Stars from the creative world, including Stella McCartney, Damien Hirst and the model Lily Cole, are rallying together to set up a fighting fund for tuition fees protesters.
More than 80 artists, designers, musicians and actors have pledged to help pay the legal fees or fines of students prosecuted for taking part in demonstrations against the hike in university charges.
The campaign — Can’t Pay Your Fees? We’ll Pay Your Fines — is the idea of Jake Chapman who, with his older brother Dinos, is a former Turner prize nominee synonymous with controversy.
Once at the vanguard of the Young British Artist movement, Chapman regards his latest venture as deliberately sticking up “two fingers” to the government.
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The fund will be financed by celebrities donating some of their work for auction. Artists such as Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Marc Quinn will either give one of their existing works or create a new painting or sculpture.
Also planned is a charity review that could involve the actors Russell Tovey, best known for The History Boys, and Dougray Scott; Jamie Hince, the guitarist engaged to Kate Moss; and Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh comedy act. They have all pledged their support on an online petition to be officially launched this week through Dazed & Confused magazine.
It comes ahead of the next big rally against public spending cuts on March 26. Previous demonstrations against tuition fees ended in a stand-off between police and students and even saw Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall attacked in their official Rolls-Royce.
“We obviously can’t pay their higher [education] fees, but we do have the ability to pay the fines — both in the future and retrospectively,” Chapman said.
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“We are very much in favour of their campaign of protest and, if necessary, civil disobedience. However, we are not advocating or supporting violence.”
Chapman accused the government of “blocking social mobility” by allowing universities to charge students up to £9,000 a year from 2012: “They are landing those who do go to university or college with debts which could last for 30 years. The fees will be crippling. So a deserved two fingers from us to the coalition’s policy.”
Only a “few dozen” students have been fined for public order offences to date, according to the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.
