Celebrating over 50 years of ICAF

We look back at half a century of Equity’s International Committee for Artists’ Freedom, and ahead to its future.

“To all artists: good work. To all workers: good art. To all people: Equity.”

True to this universal rights-affirming slogan, our union has a long and proud history of international solidarity.

The performing arts and entertainment industry is a global one, and Equity’s international work has included banning the sale of British television programmes to South Africa from 1976-1993 to strengthen the anti-Apartheid movement; speaking directly to British producers when working with Bollywood companies who’ve risked artists health and safety in recent years, supporting the foundation of a sister union in Ghana in 2014, winning a Covid support scheme for artists in Japan during the pandemic and much, much more.

In 1952, we also co-founded the International Federation of Actors (or FIA, from the French Federation Internationale des Acteurs) made up of performers’ trade unions across the globe. Unlike many such federations we’ve always accepted members from every continent, and in the Cold War to this day, from countries with every political tradition. Today, FIA represents hundreds of thousands of people and spans around 90 member organisations in more than 60 countries.

Alongside this global industrial activity has sat the direct, practical work of Equity’s International Committee for Artists’ Freedom (ICAF). Over 50 years, ICAF’s function has been to provide support to foreign artists suffering persecution – whether that be through activity such as campaigning, donating money, and helping artists obtain visas to escape oppressive regimes.

The personal difference that ICAF has made to the lives of hundreds of individual artists has been immeasurable, and in doing so they have put a progressive understanding of freedom of speech on the map and made Equity a respected voice on international issues.

From 2024, ICAF will be renamed the International Solidarity Committee to make its purpose and remit clearer, with a nod to its original name: the FIA Solidarity and Aid Fund Committee. It will also have new powers to submit motions to Equity’s annual conference and Council (where Equity’s policies are made), and for the first time receive regular funding from the union directly – starting at £10,000 a year. This will be in addition to the bequests and fundraising that will remain a core part of its financing.

The Committee has a vital role in supporting individual artists and companies who are fighting persecution, and will continue to do so, as well as advising Council on international solidarity issues which arise.

All of the Committee’s activities are too numerous to be listed in full – including re-building a theatre company after the civil war in Sierra Leone, helping displaced Syrian actors, campaigning on behalf of artists in Tibet, and much, much more. But as we mark 50 years of Equity’s international solidarity activism, we’ve compiled some highlights of how ICAF has fought for good work, good art and equity for artists across the world.