Arts engagement practices as a pathway to solidarity with people seeking sanctuary

My thesis builds a theory of political solidarity as a practice and examines how – when enacted by arts organisations as opposed to groups or individuals – it is engaged with both ethically and strategically. When political solidarity opposes the injustices (e.g. the Hostile Environment Policies) faced by people seeking sanctuary, the practice becomes one concerned with embedding and inculcating an environment of hospitality and feeling of welcome. My thesis explores the particular ways in which being an organisation uniquely positions Opera North to deliver a political solidarity that is appropriate to the injustices faced by sanctuary seekers, and acts as a sight of flourishing for the requisite virtues of political solidarity. My research demonstrates the importance of organisations engaging in such solidarity work, and the contributions that they can make to practices comparative to more traditional political solidarity agents. I develop and consider this using the MacIntyrian framework of institutions, which enables me to articulate the power dynamics inherent to the political solidarity relationship between outgroup and ingroup, simultaneously highlighting how this dynamic can be used to help further the aims of the political solidarity cause through creating possible pathways to membership as a result of practices of hospitality. Solidarity literature to date has primarily focused on individuals or grass roots groups as opposed to organisations. My research brings new insights regarding how political solidarity can be enacted through structures such as organisations, and the specific way in which the position of an organisation allows actors to engage in political solidarity in an important way previously not considered within the literature. To bring to light these new understandings of political solidarity from an organisational perspective, I develop a theoretical framework drawing together feminist virtue theory and traditional virtue ethics. Consequently, my methodology builds on a feminist theoretical foundation of attending to lived experience and being reflexive, a Feminist Ethnographic Sensibility. I understand both my methodology and conceptualisation of political solidarity to be a practice. A Feminist Ethnographic Sensibility enabled me to capture the wholeness of Opera North’s political solidarity, drawing together the institution and practice, the epistemic and empirical.