After a challenging few years, many arts companies in the UK are looking for ways to grow in new directions. This means a widespread desire for greater reach, connection with new audiences and collaborations with inspiring international organisations that bring an alternative perspective. Plus, increased interest in opportunities to travel and share work.
As the UK’s fifth largest trading partner, China offers great potential for future UK-China arts partnerships.
“UK-China trade is worth over £100 billion per year,” says the UK’s Intellectual Property Attaché for China, Samuel Stone in the May 2024 International Property Office Overseas blog. “This is a significant opportunity for UK businesses, so of course, when businesses want to operate in and do business with China, this really brings along the importance of protecting intellectual property rights and intangible assets."
With a vibrant arts scene and engaged audiences, China is rich with possibilities for small to medium organisations in the UK looking for new creative pathways. The challenge for many of these companies is understandable concern about the practicalities of pursuing this market.
Questions that often get asked by artists and organisations looking to branch out include: Where do I get funding? How to I make connections? Who can help me with verifying potential partners or making travel arrangements? Perhaps most importantly, there is the question of copyright and Intellectual Property (IP) rights when touring work to China.
“Many businesses have the perception that there is little or no IP protection in China, when in fact the changes that China has been implementing have been bringing up the standards of IP protection across a number of areas over time,” says Stone.
"However, despite this progress, China has remained on the 2024 United States Trade Representative priority watch list for IP due to widespread online piracy and counterfeit goods."
There are now more resources available for UK organisations looking to understand where to start on this journey, the British Council’s China Now website has good resources available to get started in this process.
To support new connections, the British Council has recently launched the latest round of their Connections Through Culture grants. These small-scale grants give UK organisations the opportunity to connect with Chinese organisations and audiences.
Take, for example, the "Travelling Ideas" project, which has sprung from a Connections Through Culture grant collaboration between the Scottish Dance Theatre (SDC) and Shanghai International Dance Centre (SIDC) and addresses the issues surrounding IP head on. This collaboration came to life after SDC performed at the venue in 2018, leading to talks about a potential future collaboration.
They first worked together on a digital work by Yabin Studio and c, supported by the British Council, which premiered at the 2021 China Contemporary Dance Biennale. Then after the onset of the pandemic, they shifted to looking for creative new ways to collaborate outside of the traditional boundaries of physical travel.
The result has been an innovative programme that launches this year and is anchored by three key elements.
“Our goal with this project is to gain a better understanding of the legal framework regulating IP exploitation both in China and the UK,” says Scottish Dance Theatre Artistic Director Joan Clevillé. “We want to assess the demand for more environmentally sustainable content and start to build connections with potential partners that could lead to collaborative relationships in the future.”
Supported through the project will be a new research paper by producer UK Joanna Dong exploring the opportunities, practicalities and potential challenges of IP exploitation of artistic content by UK companies in China.
“We have only just begun our research, but it is already clear that resilience and adaptability are key,” says Clevillé. “We are interested in cultivating mutually beneficial relationships and innovative collaboration models that enable artistic exchange despite environmental or geo-political challenges.”
Following on the research will be a series of presentations a panel event for local artists, venues and programmers advocating for the need of sustainable international work hosted by SIDC. More information about the workshop is available on the SDT website.
It is a fascinating approach and one that many arts organisations in both the UK and China could, and indeed should, look to for inspiration when it comes to paving new pathways for creative partnerships. However, Stone stresses the importance of getting sound legal advice before making any decisions.
“Companies need to know that they should be getting professional legal advice, that they should be registering their IP wherever possible (especially with trademarks in China), to make sure that their IP is best protected,” he says.
Applications for Connections Through Culture grants close on 2 September 2024.