Arts Council England is seeking legal costs of £40,000 from the Mercury prize winner Speech Debelle and her legal team after she lost an employment tribunal following claims she faced racial discrimination while working for the arts funding body.
Debelle, whose real name is Corynne Elliot, worked for ACE as a relationship manager in the organisation’s music team for three years, but left in September 2021, before eventually bringing a tribunal against ACE in 2023.
Debelle claimed to have faced microaggressions, bullying and harassment during her time working for the organisation, which led to work-related stress and her departure. ACE denied all her claims.
During a five-day tribunal at London Central employment tribunal in October 2023, judges ruled that Elliot had not faced direct or indirect race discrimination, race-related harassment or constructive race discriminatory dismissal.
After the ruling, Arts Council England decided to take legal action to recover the money it spent defending the tribunal, which it says could be up to £40,000 with the rapper and her legal team potentially paying £20,000 each.
Debelle, who has set up a funding page to cover her legal costs, said she felt ACE was trying to make an example of her by seeking the legal costs, something it has never done before. “They want to make sure they send a message that the might of the organisation will be against you if you dare to stand up to them,” she said.
An Arts Council England spokesperson said: “The unanimous judgment of the tribunal was that the claims against Arts Council England were dismissed and the tribunal found that Arts Council staff acted professionally and appropriately.
“Whilst we will not comment further as proceedings are ongoing, we can confirm that we take our responsibility as custodians of taxpayers’ money seriously, and are therefore seeking to recover legal costs. Our approach is based on the comments of the judge on the claimant’s case, which was dismissed on every point.”
Debelle grew up in Crystal Palace and had been homeless before starting a successful music career. She rose to prominence after unexpectedly winning the Mercury prize in 2009 for her album Speech Therapy, beating the likes of Kasabian, the Horrors and Florence + the Machine.
There was intense press interest after her win and the eventual release of her second critically acclaimed album, Freedom of Speech, but she was later dropped by her label, Big Dada.
She went on to appear in Celebrity MasterChef and then opened up a food truck on Brick Lane in east London. She also helped curate the Strength and Vulnerability Bunker branch of the Koestler Trust prisoners’ arts programme at the Southbank Centre before joining ACE in 2017.
While at ACE, Debelle set up the Black Influencers Masterclass and Programme, which was aimed at Black and minority ethnic artists who wanted to access arts funding.
ACE has had a difficult start to 2024 after it was forced to amend “reputational risk” guidance it released in January that suggested “overtly political or activist” work could break funding agreements.
Several artists including Robert Macfarlane and Feargal Sharkey condemned the original advice, while Equity, the performing arts and entertainment trade union, said the effects of the guidance would be to censor work and “silence artists … especially those working in the activist or political space”.
The revised guidance, released last week, said: “The Arts Council will not remove or refuse funding to an organisation or an individual purely because they make work that is political.”
Arts Council England’s case against Speech Debelle will be heard on Wednesday 13 March.
