In February Manick Govinda wrote on this site about the UK Home Office restrictions on non-EU Artists and Academics. Since then Govinda has been leading a campaign against the new points-based system for the Manifesto Club and a petition has attracted more than 4,900 signatures.

The regulations are affecting many organisations and  visiting artists from visa-national countries, European and US based asylum seekers, some of whom have actually been refused entry even though they received certificates of sponsorship by UK licensed sponsors.  Equally, many professional,  community and  amateur arts organisations have not been able to cope with the costs and  excessive bureaucracy of the points-based system.  The testimonials section of the campaign website so far contains 19 accounts of contemporary visual artists, musicians, academics, promoters, museum and gallery workers, a ballet company, tango enthusiasts, and international actors who have come up against these Kafkaesque, humiliating and hostile regulations.

Many well-known  artists, musicians and writers such as Antony Gormley, Jeremy Deller, Zarina  Bhimji, Tacita Dean, David Medalla, Maureen Duffy and Arthur Brown have signed up as well as executive  directors and trustees from the Whitechapel Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, Showroom Gallery, Afterall,  Ballet Rambert, Artsadmin, The Live Art Development Agency, A Foundation,  Jerwood Foundation, Visiting Arts and Delfina Foundation to name a few.

There will be a campaign event in London – Cabaret without Borders on Wednesday  3 June 7-10pm supported by A Foundation and Artsadmin. This will be a convivial  evening of performances, readings, testimonies and passionate rhetoric – for freedom of movement and against these suspicious border control rules. Contributors so far include the author Maureen Duffy and performance artists Mark McGowan, Harold Offeh and Susannah Hewlett.  This event is important – an act of resistance against the regulations and for campaign members to get further involved, to meet, socialise, discuss and celebrate the right to unfettered artistic and intellectual freedom.

Govinda is now stepping up the  campaign and asking Blueprint readers to do 3 things:

1. Help us reach  10,000
The petition is growing fast. Our aim is to reach 10,000  signatories to force politicians to take notice. So please get the petition  out everywhere you can. Send it around friends and colleagues; get it on  mailing lists; post it on newsletters, websites, facebook groups and other  social/professional networking sites; get it discussed in organisations, your work-place, union meetings, and within any other formal or informal  groups. Here’s the petition site again: www.PetitionOnline.com/MCvisit/petition.html

2.  Write to your MP
MPs do pay attention to constituents’ mail, so writing  a letter is a good way to raise our issue’s political profile. You can easily  write to your MP using the message service: www.writetothem.com. Your  message will be faxed or emailed directly to your local MP.

Key  points to mention:
- Say that you are objecting to the new Points-Based  System for visiting artists and academics
- Mention any negative effects  that these regulations have had (or will have) on your work
- Demand they  ask a question about the issue in parliament, raise it with home secretary  Jacqui Smith and Home Office ministers
- Say why you are passionately  opposed to these regulations