Performing Difference: Diversity, Representation and the Nation

The chapter argues for the importance of creatively engaging with cultural differences within communities in order to address the lack of representation, participation and accessibility in the arts, especially in relation to race and ethnicity, theoretically underpinning the postcolonial aim set out by Homi Bhabha of a construction of the nation based on ‘the otherness of the people as one’. Through an examination of the methodology of a new opera work Clocks 1888: the greener by Brolly Productions that premiered at the Hackney Empire, London (2016), the discussion explores how this engagement can lead to art form innovation and inclusion, contextualised by a historiography of public funding in relation to BME representation in the arts  from 1976 to the present.