Dear Trustees of the Old Vic,

We are writing to you as theatre workers, acting professionals and others working in the performing arts, many of whom have direct connections to the Old Vic, to call on you to bring your relationship with Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to an end.

We share a deep concern for the climate crisis, human rights, and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and are deeply troubled that the Old Vic, an institution with a prominent and influential role in the arts world, is helping to both enhance the reputation and further the business of one of the world’s biggest financiers of fossil fuel development and investors in war. 

We understand that Old Vic’s corporate partnership with RBC began in 2015, with RBC’s current contract as ‘Principal Partner’ of the theatre up for renewal this August 2024. As supporters and friends of the Old Vic, we urge you not to renew this partnership. 

The Charities Commission states that it is the duty of trustees to ‘consider carefully donations from sources that might be seen to compromise the charity’s reputation’ and to ‘ensure that it is appropriate for the charity to accept money from the particular donor’. In making a decision about any future partnership, you must therefore inform yourselves of the ethical concerns and controversies relating to RBC below as part of your due diligence responsibilities, and recognising that this only represents a short summary of the many serious issues that could be raised.

RBC’s contribution to the climate crisis

RBC is one of the world’s biggest funders of fossil fuels and has put hundreds of billions of dollars into the industry. It invested US$33.7 billion in 2022 and has invested over US$250 billion in fossil fuel funding since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed, in which countries committed to limiting global temperature rises below 1.5℃. This has included investments in and loans to major oil and gas producers such as BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, and furthering coal mining, destructive fracking and extraction from the highly-polluting Alberta Tar Sands. 

RBC has loaned billions to the North AmericanTrans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project and Coastal GasLink project; despite warnings from the UN that there can be no further expansion of fossil fuel projects if we are to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

The scale of the human impact from the projects RBC finances cannot be underestimated. On the current trajectory of GHG emissions, global communities are facing increasingly severe droughts, more intense storms and sea level rise, putting pressure on human health, food systems, livelihoods and ecosystems, in ways that will be irreversible if emissions are not rapidly brought down.

Human rights violations and climate colonialism

RBC finances projects that violate human rights, particularly Indigenous rights within Canada/Turtle Island. First Nations leaders have mounted campaigns against the Coastal Gaslink pipeline, transporting fracked gas, which threatens Wet’suwet’en land, and the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, a new tar sands pipeline. It has significant shares in Total Energies, whose East Africa Crude Oil pipeline threatens to displace 118,000 people in Uganda. 

Palestine: investing in war crimes

RBC holds billions of dollars of shares in arms manufacturers that are supplying Israel, including General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, whose weapons have been used for decades to support its military occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine, and have been used in attacks on civilians.

Old Vic is giving social licence to RBC’s operations

As those working in theatre and the arts, we recognise that funding pressures across the sector are acute and that the Old Vic in particular is more reliant upon commercial and private sources of income. However, we have now seen numerous arts and cultural organisations draw clear ethical red lines and shift away from unethical sponsors and donors.

The Old Vic presents sponsorship as a means to ‘enhance your corporate credibility by positioning your brand as a crucial supporter of the arts and its positive impact on the communities theatre serves.’ As performers, theatre-makers, artists and workers, we strongly object to our creativity and our labour being used to enhance RBC’s reputation and its profits. Given the disparity between RBC’s professed commitment to social and environmental causes, and its deeply destructive business operations, it is clear that it would not be appropriate for the Old Vic to continue promoting RBC as a positive contributor to society.

Corporate sponsorship is a transaction, not philanthropy – and no money is given in an ethical vacuum. When the Old Vic advertises sponsorship as a means ‘to meet your specific business objectives and to drive superb [return on investment] back to your business”, it is clear the theatre has been prepared to help further the profits and destructive business plans of a company like RBC.

What the Old Vic must do now

We believe the Old Vic’s stated mission to be a “strong advocate for the power of theatre as a force for good” is clearly undermined by the Old Vic’s partnership with Royal Bank of Canada, rather than sustained by it, and continuing the relationship with RBC has the potential to do significant harm to the theatre’s own reputation and standing. 

We trust that you will not renew the sponsorship agreement with Royal Bank of Canada in 2024. 

Please would you kindly confirm what action you will be taking to address this. 

Kind regards,

• Caryl Churchill, Playwright
• Sir Mark Rylance, Actor
• Dawn King, Playwright
• Morfydd Clark, Actor
• Paapa Essiedu, Actor
• Stephen Dillane, Actor
• Tabby Lamb, Playwright
• April De Angelis, Playwright
• Cara Theobold, Actor
• Alex Lawther, Actor/Filmmaker
• Hilary Westlake, Chair, Artists for Palestine UK
• Tamara Lawrance, Actor
• Trevor White, Actor
• Amber Massie-Blomfield, Producer
• Will Attenborough, Actor
• Sean Biggerstaff, Actor, Equity Union Councillor
• Sam Swann, Actor
• Edward Davis, Actor
• Leonor Lemée, Actor, 
• Amerjit Kaur-Dhaliwal, Equity Union Officer
• Alexandra Dowling, Actor
• Eleanor Sutton, Actor
• Victoria Burns, on behalf of Culture Declares Climate and Ecological Emergency, UK
• Emily Davis, Theatre Producer
• Toby Peach, Theatre Maker
• Rachael Savage, Vamos Theatre
• Marta Moreno Muñoz, La Cultura Declara la Emergencia
• Elza Kephart, RBC Off Screen
• Fiona Whitelaw, Actor/Writer Councillor Equity Union
• Shenagh Govan, Actor
• Dr Anthony Roberts, Director
• Kate DeRight, Creative Director, Spectra
• Dan de la Motte, Equity Councillor & Performer
• Ellen McDougall, Director
• Katie Wilson, Indigenous Climate Action
• Tomasin Cuthbert, Artistic Director Soap Soup Theatre
• Harry Lister Smith, Equity for a Green New Deal
• Leila Mimmack , Actor
• Danusia Samal, Actor
• Natalie Abrahami, Theatre Director
• Fehinti Balogun, Actor, Theatremaker and Climate Activist
• Helena Wilson, Actor
• Sarah Impey, Actor
• Joseph Hancock, Theatre Maker
• Cressida Brown, Director
• Kirsty Housley, Theatre Maker
• Jennifer Lunn, Playwright
• Sonali Bhattacharyya, Playwright and Screenwriter
• Sara Masry, Actor
• Omar Bynon, Theatre-maker
• Joe Clark, Actor
• Rida Hamidou, Playwright
• Joanna Mackie, Theatre Producer
• Kirsty Bushell, Actress, writer, director
• Ruth Ben-Tovim, Co-director, Walking Forest
• Rima Dodd, Complicité
• Naomi Westerman, Playwright
• Chloe Naldrett, Producer
• Suhayla El-Bushra, Playwright
• Aisling Gallagher, Director
• Tam Dean Burn, Actor
• Zachary Hing, Actor
• Tracy Gillman, Actor, Writer & Director
• Holly Robinson, Playwright
• Caitlin McEwan, Actor & Dancer
• Francesca Willow, Dance artist
• Marla King, Dance Artist
• Charlotte Pyke, Actor
• Paul Skelton, Freelance Production Manager
• Clare Slater, Artistic Director and Dramaturg
• Siobhán Cannon-Brownlie, Director
• Zita Holbourne, Performance Poet
• Culture Workers Against Genocide
• Frances Morgan, Theatre maker, Producer
• Deane McElree, Playwright
• Katrina Bennett, Playwright
• Eleanor Sikorski, Choreographer, Filmmaker
• Abigail Graham, Theatre Director
• Alan Fielden, Theatre maker, Lecturer
• Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Playwright & Screenwriter
• Zoe Svendsen, Director, Dramaturg
• Connie Treves, Theatre Director
• Chris Garrard, Campaigner and Post-Doctoral Researcher in Theatre Studies
• Jamie Potter, Audience Development Manager
• Lestyn Evans, Puppeteer and Equity member
• Rachel Leonard, Theatre Maker
• Sara Masry, Actress and Writer
• Robin Lyons, Ergon Theatre, Climate Artist and Environmental Consultant
• Owen Sheers, Poet & Playwright
• Katie Tranter, Actor
• Ruth Lass, Actor
• Chloe Massey, Actor
• Gemma Lawrence & Paul Valentine, Chair & Vice Chair of Equity for a Green New Deal
• Lewis Holt, Theatre Maker
• Penny Chivas, Dance artist
• Stephanie Ware, Actor & Writer
• Mika Collins, Writer
• Cal Trute, Writer/Director
• Amir Kiani, Producer
• Laura Hetherington, Troubadour Theatre
• Nina Millns, Writer
• Faiza Abdulkadir, Arts Fundraiser
• Fionn Ó Loingsigh, Actor
• Annie Siddons, Writer, Dramaturg
• Giovanni Bienne, Actor, Equity Union Councillor
• Lucy Sheen, Actor & Writer
• Sally Abbott, Writer, Playwright
• Bec Boey, Writer & Actor
• Venice van Someren, Actor
• Olivia MacDonald, Actor
• Rachel Hamada, Playwright
• Scott Parker, Theatre maker
• Paul Westwood, Actor & Playwright
• Ian Macnaughton, Actor
• Bertrand Lesca, Theatre maker
• Georgia Silver, Actor
• David Levesley, Writer
• Amelia Moses, Actor
• Kathleen Cranham, Actor
• Blair McAlpine, Director/Dramaturg/Performer
• Zoe Katsilerou, Dance Theatre
• Natasha Pavey, Theatre maker/ Producer
• Manuel Ruiz, Theatre Student, Actor and Facilitator
• Ziyad Saadi, Writer/Director/Actor
• Amelia Kyriacou, Theatre Designer
• Matthew Heywood, Actor
• Alli Hepper, Costume Designer
• Ryan McVeigh, Director
• Maddy Wade, Stage Manager
• Emma Pallant, Actor
• Robbie Butler, Lighting Designer
• Chrussy Byrd, Film worker
• Robin Paley Yorke, Actor
• Christopher Nairne, Lighting Designer
• Khadija Raza, Theatre Designer
• Astra Burka, Filmmaker
• Elric Robichon, Film editor
• Sydney Sobel, Student
• Gillian Muller, Screenwriter
• Jenny Cartwright, Filmmaker
• Steve Patry, Filmaker
• Josue Bertolino, Cinematographer
• Simon Plouffe, Filmmaker