"Without Fronteiras: an interview with Flavia D'Avila"
Flavia D’Avila is a friend of mine. The expat Brazilian theatre producer with the rhyming name has a lot of friends. She’s well known in Edinburgh’s creative circles for her tireless hard work in independent theatre. Culturally bilingual and fluent in Scottish humour, she could pass for an Edinburgh native. She’s one of very few people I know who seem to be constantly, refreshingly overjoyed at living in Scotland. Now though, she’s absent from her adopted home-city, returned to Brazil as an ex-expat, due to some particularly awkward clauses in the UK visa system.
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The recently-graduated artists’ ubiquitous “Method of Survival” is to work any available paying job while developing one’s own Real (i.e. artistic) Work. Yuck ‘n Yum readers in the same boat will sympathise: this is not the sort of lifestyle that endears itself to paperwork. At what point do you get to call yourself a pro? Flavia graduated from the department of Drama and Theatre Arts at Queen Margaret University in 2010. A fellow professional-in-all-but-income, her adoption of the Recently-Graduated Lifestyle placed her out of the range of working visa eligibility:
“To try and put it simply, following the new immigration rules that came into effect in February 2012, I am very uncomfortably sitting between a few visa categories, but not fitting into any of them. The points-based system seeks to standardise the applications, but it’s incredibly hard for people who would benefit from some flexibility, like myself. My post-study work visa ran out and I’ve had to return to Brazil to assess my options and try to get a new visa.
In order to get a work visa, a person needs to have a job that pays at least £20,000 a year, and their employer (which they call ‘sponsor’) would have to be approved by the UK Border Agency as legitimate.
Like most people working in the creative industries, I had a part-time job which was ok to pay the bills, but not anywhere near enough to meet those criteria, and I didn’t get paid sufficiently for my theatre work either. That’s what I mean about a lack of flexibility... if you are part-timing and/or freelancing, you can get by alright, but it’s not considered enough to have a work visa. I did seek full-time jobs within the arts, but there aren’t that many that offer 20,000 or above as a wage, and then the competition for those that do is tough. Besides, with a full-time job, it would be a lot harder or even impossible to keep up my own work with my company.”
These visa conditions do not tend to favour creative workers of any stripe, and would prohibit a considerable number of foreign professional artists (and certainly the majority of foreign emerging artists!) from living in the UK on the basis of their work alone.
...And things get weirder. Perhaps the strangest element in Flavia’s awkward suspension of residence is the UK Border Agency’s bizarre “Exceptional Talent” or “Tier 1” visa category for “high-value migrants”. Knowing that the rarity of these visas was due largely to their daunting application process, and confident of her own artistic ability, Flavia looked into officially registering her Exceptional Talent. The UKBA website defines the visa thus: “Tier 1 (Exceptional talent) is for people who are internationally recognised as world leaders or potential (1) world-leading talent in the fields of science and the arts, and who wish to work in the UK.” (2) The only current holder of an Exceptional Talent visa in Scotland is Edinburgh International Film Festival director Chris Fujiwara.
In what must have seemed a perfectly sensible move at the time, the UKBA advised Flavia that her Talent could be classified as Exceptional were she to receive 5-star reviews for her Fringe show this year. The absurdity of this condition made it to national TV with the headline “Show has to get five-star reviews at Fringe or producer will be deported” (3) (although Flavia quickly points out she wasn’t deported but left the country as a legal migrant before her then-current visa expired).
As things go, the long application process for the extension of Flavia’s visa necessitated a return to her home country, where she is now. The UK visa application process is notoriously strenuous. In 2008, I was granted a one-year Japanese student visa, for the price of a university recommendation and five pounds. A friend of mine doing the opposite – coming to Edinburgh from Kyoto, for four years – was charged more than a hundred times as much.
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Flavia came to Edinburgh from Brazil in 2006, attracted by the world’s largest arts Festival. While studying at Queen Margaret University, she helped found independent theatre group Tightlaced Theatre. The group, directed by Jen McGregor – currently well-known for her activism in the public arts – is notable for its promotion of Edinburgh theatre culture outside of Fringe time. In 2012, Flavia set up her own Fronteiras Theatre Lab, a “transcultural” organisation focusing equally on research, professional development and production. The group draws its ethos from Flavia’s own cross-cultural experience, and from an intense love of Scottish and South American culture. The name means “borders”, a sad irony considering her dealings with our Agency of the same name. Now back in Brazil, Flavia is working to set up the Fronteiras Explorers programme, which she describes as “an artistic residency/ research lab/exchange project” with the aim of bringing Scotland-based artists to the Brazil-Uruguay border to explore the same cultural synthesis she has so benefited from.
Flavia is preparing to apply anew for residence in the UK. Fronteiras Theatre Lab is online at http://fronteirastheatrelab.com/
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(1) It is rumoured that the “potential” phrase is to be scrapped, so those of you who aren’t already internationally recognised as world leaders in your field, look for another route, please.
(2) www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/working/tier1/exceptional-talent/
(3) www.local.stv.tv/edinburgh/111114-show-has-to-get-five-star-reviews-at-fringe-or- producer-will-be-deported/