2010 in London

Saturday, April 2nd, 2022

Good Friday 2010 in London – This year Easter Day is celebrated on April 17th by Western Christianity, though as usual a week later by Eastern churches. But it is a ‘moveable feast’ and is on the first Sunday after the first ‘ecclesiastical full moon’ (don’t ask) on or following 21st March, which means it will always be somewhere between March 22nd and April 25th. In 2010, Easter Day was April 4th, so April 2nd 2010 was Good Friday. I photographed two public events for it in London.

Good Friday 2010 in London
Jesus’s body taken down from the cross in Trafalgar Square

Crucifixion on Victoria St, Westminster

Good Friday 2010 in London

I photographed ‘The Crucifixion on Victoria Street’ on Good Friday for a number of years, though decided to stop doing so more recently, largely because of how I felt the behaviour of other photographers. When I first photographed the event there were relatively few of us taking pictures and we did so with some discretion, respecting the religious nature of the event. But over the years the number of photographers has increased greatly and it became more of a media circus, with a few really interfering with the proper nature of the event.

The event brings together clergy and congregations from a number of churches on and around Victoria Street, which includes the Westminster Abbey, the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathredral and Methodist Central Hall as well as other churches, church schools and projects in the area. They process along Victoria Street behind a man carrying a large wooden cross – in 2010 carried by men from the Passage, a project for homeless people close the the Cathedral – and stop for short services in front of the three main churches.

The main service was outside the entrance to Westminster Cathedral where there were hymns, bible readings, a meditation, prayers and a reflection on peace to honour the innocent victims of our times by The Most Reverend Vincent Nicholls, the third Archbishop of Westminster I’ve photographed on these steps.

I left the procession as it made its way towards Westminster Abbey where there was to be a final service.

Crucifixion on Victoria St


The Passion of Jesus, Trafalgar Square

This was the first Passion Play to be performed in the square since 1965, and was a highly professional performance by a group based on the Wintershall estate near Godalming that have been putting on similar but larger and longer ‘Life of Christ’ plays there for a number of years.

Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss

The play related key events leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, folowing the stories in the four gospels with both narration and the voices of the main characters coming to the crowd over loudspeakers around the square. It was a colourful and at times exciting rendition of what was for some of us a familiar story, but for some present was novel.

Photographing the live performance had to be from the sidelines, but I was able to do so fairly well, though mainly from longer distances than I like to work from. It was an interesting presentation of a difficult story to stage.

The pictures on My London Diary show the story in sequence and I think capture all the key moments.

The Passion of Jesus


BP Or Not BP?

Monday, December 20th, 2021

Since their birth as the Reclaim Shakespeare Company in 2012, BP Or Not BP? have carried out an incredible range of high-profile theatrical interventions which have received widepread media coverage against the abuse of our major cultural institutions by BP. One of the world’s major fossil fuel companies, BP uses its support of the arts to give it a respectable and worthy veneer while continuing to play its part in fuelling global warming and preventing real action against climate change.

According to the BP Or Not BP? website, the “have performed without permission at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the British Museum, the Edinburgh International Festival, the National Gallery, Cadogan Hall, the Royal Opera House, the Science Museum, the Roundhouse, the Noel Coward Theatre, the National Portrait Gallery and in Tate Britain.’

Some of these events have involved wide public participation, and have had considerable advance publicity andI’ve photographed a number of those that have taken place in London, but others have needed to be kept secret in advance, with only the players and a small number of trusted photographers and videographers being involved.

BP sponsored an exhibition on Mexico – the site of BP’s 2020 Deepwater Horizon disaster

On 20th December 2015, I was pleased to be asked to photograph a performance of a play depicting ‘BP executives’ giving a farewell party to departing Museum director ‘Neil MacGregor’ inside the British Museum’s Great Court as visitors and security stood and watched. The pictures here are a small reflection of those I took on that occasion.

Sunken Cities – BP activities are causing sea level rise

You can read my account of the event at End BP’s British Museum Greenwash, along with a more detailed account of the proceedings including the full written script by BP or Not BP? on their web site. Although as I wrote, the actual performance contained considerable improvised embellishment.

In my account of the event, I included these paragraphs about the reasons behind the protest:

BP makes a relatively small contribution to the museums budget, a fraction of a percent, for which they get an engraved message on the wall of the rotunda in the Great Court and their logo prominently on the publicity for the museum’s major exhibitions, including Vikings, Ming, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, the Mexican Day of the Dead and Sunken Cities, the last two perhaps particularly unfortunate as BP has been given the largest corporate criminal fine in history of $18.7 billion for the underwater Deepwater Horizon oil spill which caused huge pollution of the ocean around the coast of Mexico.

The current 5-year sponsorship deal between BP and the British Museum ends shortly and the museum and its new director will soon have to decide whether to renew its with the oil giant. While a good deal for BP, the amount concerned is a relatively small contribution to the museum’s budget, and thanks to the activities of BP or Not BP and other climate activists results in a great deal of bad publicity for the museum; hopefully they will look for less toxic sponsors.

After the performance inside the museu, there was another on the steps outside

Unfortnately the British Museum hasn’t ended its deal but renewed it and is still taking dirty oil money from BP. In November 2021 over 90 leading members of the archaeology and museum community sent an open letter to the Museum trustees calling on them to end BP sponsorship which they describe as “a strategy of reputational management. BP is taking advantage of the British Museum’s status as a highly respected institution, and of the public’s love of museums and heritage, to associate its brand with values of high culture, art, education, sophistication, reason, and knowledge. These values have powerful significance and appeal within our society and, crucially, among our political and civic decision-makers.”

BP or not BP? might put it more succintly: “‘greenwashing’ their very dirty, oily, reputation”.


British Museum and BP

Sunday, December 20th, 2020

Five years ago today on 20th December 2015 I went into the British Museum with “actor-vists” from ‘BP or not BP‘ to photograph their ‘A Farewell to Neil MacGregor – Director of the British Museum‘ who had enjoyed a “cosy relationship” with the museum’s sponsor, BP.

Fossil-fuel companies make their profits largely through the combustion of the hydrocarbons they produce in the engines of cars, lorries and aeroplanes and the boilers used to generate electricity and heat buildings and other processes which turn the carbon in these fuels into the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the main cause of the global warming which is currently threatening the future of human life.

As well as that, the prospecting and exploitation of oil resources, now more and more taking place in environmentally fragile areas such as the Arctic, together with spillages, some inevitable but others demonstrating a remarkable lack of care are causing terrible damage to our environment. And of course most of what doesn’t get burned is made into plastics and we are now becoming aware of the huge amounts of this that ends up in the marine environment with disastrous consequences.

While continuing to fuel the global crisis, companies such as BP have invested heavily in promoting themselves as good guys, publicising the relatively small investments they have been making in renewable energies and other green areas. It’s a short-sighted policy as their long-term future – and ours – depends on a complete move away from carbon fuels, but one which keeps current investors rich at the cost of the rest of us.

Almost certainly the most cost-effective part of the ‘green-washing’ of BP’s ecologically disastrous activities has been their sponsorship of many of our major cultural institutions including the British Museum, something which the cultural activists of ‘BP or not BP’ have highlighted in a number of artistic interventions. I was pleased to be able to photograph their play depicting ‘BP executives’ giving a farewell party to departing Museum director ‘Neil MacGregor’ inside the British Museum’s Great Court.

Although BP’s contribution is only a fraction of the museum’s budget, they get an engraved message on the wall of the rotunda in the Great Court and their logo prominently on the publicity for the museum’s major exhibitions which have included Vikings, Ming, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, the Mexican Day of the Dead and Sunken Cities. As BP or Not BP point out, the last two are particularly unfortunate as BP has been given the largest corporate criminal fine in history of $18.7 billion for the underwater Deepwater Horizon oil spill which caused huge pollution of the ocean around the coast of Mexico.

My write-up on My London Diary gives a fairly full account of what happened with a lot more pictures. Many museum staff are unhappy about taking cash from BP and welcome the publicity protests like this give. The protesters assured the museum security that they would cause no damage and leave without any trouble after the relatively short performance which continued without any interruption and entertained a number of the visitors to the museum.

You can also read a fuller account, with some of my pictures and including the full text of the play on the on the BP or not BP website.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.