Barclays will no longer be a partner of The Great Escape Festival in 2025, after over 125 artists boycotted the event this year.
More than a quarter of the Brighton festival’s lineup pulled out of the 2024 edition by joining the boycott, in solidarity with the people of Palestine during the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
Barclays are accused of investing in a number of companies that supply arms to Israel, with over 40,000 lives having been lost in Gaza since the conflict escalated last year when Hamas committed the October 7 attacks. In response, the bank claims it is “trading in shares of listed companies in response to client instruction or demand”.
CONFIRMED: Barclays is not a partner of The Great Escape 2025! BOYCOTTS WORK! After hundreds of artists and music industry professionals took collective action in solidarity with Palestine this year, Barclays are no longer in any way affiliated with The Great Escape Festival! pic.twitter.com/T596wovFYY
— bandsboycottbarclays (@bands_boycott) October 6, 2024
The news that the bank will no longer sponsor The Great Escape was shared by the campaign group Bands Boycott Barclays on social media on Sunday (October 6), who wrote: “CONFIRMED: Barclays is not a partner of The Great Escape 2025! BOYCOTTS WORK!”
“After hundreds of artists and music industry professionals took collective action in solidarity with Palestine this year, Barclays are no longer in any way affiliated with The Great Escape Festival!”
Every artist that had been booked to play the 2024 opening party in Brighton cancelled their appearance, alongside more than 100 others, including Picture Parlour, Miso Extra and Alfie Templeman.
Over 1,200 artists including IDLES, Squid and Massive Attack also signed an open letter addressed to The Great Escape, asking them to remove Barclays as a sponsor. “Israel continues to defy international law, ignore the United Nations calls for a ceasefire and block aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, including by killing aid workers. We cannot be silent. We will not be complicit in The Great Escape being a branding opportunity for Barclays,” it read.
In a move similar to the Great Escape walkout, many artists refused to play at SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas in March because of the event’s connections to the US Army and weapons companies amid the Israel-Gaza conflict. These included Gruff Rhys, Kneecap, Sprints, Lambrini Girls, Gel, Rachel Chinouriri, Cardinals and NewDad.
On artists who pulled out of SXSW earlier this year, US singer-songwriter Squirrel Flower said: “A music festival should not include war profiteers. I refuse to be complicit in this and withdraw my art and labour in protest.”
Barclays was previously the target of a number of boycotts throughout the 1970s and 1980s over their financial involvement in the South African apartheid, which eventually forced them to withdraw from the country.
Other artists opted to play The Great Escape despite political reservations, including Kneecap, with Moglai Bap explaining to NME: “If your income depends on this life and you’re a touring band, then everything’s connected to one of these companies in some way. Ideally, if we had the money, we’d just boycott everything and sit in the house and tweet all day.”
Meanwhile, a similar boycott built around Latitude, Download and Isle Of Wight Festivals this year, when it emerged that they were also sponsored by Barclays. The bank did eventually withdraw from those events too, in news that was celebrated by Tom Morello, Enter Shikari and others.
In other Great Escape news, the festival withdrew the Faroe Islands as its lead country partner last month over concerns over its whaling practices, amid outcry from local interest groups.
