The government minister responsible for the “northern powerhouse” has described campaigners who forced the arms firm BAE Systems to withdraw as a sponsor of a flagship arts festival in north-east England as “subsidy-addicted artists” and “snowflakes”.

The Great Exhibition of the North, which will run from 22 June to 9 September in Gateshead and Newcastle, is being funded by £5m from the government’s northern powerhouse fund, with a further £7.5m to be found from other sources, including sponsorship.

BAE Systems, which employs 18,000 people in the north of England, was lined up for an estimated £500,000 sponsorship deal, but decided to pull out after an online petition calling for the event to sever ties with the arms manufacturer garnered more than 2,000 signatures.

Lauren Laverne. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex/Shutterstock

The singer-songwriter Nadine Shah; the Commoners Choir, founded by the ex-Chumbawamba member Boff Whalley; and the BBC radio DJ Lauren Laverne were among those to have criticised the sponsorship deal.

On Thursday, Jake Berry, the northern powerhouse minister and MP for Rossendale and Darwen – where BAE Systems has a huge manufacturing plant – rounded on the petition’s organisers. He tweeted:

This is an absolute disgrace. What these subsidy addicted artists need to realise is that it is the 18000 BAE workers in the North who pay the taxes that support them. https://t.co/W7CmFUibK1 — Jake Berry (@JakeBerry) March 8, 2018

In later comments to the media, Berry said: “In the north of England after the last couple of weeks we are used to a bit of snow – we just don’t need any more snowflakes, thank you very much.”

BAE Systems said: “With our significant presence in the north of England, BAE Systems is a strong supporter of the northern powerhouse, which recognises the important contribution that the region makes to the UK.

“While BAE Systems remains supportive of the aims of the Great Exhibition we have decided to redirect our support to other initiatives better suited to both our skills and innovation objectives and in support of the industrial strategy of the north of England.”

The petition organisers said BAE Systems’ decision showed “that arms corporations cannot hide their war profiteering behind arts events”.

“The protest was a collective response from artists, cultural workers, and every one of you who signed the petition,” they said. “The campaign does not end here – we will be asking for transparency in how BAE came to be a ‘premier partner’ of the exhibition, and watching arms companies as they attempt to sponsor education and other arts events.”

Earlier this week, Shah – who withdrew from the event after finding out about the company’s sponsorship – urged her fans to press the exhibition’s organisers to drop BAE Systems as a sponsor, tweeting:

Dear friends, please help us in putting pressure on @getnorth2018 to #dropBAE as a sponsor. We want to celebrate all the beauty of the North without @BAESystemsplc blood money RT ✌🏾❤️ https://t.co/1Q3LuJXmye — Nadine Shah (@nadineshah) March 7, 2018

Announcing they would also be pulling out of the event, the Commoners Choir said last week: “There are plenty of researched and nuanced reasons for not wanting to make work that links to BAE which we won’t go into here, but suffice to say that we felt completely unhappy being represented alongside a corporation with a track record in supplying weaponry to countries waging war on their own people and boasting appalling human rights records.”

A spokesperson for the Great Exhibition of the North said it accepted and respected the arms company’s decision. “Working with all of our partners, funders, supporters and contributors, we remain focused on delivering a successful event which will shine a spotlight on the north’s great art and culture, design and innovation,” they said.

Uneasy bedfellows: art and corporate sponsorship

This is not the first time a multinational’s decision to sponsor the arts has sparked anger. In 2016, campaigners promised to escalate their protests after BP announced a £7.5m renewal of its sponsorship deals with the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The move was described by the campaign group BP or Not BP as “wildly out of touch with the mood across the cultural sector”.

A Liberate Tate protest against BP’s art sponsorship.

Earlier that year, BP ended its longstanding deals with both the Tate and the Edinburgh international festival, a move attributed to a feeling in both organisations that the partnerships were causing damage to their reputations. Groups such as Liberate Tate have been known to stage spectacular protests at institutions taking money from the oil industry, including dousing a naked man in oil at Tate Britain.



In April 2016, more than 1,000 healthcare experts signed an open letter calling on leading cultural institutions to sever their financial ties to big tobacco. Japan Tobacco International (JTI) has corporate sponsorship deals with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts. British American Tobacco is a corporate sponsor of the London Symphony Orchestra and an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts.