Brexit has betrayed UK artists like me by locking us out of Europe

It would have been perfectly possible to insulate music, dance, books and the visual arts from the miserable effects of Brexit. After all, it is not necessary to have a political union in order to listen to a concert or see an exhibition.

But then the trade negotiators got stuck in and the bitterness led to generally punitive rules on the movement of goods and performers. It is said that the British side were offered a cultural exception – then simply forgot to put it into the final deal.

The major institutions on both sides of the Channel have tried to carry on as usual, though with layers of added bureaucracy. They have the staff and resources to find imaginative ways around cabotage, work permits, social security and tax impositions, but the process is time-consuming and pointless. You will still find the London Symphony Orchestra and the (London-administered) Chamber Orchestra of Europe playing on tour, but more expensively. European festivals are sorely tempted to find an alternative to UK-based talent with less bureaucratic baggage. The same goes for exhibitions. The up-front customs duties and VAT payments can be handled by Tate Modern or Guggenheim Bilbao, but the costs are tiresome and illogical.

The real problems come for those trying to make a living from their work. For most people in the arts, the British market is simply not big or rich enough. The younger you are, or less established, the harder it is. EU organisations are not going to go to the bother of booking relatively unknown pianists or violinists from the UK if they can get someone of the same quality from Romania or Estonia without the paperwork.

The same is true in the other direction. I have friends in their thirties who are making superbly busy careers all over Europe, but hardly ever visit Britain. Gradually, our music conservatories are losing their attraction, too, despite having been thought of as top of the pile over the last 50 years. Why study in London or Manchester at enormous cost when you can do the same in Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy or The Hague’s Royal Conservatory for a fraction of the money?

This has a cumulatively destructive effect on the formation of ensembles. Early music groups, string quartets and contemporary dance groups often put themselves together or are introduced by their teachers at college. Since the Brexit rules came in, this is not only happening less, it has become impractical for European groups to even have British members. The rolling restriction that allows non-EU citizens to visit the continent for up to 90 days within any 180-day period means that groups with British performers are hampered. A show cannot take place if one dancer, the cellist, singer or lutenist in the group cannot take part. The whole sense of collaborative integration, of carefully nurtured ensemble, is lost. Young opera singers from the UK are frequently not even auditioned. With performances spread across seasons, it is difficult to be able to guarantee attendance at all the rehearsals and shows, especially if they have some concert appearances in between.

Writers have not been exempt from this downturn. Selling books was never easy, except for best-selling writers published by big multinationals. Now, one cannot even send a friend a book by post without them incurring customs costs. This, plus the new postage rates, take the fees way beyond the book's value. What’s more, touring writers share with musicians the problem that they cannot bring books for sale as merchandise, like CDs, with them, or have their publishers or record companies send stuff, if they appear at an EU festival. Smaller publishers do not have the distribution and storage facilities to print in the EU to circumvent the problem.

To give a personal example, this month I am collaborating with a Spanish and a French artist who have derived ideas from one of my poems. I cannot sell poetry books at the exhibition or be paid for reading (in the Spanish Embassy in Brussels). My colleagues cannot bring their work in paintings and textiles to exhibit them in Britain without risking prohibitive payments, even if they did not wish to sell them. Above all, the nonsense is a disincentive to even trying to work together. It all just feels silly. The arts are always said to be without borders. Governments are making sure that they are, instead, imposed as pointlessly as possible.

Simon Mundy has written six books of poetry, several on cultural policy, novels, and biographies. He co-founded the European Forum for the Arts and Heritage (now called Culture Action Europe) 35 years ago. He is an advisor to the European Festivals Association and writes on classical music for The Independent