While literary festivals face existential threat due to funding issues and controversial sponsors, indie bookshops are filling the event-space void across the South West.
The rapid growth of the book sector in Bristol that has previously been highlighted in The Bookseller seems to be a particularly lively locus of a broader national phenomenon. When bookhaus opened three years ago, we were stepping onto the stage in a city that had seen three independent bookshops open since 2018, following years of stagnation. I attended the Booksellers Association conference that year and learned that 2021 was a record year for the opening of new independent bookshops across the country. Since then, a further four independent bookshops and a magazine specialist have opened.
A central part of our vision for opening bookhaus was to host lots of events and provide a space for all sorts of culture and debate, and an exchange of ideas. In London there was a constant stream of interesting events to attend and I thought that bookhaus could help to address the comparative dearth in Bristol. Why couldn’t Bristol emulate the romantic visions of the bohemian artistic and literary scenes I had read about in the past in places like Paris, New York or Berlin?
Reflecting on the past three years, I think I can say that this endeavour has been a success. We have hosted huge events with local authors, such as the launch for None of the Above by Travis Alabanza, a book about the experience of being trans and non-binary. We hosted the launches of both of Moses McKenzie’s Bristol-set novels before packed audiences of mostly Black young people. We hosted the first UK event with the Swedish environmental activist Andreas Malm on his book How to Blow Up a Pipeline before an audience of about 160 people. We hosted a launch for Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona at a local nightclub. She was palpably excited because she said it reminded her of 90s grunge, and was so inspired that she dropped what she was working on and started writing a novel set in the punk scene in Brighton.
Independent bookshops have no one to answer to other than themselves and their customers, and they have to sink or swim on that basis
There has been a great efflorescence of literary events taking place in Bristol, not only with us but with our peers too, so that Bristolians today have the opportunity to participate in a really lively cultural and intellectual scene across the city.
There was an institution putting on literary events before the developments I am describing. Bristol Festival of Ideas programmed some excellent literary events from its inception in 2005 until it announced the terrible news that it was closing down in April earlier this year. It lost the funding that it had relied upon, so it was no longer financially viable.
This comes at the same time that several literary festivals across the country have also been struggling to survive in the face of funding problems. Aye Write festival in Glasgow was cancelled at around the same time due to funding issues (though it subsequently received a lifeline). And then the major controversy blew up about Baillie Gifford Investment Managers sponsoring Edinburgh International Book Festival and Hay Festival. Fossil Free Books, a campaign group of writers and book workers, started a campaign to demand Baillie Gifford stop investing in fossil fuels and the carbon economy, and profiting from doing business in illegal settlements in the West Bank. A fierce debate took place across the book world, with the broadsheet press seemingly unified in their opposition to the campaigners. Eventually Ballie Gifford pulled its funding, and the writers that were boycotting the festivals agreed to appear.
I signed the Fossil Free Books petition because I agreed with the cause. If you are concerned about the climate crisis and the indiscriminate killing being perpetrated in Gaza, it is the kind of minor action we can take in the book industry to take a stand against them.
I used to work for the Royal Academy of Arts where we had the Sackler Galleries, named in honour of the Sackler family who made a fortune from producing OxyContin and creating an endemic opioid crisis in America. They helped to whitewash their reputation by sponsoring museums and galleries across the world, as is well documented in the book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, which ironically won the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2021. British Petroleum has sponsored institutions such as the Tate, the British Museum and the Royal Opera House, and climate activists have protested this to some effect. When you are reliant on funding and donations from any source, whether state or private, you cannot avoid being associated with, and potentially compromised by them. Even the Arts Council announced in January that it might remove funding from artists or organisations that were “overtly political or activist”.
In a scenario in which literary festivals are under pressure due to funding issues, bookshops can help to step into the breach. Independent bookshops have no one to answer to other than themselves and their customers, and they have to sink or swim on that basis. At the same time as book festivals are facing existential problems, there is a boom in literary events in Bristol, and across the South West region in places like Bath and Exeter. I think it is worth celebrating and supporting the kind of literary event ecosystem that can flourish in independent bookshops.