IN THE Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell posed the question: Meanwhile, what about socialism?” and that timely query was adopted as the title of this year’s AV international arts festival in north-east England.

A canny idea.

Socialism was the most looked-up word online in 2015 and the region has long been linked with radical and progressive politics.

The thematic link to Orwell’s road map of a democratic socialism based on equality and fairness inspired events highlighting socialist political struggle, created by artists committed to the importance of cultural action in contributing to radical change.

Over the course of a month, a wide-ranging programme was on offer including exhibitions, films, talks, debates and special performances.

The film screenings and discussions about British film maker Marc Karlin, whose work critiques both Thatcherism and Blairism, were highlights, as were the politically and aesthetically radical films from the Soviet Union.

The screening of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s Winstanley was a reminder of the almost forgotten tradition of English communism and the programme of British political documentaries from the 1930s to recent times exposing injustice and deprivation offered both practical and utopian alternatives.

Why on Earth, it made you wonder, aren’t films like this being made any more?

The festival ended memorably with a live performance by Kris Canavan.

Over 22 hours, he pounded the pavements of Jarrow, crushing 200 concrete blocks, for his “aktion” Labour Isn’t Working.

It was his take on the number of proletarian protesters who in 1936 marched on London to denounce the crushing of their shipbuilding industry and their community by the capitalist system.

That crusade was met by indifference from Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who refused to see the marchers and by hostility from the Labour Party conference, who heckled the Jarrow MP Ellen Wilkinson and offered no further support for the people of the town.

As a rejection of the status quo and the subservience expected of us by the state, this was a powerful demonstration of politically committed art which typified AV this year.

Thanks to the artists involved and the synergistic curating of festival director Rebecca Shatwell, all the events contributed to the sense of developing a manifesto. As such, they were a collective challenge to the apolitical, self-referential mainstream art world and to the harsh and corrupt consensus in the political sphere.

From different positions, in different art forms and geopolitical contexts, a common message emerged of international artists successfully removing progressive politics from the language of nostalgia and mourning and suggesting new and vibrant forms of resistance.

Neoliberal capitalism increasingly appears to be morally, culturally and politically bankrupt. It certainly has come close — and may come closer — to financial bankruptcy.

Which is why the question AV posed: “What about socialism?” couldn’t have been more timely.