Surviving the odds: Wasafiri and funding precarity

Abstract

Little magazine Wasafiri, celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2024, has become the UK’s leading magazine for international contemporary writing since its launch at the University of Kent in 1984. This is a considerable achievement since little magazines – known to be more avant-garde and experiential than their commercially oriented counterparts – are subject to limited budgets, small print runs, and short duration.¹ Like many little magazines, Wasafiri was buoyed by countless volunteers but hampered by a continuous need for funding. This took place against the backdrop of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government (1979–1990) which, for this little magazine and similar grassroots organizations, engendered a heightened environment of precariousness. Pioneering shifts in the literary, cultural, and critical landscape, Wasafiri continues to provoke cross-cultural dialogue by drawing widely across modern culture and the arts. How did it get here? Wasafiri’s history is a story of the survival of a little magazine faced with several decades of a precarious arts environment – one of beating the political and policy odds to become a prestigious magazine earning a coveted position as one of the Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organizations.²

This article argues that Wasafiri’s heavy reliance on individuals, universities including Kent, Queen Mary, and the Open University, as well as institutional patrons such as the Greater London Council (GLC) and Arts Council England (ACE), is not simply a ‘little magazine trait’ but is the result of state-engendered precarity. In Frames of War, Judith Butler denotes precariousness as implying dependency, and advances that precariousness is ‘a social condition from which clear political demands and principles emerge’.³ She presents this concept, however, as a corporeal predicament of those who need to be supported by proper infrastructure and, as such, are beholden to others for that support. While Butler positions this argument concerning the human experience in times of war – and magazine publication is by no means comparable – the aspect of the political environment as a cause of precarity through which Butler frames her argument is applicable in its emphasis on dependence. The article is concerned with Wasafiri’s specific pecuniary vulnerability as both an arts organization and independent little magazine. Through a case study of Wasafiri, this article suggests three contributory factors that may determine a magazine’s success or demise: (i) the lack of funding infrastructure which puts the administrative burden on the magazine, its editors, and close supporters; (ii) how it responds to the impact of this on its resources; and (iii) how the content of the magazine represents an interaction with broader socio-political-economic environments. To explore these factors, the article draws on unique primary data from Wasafiri’s archive to provide a brief historicized account of the magazine and its relationship with ACE during the fraught Thatcher years of mid-1980–1990.⁴

Thatcher instituted a brand of governance and political ideology (‘Thatcherism’) that was considered a decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war Keynesian consensus, which promoted spending to preserve the economy rather than make savings.⁵ Consequently, little magazines like Wasafiri were no longer ‘protected’ by the state but instead forced to repeatedly justify their existence and depended on the government’s whim about which projects (or not) it would sponsor. As a result, many magazines – now unable to reach, adhere to or even maintain funding criteria – fell by the wayside.

Although ACE was retained to provide ‘arms-length’ pecuniary support to the arts and culture sector, for those who, like Wasafiri, survived the turbulent changes that Thatcher instituted, this came at a cost.⁶ Grass-roots organizations like Wasafiri were subject to constant form-filling and requests for formalization that belied artistic ethos: complying put pressure on resources. In socio-political contexts, institutional grant funding is a fundamentally political activity, and considerable time and effort is spent seeking this form of patronage. Designed to instil and maintain uniformity and control, this form of patronage destabilizes the organization awaiting the uncertain outcome, and for Wasafiri applying for funding would become as much the business of publishing as commissioning content for the magazine. This funding environment created a precariousness that was arduous to avert. As Wasafiri founding editor, Susheila Nasta, explained in 2019: ‘given the often short lives of these kinds of ventures […] Wasafiri has not only stayed afloat but thrived amidst the often-shifting requirements of funding bodies, along with changes in government, cultural politics and the agendas of key institutional stakeholders’.⁷

This article draws on Asha Rogers’ State Sponsored Literature and Chin-Tao Wu’s Privatising Culture to explore how state intervention in cultural activities impacted Wasafiri. Rogers claims that when the Arts Council was established in 1946, ‘the welfare state inaugurated access to culture as a public good […] through a model of arm’s length funding’.⁸ These new ‘expressive acts of subsidy, sponsorship, and cultural policy’ signalled a significant social change from the previous overbearing relationship instituted within the ‘Victorian supervision’ era to one of liberal welfare and artistic autonomy. At this point, the British government, through Keynesian ideals, sought to offer literature and the arts protection from market pressures through cultural and pecuniary measures. These were meted out in various forms, but particularly through the rapid ascendancy of writers and intellectuals in Britain’s cultural institutions such as ACE. However, Rogers notes that, despite the positive intentions, these measures were often ‘relative, partial and liable to disruption’.⁹ These unintended outcomes pale in comparison to the destructive turn of the state’s interventions under Thatcher’s leadership. Wu’s analysis highlights Thatcher’s radical policy change from the 1980s, which instilled another significant shift in the role of the state. Following drastic cuts to arts subsidies, publicly funded arts institutions were forced to adopt the competitive spirit of free enterprise, ‘creating a culture of craven dependency’ within the social landscape.¹⁰ Designed to end the welfare mentality of the 1960s and 1970s and push the political discourse firmly to the right, Thatcher also inveigled her ministers into key positions within ACE, resulting in a marked shift towards a business-like orientation. This change in direction and language was reflected in the title of a 1987 ACE publication: Rewarding Enterprise.¹¹

Rogers’ and Wu’s detailed discussions support this article’s questions about how state interventions impact the artistic endeavours of economically fragile enterprises. Grant funding is offered within a specific political and ideological environment and, as Butler contends, is designed to produce outcomes expedient to the government supporting cultural activity on its terms. The result is a compounding, not alleviating, of precarity. Thus, enterprises like Wasafiri are forced into the very specific challenge of how they can guard their independence while also being under the pay of a patron, treading a thin line between independence and capitulation to the system. Analysing Wasafiri’s history highlights a complexity in the contingent nature of the interaction between a little magazine and the political environment. This case study disrupts the assumed historical narratives about little magazines. Additionally, fore-fronting and assembling information from the archive provides a different framework for understanding precarity: what, for example, it says about issues of independence, agency, and state-sponsored literature.

Wasafiri and the necessity of patronage

Wasafiri is the brainchild of founding editor Nasta; its name stems from the Kiswahili word for ‘travellers’ which reflects the magazine’s ethos of cultural travelling, and diverse histories.¹² It was launched in 1984 as a journal of the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures (ATCAL). ATCAL was initiated as an activist group in 1978 in response to inadequate attention to and teaching of African, Caribbean, and South Asian literature within English schools. A plethora of Department of Education and Science surveys and government papers evidenced prejudice within the state school system, indicating that the English curriculum lacked an affiliated approach towards culturally diverse reading and examination texts.¹³ Precipitated by a tumultuous period of change in the UK as it moved through the decline of the Empire into multiculturalism, throughout the 1970s into the 1980s, the Inner London Education Authority encouraged schools to implement a multicultural curriculum. A driving force for seven years, ATCAL was notably successful in getting authors such as Derek Walcott and Chinua Achebe onto examination syllabuses. Towards its eventual demise due to lack of funds in 1985, ATCAL called for a journal to continue its legacy, and founding editor Nasta and her associates Robert Fraser and Prabhu Guptata accepted the call. Thereafter, Wasafiri was propelled forward by Nasta’s determination and she was at the helm until she ‘passed on the torch’ at Wasafiri’s thirty-fifth anniversary.¹⁴ From the start, Wasafiri, joined organizations like the National Association for the Teaching of English and the Commonwealth Institute in calling for inclusive approaches to literature in society and education.¹⁵ The magazine had ambitions to extend the established boundaries of British literary culture and to provide much-needed literary and critical coverage of writers from African, Caribbean, and Asian backgrounds who often struggled to get adequate attention in mainstream publishing. With a mix of fiction, poetry, interviews, essays, and reviews, it is now renowned for publishing some of the world’s most distinguished writers, including Abdulrazak Gurnah and Bernardine Evaristo.

Within the publishing industry, ‘little magazines’ are renowned for being driven by artistic expression rather than commercial gain; this freedom, however, means that they run perennially short of funds. Consequently, they have long been known for their precarity and fleeting existence.¹⁶ Despite this, Wasafiri has grown to international status and is now in partnership with publishing giant Taylor & Francis.¹⁷  Wasafiri epitomizes a ‘little magazine’, but one that fiercely fought against the fate of an early demise, working hard for its independence and beating the odds to survive navigating Britain’s complex funding environment. At the start, however, Wasafiri was rich in support but poor in funding. Archive documents reveal that, lacking money to print the magazine, it was launched ‘in absentia’ at an ATCAL conference in 1983.¹⁸ Editors Nasta and Fraser – a biographer and critic – announced that the magazine would be released but required ATCAL attendees to subscribe to raise funds. Those subscriber funds – 90 lots of £4 – together with blind faith in the editors saw the magazine realize its first publication in Autumn 1984.¹⁹

Wasafiri existed as an independent venture for several years without regular state funding. This distinction is necessary to highlight the historic prefiguration of Wasafiri’s funding challenges. A little magazine’s viability relies on the founding editor’s vision and the free labour of willing supporters – but with scant financial resources, they must look to patronage for financial assistance. The archive reveals an array of little-known but integral personal connections that were key to Wasafiri’s survival, such as Randolph Vigne – a South African activist – who supported the magazine by allowing it shelter in the basement of his home and publishing it between 1984 and 1986. Additionally, academics Lyn Innes and Louis James (who supervised Nasta) and Alastair Niven (Director General of the Africa Centre, later Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Great Britain) would provide considerable support to Wasafiri and its mission.²⁰ Notably, some of these personal contacts were connected to influential organizations. For example, Vicky Unwin, a long-term supporter who served the magazine in various roles, published the Heinemann African Writers Series. Unwin used her publishing relationships and resources to benefit a little magazine that might have struggled to reach or obtain those on its own. The University of Kent also became a significant supporter: it was the site of ATCAL’s and Wasafiri’s launches in 1978 and 1983, respectively. Kent had a long history of African and Caribbean studies and developed a degree course in 1976 that enabled students to specialize in African and Caribbean studies with English. Some of those students included now esteemed writers and poets Fred D’Aguiar, Sandra Agard, and Nasta herself. In a 1987 editorial Nasta acknowledged that ‘Kent has offered to contribute to the funding of Wasafiri for the next three years’.²¹ That association continued thereafter for at least ten years with Kent providing free postgraduate assistance to the Wasafiri office and printing services. Kent’s patronage highlights a mutually beneficial relationship whereby Wasafiri gained financial injections and in-kind administrative support and Kent was aligned with a well-regarded, up-and-coming literary magazine.

Throughout its history, Wasafiri made many one-off funding applications: one such was to the GLC’s ethnic minorities unit. The GLC – the local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986 – was led by Labour MP Ken Livingstone during its past 5 years. With radical socialism, Livingstone introduced high-spend policies and so-called controversial grants. Of benefit to Wasafiri were the grants aimed at integrating historical and contemporary contributions made by Black artists to British society. In issue 2, editors Nasta and Fraser wrote, ‘Since November we have been given GLC funding; this is to cover the next three issues’.²² This brief but significant sentence announced that the magazine would now have four issues safely under its belt – enough to begin staking its place alongside ‘several other Black Arts magazines, such as Artrage, Third Text and Intercultural Arts’.²³ This was Wasafiri’s first and last application to the GLC. The GLC were viewed as ‘left-wing extremists’, with Livingstone nicknamed ‘Red Ken’ and compared to Lenin in the press; Thatcher subsequently abolished the GLC in 1986.²⁴ In issue 4, it behoved editor Nasta to alert readers to the loss of this major funding source. Unable to obtain a grant for 1986–1987, she stated that ‘Wasafiri’s future depend[ed] on further financial assistance’ and made a plea to subscribers for as much support as possible in promoting the magazine.²⁵ Later, in issue 9 Nasta paid homage to the GLC, acknowledging the support of a scheme without which Wasafiri’s immediate future would have been very uncertain.²⁶

While the GLC grant provided a significant boost for the magazine, financially and amongst its competitors, the addition of the GLC logo inside the cover during this period potentially conflicted with the magazine’s underlying ethos of independence. On one hand, it was an important visual endorsement. On the other, the logo of a political institution implies ownership. Was this bending its principles or was it simply about there being no other viable means for Wasafiri to fund itself? This speaks to Butler’s call to ask critical questions about which lives flourish in particular socio-political contexts. Thus, the state’s provision of such funding pots created or contributed to the very precariousness of the arts that it claimed it wanted to prevent. Wasafiri’s history demonstrates a growing dependence on state institutions. The subsequent demise of the GLC in 1986 not only highlighted shifting political priorities but also the far-reaching impact on the arts and cultural organizations in Britain. Regardless of their political origins, such funding schemes required many acts of labour and Nasta had to seek and secure this funding. The remainder of the article therefore not only examines ACE, Wasafiri’s largest funding source, but also considers the demanding application processes and how these were negotiated as constant bids for survival.

Thatcher’s Britan and state-funded art

The Thatcher government based cultural policy on objectives of reduced public expenditure, the growth of private sponsorship, and stronger control of ACE’s operations. This radical policy change demonstrated how the ‘cultural becom[es] political’ as community arts were denigrated as political agitation.²⁷ Thatcher starkly expressed that she was no supporter of public subsidies for the arts and submitted the cultural sector to a regime of cuts and insistence on private funding sources. Integrating Wasafiri’s history into this specific political juncture sheds new light on these Thatcherite changes.

ACE went through two clear iterations during the period detailed in this article. First was the attitudinal recognition of the writer’s need for autonomy. In its original incarnation, ACE was a quasi-autonomous governmental institution.²⁸ It sought to champion and develop art and culture across the country by what was regarded as ‘light-touch state patronage’ via an ‘arms-length’ model.²⁹ This was distinct from the historically onerous ‘Victorian supervision’ model of patronage of the author.³⁰ While this progression was welcomed by authors, this new attentiveness toward ‘the writer’ in practice favoured white writers. For example, those deemed worthy of patronage were decided by peer judgement which, as such, came with implied boundaries. Though technically ethnic minority authors were not excluded, applications from ‘British writers’ were implicitly coded as ‘white writers’ and two criteria indicate that applications from ethnic minorities would be disproportionately disadvantaged.³¹ Firstly, there was an implicit assumption that writers were already established and would be able to evidence ‘by one or two published books, that they have a promise worth encouraging’. This would have been a difficult hurdle, particularly given the general attitude of publishers towards literature from the Commonwealth at the time. Secondly, the requirement to ‘be sponsored by a reputable member of the literary profession’ would again prove an inordinately difficult hurdle for ethnic minority authors.³² Therefore, although bursaries were given in recognition of writers being ‘deserving of financial help’, unless they met these additional criteria, their precarity was not assuaged but compounded.

Indeed, Butler speaks of political formations, whereby a generalized condition of precariousness and dependency is both exploited and disavowed, and arguably the implicit nature of ACE’s application criteria reflects this.³³ The connotation here is that individual autonomy is limited by ‘modes of sociality and environment’, which, through clear class and, by implication, race distinctions, were actively created by ACE.³⁴ It was not until 1982 and subsequently in 1986 that there were belated attempts by ACE to not only widen the definition of ‘British writer’ but also recognize the contribution and value of ethnic minority arts significantly present in the UK since the end of the Empire. ACE’s intentions to move towards promoting cultural diversity within the arts were not fully articulated until its 1986 strategy document, The Glory of the Garden, which recognized the ‘changing perceptions of the requirements of a multicultural society’ and put in place steps to meet the needs of those communities.³⁵ As a result Wasafiri was able to apply for funding given its close associations with that multicultural society. This would, however, become a double-edged sword as for many future applications it was kept firmly within this category.

Thatcher’s arrival advanced ACE’s second iteration. The political orientations of the new Conservative government for the cultural sector impugned the established arms-length principle and drastically transformed the operation, scope, and working practices of ACE. Hitherto it had some semblance of protection from government control through its semi-autonomous capacity to allocate funding according to the decisions of its different specialist (unelected) committees. However, it began to feel its powers curbed throughout three significant changes in leadership and as the Government, under the guise of reducing government spending, began applying financial pressure. Expert appointees were replaced with new Conservative ‘political placemen’ appointed by Thatcher, who, standing as partisans, hired staff that reflected her neoliberal orientations.³⁶ The first appointment was Sir (now Lord) William Rees-Mogg, the editor of The Times (one of the major Tory papers) from 1967 to 1981, and father of the current Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. An out-spoken Thatcher supporter, he was appointed as ACE Chairman in 1982, resulting in ACE decisively moving to extract money from the private sector and change its language to monetarist talk of ‘value for money’.³⁷ Rees-Mogg appointed Luke Rittner as secretary-general in 1983. Before that appointment, Rittner had been director of the Association of Business Sponsorship of the Arts, an obscure corporate sponsorship organization but one with the right business contacts. His move into national public arts signalled Thatcher’s efforts to instil the principle of sponsorship in arts funding.³⁸

Initially ‘the energy of this entrepreneurial duo’ was absorbed by ACE’s devolution efforts outlined in The Glory of the Garden, and it was not until much later that the true impact became clear, though there were early clues.³⁹ In the ‘Chairman’s Introduction’ to ACE’s 39th Annual Report, for example, Rees-Mogg wrote, ‘We are also deeply involved in the consequences of the proposed reorganisation of local government which will in 1986 give us new responsibilities’. In the same report, Rittner wrote, ‘The General Election of June 1983 heralded a new Minister for the Arts, and so new relationships had to be forged’.⁴⁰ Such commentary indicated ACE’s new political orientation; Thatcher had managed without major structural reorganization to infiltrate ACE’s inner mechanisms and use that to implement radical changes.

ACE’s move from public resource to the marketing arm of corporations was cemented in 1989 when Rees-Mogg was succeeded by Peter Palumbo, a successful property developer notably well-connected in both the art and business worlds. All three appointments were the means through which the government was able to shape the previously ‘arms-length’ Arts Council.⁴¹ This saw grant conditions become more business-like in response to the Thatcherite privatizing of culture. This change towards business language illustrates Butler’s concerns when she said that ‘certain categories [of language] can bring social realities into being and produce certain affects [and, consequently] “performativity”’, and questioned what agency we have in political discourse.⁴²  Wasafiri’s acts of labour noted below reflect Butler’s statements, highlighting both the ‘performativity’ and ‘agency’ required to secure public funding.⁴³ This is a historic challenge as the role of patronage is complicated by the double function of ‘paymaster and taste-maker’.⁴⁴ Notably, ‘patrons of history, in the course of providing a living for creative or performing artists, have consistently imposed their own tastes’.⁴⁵ ACE was intimately involved with its applicants and as their ‘arms-length’ funding policies morphed into instruments of the state – thereby ‘legitimising processes within, and for the political system’ – there was increasing pressure for applicants to provide proof of adherence to its criteria and conditions to receive and keep its funding.⁴⁶

Sadly, while these developments in policy were taking place, ACE’s Literature Department felt the impact of the Thatcher cuts and experienced a major reduction in its budget for 1985/86 with its bursaries reduced from £82,000 to £15,000.⁴⁷ The cuts left the department unable to make any significant progress in its strategy to promote ethnic minority writers, effectively exacerbating an already extremely competitive process. It was at this difficult junction that Wasafiri began applying for funding. However, a fortunate turn of events saw, in 1987, Alastair Niven being appointed as Director of Literature for ACE. Niven, an editorial board member of Wasafiri, was also a member of ATCAL’s original steering committee and a one-time Director General of the Africa Centre in London. Niven proposed that ACE should not cut its support for literature, resulting in allocations almost doubling between 1987 and 1991. In the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Wasafiri, Niven described how Wasafiri met ACE’s aim to support ethnic minority writers, stating, ‘awarding it funding was not a hard decision […]. The journal from the start fitted the new brief of the Arts Council, which was to recognise diversity […]. Wasafiri has been one of the glories of the Arts Council's garden ever since’.⁴⁸ Niven’s intertextual reference to the Glory of the Garden report reflects ACE’s move into ethnic minority writing, and between 1984 and 1992, Niven would be a signatory to the grant offer letters to Wasafiri. However, Niven’s fond memories do not portray the exigencies of Wasafiri’s experience of that relationship, explored below.

Wasafiri and the arts council: a coming of age

Wasafiri had managed to publish two issues a year for five years before it began to formally apply to ACE for funding in 1989. Thanks to Nasta’s efforts, their annual applications were mostly successful and from the initial lowly grant of £2,000 in 1989, it would from 1990 be awarded annual funding. Fortunately for Wasafiri, it was able to supplement its annual grant by applying to other funding pots within ACE. Predominantly, these grants either sought to improve its business acumen and marketability and/or leveraged its ‘ethnic minority status’. Wasafiri disliked its ongoing categorization as a ‘minority’ magazine but had to heavily rely upon it as funding criteria. This is again representative of the performativity in language of which Butler speaks. For example, in 1990, it successfully applied to the Cultural Diversity Grant which was awarded to develop a marketing strategy: this figure represented a 200% increase to employ an editorial and subscriptions assistant.⁴⁹ In its initial funding applications, Wasafiri was required to provide two copies of ‘estimate forms’ noting estimated expenditure and income for the period. Instructed to return the form by August 1989 or ‘payments […] may be stopped if estimates have not been received’, thus begun Wasafiri’s relationship with such rigorous formality.⁵⁰

The period of ACE funding between 1990 and 1996 was a turning point for Wasafiri. First, ACE introduced 3-year funding, providing much-needed long-term assurance – though this opportunity was relatively short-lived as three-year grants were withdrawn by 1993/94 due to a low funding allocation from the government.⁵¹ Secondly, ACE referred Wasafiri to Nicholas Spice, a consultant through whom they reviewed all ACE-funded magazines.⁵² Spice undertook a detailed review of the magazine in 1991 and recommended steps for a targeted promotions campaign to boost sales and subscribers. On this basis, Nasta applied for and received additional ACE funding. As with including GLC’s logo, using a consultant seemingly contradicts Wasafiri’s grass-root ethos. Arguably the magazine now works within capitalist practices that little magazines are seen to fight against. This article contends, however, that this move was not Wasafiri’s decision but an ACE intervention. To receive funding, Wasafiri had to improve its marketability and business efficiency: these were the entrepreneurial skills and business acumen that Thatcher wanted to instil in arts organizations.

In 1993 ACE established a Magazine Group, focusing on magazines applying for funding. This group awarded Wasafiri a further £4,000 which included an uplift of 2 per cent in line with the government grant-in-aid increase.⁵³ To receive the funds Wasafiri was required to complete a ‘Conditions of Financial Assistance’ and financial proforma with one projected year and three forecast years to complete. ACE introduced this condition to promote ‘good business practice within the organisation’.⁵⁴ Notably, this was ACE nudging its funded organizations towards more formal, corporatized structures. The two-page proforma was accompanied by four pages of conditions that, for example, included a requirement to eliminate any accumulated debt ‘not more than three years from the date of the offer of subsidy’, and to ‘hold at least four meetings of its management body at regular intervals during the financial year’.⁵⁵  Wasafiri, having survived eight years by this point, would have conducted itself on a very informal basis. Thus, meeting four pages of wide and varying conditions that changed its work model would have been extremely challenging. Though issued under the auspices of ‘guidance’, there was little scope for non-compliance and, consequently, they read like directives. Even the mainstream publication The Times Literary Supplement commented on ACE’s stringent funding criteria stating, ‘the Council demands that editors meet a strict set of criteria before doling out the pittances’, with a nod there too to the falling subsidies.⁵⁶ The burden of these requirements put a great deal of strain on Nasta, who bore the brunt of this responsibility, having to handwrite applications and attachments in duplicate. Not to severely jeopardize its funding, Wasafiri applied itself to the task.

Conversely, there is an argument that these interventions, tough as they were to meet, created a fertile environment for growth. Wasafiri’s informal nature had served it thus far but to continue to call on ACE funding, it was forced to professionalize. Perhaps, then, ACE interventions spurred Wasafiri on to realizing its potential, particularly as year on year, it continued to thrive. Wasafiri’s bids were mostly successful and from 1995 its annual allocations almost doubled to £18,000 (comprising £7,000 from the Literary Panel; £5,000 from the Magazine Committee; and £6,000 from a newly founded Cultural Diversity Committee). Now well known to ACE and with Niven in their corner, the magazine was assigned a Literary Officer who referred them to ACE’s different funding pots. That same year, encouraged by the ACE Literary Officer, Wasafiri became a Limited Company and subsequently obtained charity status based on its educational content and encouragement of the arts of literature and drama.⁵⁷

In monitoring adherence to their terms and conditions, ACE conducted annual reviews. Copies in the Wasafiri archive, dated 1994/95–1997/98, evidence Wasafiri’s propulsion, revealing how it used the funding to secure itself within the magazine marketplace through increased subscriptions (which rose by ‘188.26%’) and developed sales and subscriptions markets overseas that boosted its success.⁵⁸ The next step in Wasafiri’s evolution occurred in 2001. Due to continually falling subsidies, ACE informed Wasafiri that it had to ‘justify the high level of subsidy [it … receive[d] (in relation to other magazines) per issue’ and required it to produce a third issue per year.⁵⁹ The thought of publishing a third issue without additional funds caused great consternation and in April 2001, Nasta prepared a proposal for Wasafiri’s Board titled ‘How do we do a third issue?’.⁶⁰ Nasta wrote, ‘much work is done on goodwill, a commodity that might run out if we are pushed too often. While I am told all literary magazines survive like this, it does not seem fair to continuously exploit the goodwill of Wasafiri’s staff and its Board’.⁶¹ Expressing concern about ACE’s request, she wrote, ‘Do we want our editorial decisions to be directed by our funding body […] are we doing this because we want to or because it is becoming a condition of our funding?’⁶² A salient question, indeed, as this felt like a too direct intervention into decisions Wasafiri would make for and about itself. Minutes of the lengthy Board discussions in May 2001 note that they were joined by John Hampson from ACE’s Literature Department.⁶³ Hampson, asked to explain ACE's rationale, stated,

The Magazine Advisory Committee of the Arts Council felt Wasafiri is receiving more money per issue than other clients […]. They are keen that Wasafiri should develop more creative writing and believed a third issue was feasible both with the magazine’s ability and finance.⁶⁴

Hampson also considered the magazine’s content and its accessibility of higher importance than the additional costs that would be incurred. Nasta, seemingly assured that ACE would not interfere with its content, eventually closed the matter with the following statement:

Wasafiri will produce a third issue but we are seriously concerned and apprehensive about whether we will be able to manage the financial implications as well as maintain the high quality which is its distinctive feature.⁶⁵

She wanted it minuted, however, that she as editor was going into this with serious misgivings about the future of the magazine which reflected a continuous fear about its ongoing viability. Nonetheless, Wasafiri successfully published a third issue – No. 34 – later that year.

Thereafter, Wasafiri continued to publish three issues a year and, on average, received annual increases in its funding from ACE. By its twentieth anniversary in 2004, it received £21,650 plus £47,100 from the Lottery ‘hard commitments’ funding. 2005 saw another significant increase, with £82,325 over two years awarded by the new London Arts Board, an off-shoot of ACE.⁶⁶ In 2008, Wasafiri moved to four issues per annum. By 2015, Wasafiri received £59,413.⁶⁷ For a little magazine, these figures show a near meteoric rise and represent a period with significant milestones in the magazine’s development and reputation. Wasafiri went on to have a long association with ACE and still receives an annual grant to the present day. This has required considerable tenacity to survive in the face of competitors and a heavy administrative relationship with the ACE. Such perseverance paid off when, in 2011, Wasafiri became a coveted National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) – a great coup for a little magazine. Such a title conveyed that, now considered ‘a leader in its area’, Wasafiri had ‘a collective responsibility to protect and develop England’s national arts and cultural ecology’ and by doing so would receive ‘annual investment’ from ACE’s integrated National Portfolio programme.⁶⁸ The stringent monitoring remains, however, as NPOs must submit an Activity Plan, Investment Principles Plan, and financial information and, ironically, have less access to alternative grants on offer. Nonetheless, Wasafiri has since maintained this status, a true mark of its coming of age.

Taylor & Francis: success attracts success

In bringing this case study to a close, and as a final mark of Wasafiri’s strategic move towards long-lasting survival, it is prudent to discuss its partnership with Taylor & Francis. By the time Wasafiri was approached to join forces with Routledge publishers Taylor & Francis, it had been publishing for nineteen years, was in receipt of a significant grant, and was producing three issues a year with permanent members of staff now outnumbering volunteers. Arguably, it was this show of tenacity that attracted Routledge.

Logically, one might assume that Wasafiri finally felt the need to approach an established publisher to cement their standing – but that is not the case. In 2004, while publishing Writing Across Worlds, a book celebrating the magazine’s twentieth anniversary, Nasta was approached by a particularly astute editor at Routledge who asked whether she wanted to continue with the hard work of managing a magazine.⁶⁹ For the fiercely independent little magazine, this was a huge question from a mainstream publisher. However, knowing that Routledge had Wasafiri’s sister magazine, Third Text (specializing in global visual arts), Nasta was curious to explore the proposal. Over a year, Routledge was invited to attend Wasafiri board meetings. The negotiation process is particularly telling and important as Nasta fought hard to maintain independence. Seeking the best deal to alleviate its resource problems and gain more funding, Nasta eventually, in 2005, came away with a partnering agreement unheard of for a little magazine.

Routledge, of course, wanted to bring the magazine under its own branding; Nasta, however, was determined that the magazine should and would remain as far as possible true to its original look and ethos and insisted Routledge maintained Wasafiri’s already established brand. This was a highly unusual move. Additionally, Routledge wanted to change the magazine into an A5 layout, use academic footnotes for articles, and have their logo on the magazine. Nasta refused, insisting that Wasafiri did not see itself as an ‘academic journal’: it was a ‘magazine’, and its content and layout must continue to reflect that. As Richard Dyer – Wasafiri’s Managing Editor from 1998 to 2005, before becoming its Arts editor – explained,

We negotiated to maintain the design and layout of the magazine and the unique look of the covers, […] we wanted to keep Wasafiri’s distinctive appearance since we have always addressed the interests of audiences beyond the solely academic.⁷⁰

Somehow Routledge was also persuaded that their logo would not be printed in Wasafiri for some years. At least here, unlike with the GLC, Wasafiri was able to postpone a direct link with this mainstream publisher. Finally, as Nasta has since noted ‘[Wasafiri] got a very good deal’.⁷¹ This level of commitment to the magazine’s origins speaks to its ability to hold fast in mainstream and precarious politicized environments.

In conclusion, the contingent nature of the relationship between individual, organization, and state within such environments is not generally discussed in magazine scholarship and this article makes a new contribution. The continuous search for short-term funding, from reduced sources, kept Wasafiri in tension between ensuring its independence and securing economic viability. Due to its informal business structures, patronage came with a myriad of complex and taxing terms of conditions. Wasafiri’s funding history illuminates many examples of the transformative nature of free labour through a variety of influential relationships and university networks. These relationships highlight the philosophy and practice of arts support and the necessity and importance of individual patronage for a little magazine. However, subject to the broader socio-political environment, Wasafiri had to seek refuge in ACE’s patronage. Originally a quasi-autonomous governmental institution, ACE was itself subject to changes in political party and swerves in government policy. Thus, although Wasafiri sought out its financial protections, it was not necessarily on firmer ground.

The GLC did not work in tandem with Thatcher’s policies and aligned more with Wasafiri’s requiring less acquiescence to its funding policy than ACE. Despite its arms-length original ethos, ACE was unable to work completely outside of the political framework and, through its Chair and Secretary General, was forced to act in service to the government. The language and increased scrutiny of their funding policies created a ‘carrot and a stick’ discourse. Consequently, the application process was unrelenting. Notwithstanding, the magazine’s performativity to these requirements enabled Wasafiri to make strategic manoeuvres, positively impacting its growth and development.

Footnotes