´óÏó´«Ã½

Katori Hall couldn't get it on in America. That's why she left and came to London. It worked out. On Sunday night she won the Best New Play at the Olivier Awards for Mountaintop, her two-hander about the last night of Martin Luther King's life.

She came here, she said, because America was too conservative. Theatre there relied on formula and revivals and established writers. But in the UK it is "about pushing boundaries and welcoming new voices."

"You guys," she said, "are so embracing of new, young writers." She's right: we are.

Lots of British theatres run writers' workshops and support the development of new work "from page to stage". The process is not straightforward and it's not easy. It's not quick, either. Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth's play that was shortlisted in the same new play category as Mountaintop, was in development for several years. Enron, also shortlisted, took years too.

But if you are OK with some unpaid grafting, there are places that will help put on your play. Like The Royal Court in London's Sloane Square. It produced both Enron and Jerusalem. And it discovered Polly Stenham, who had a big hit with her first play That Face. She was an alumnus of its Young Writers Programme.

The people at the Royal Court took her on because she had sent in a script on spec that they felt demonstrated talent. I asked Jeremy Herrin, who developed and directed her play, what had stood out and what he was looking for.

He said the most important thing was a new voice. Katori Hall said that too, so that must be the thing. And the subject matter should be important to the writer. That makes sense: who wants to listen to a story that the storyteller doesn't t care about? He told me that Dominic Cooke, the artistic director of the Royal Court, says the mark of a good play is what it has new to say about the world and what it has new to say about the form.

What did Jerusalem have new to say about the form? He said that the play had shifted the balance away from a group of actors to a single, really strong protagonist. And that not many parts are currently being written for major leading roles. That was an interesting point.

Jeremy also directed The Priory at the Royal Court which won the best new comedy award at the Oliviers. He likes comedy and thinks it is critically under-rated. We talked about comedy and what makes funny. I mentioned an article I had seen a few years ago in the Guardian. It was whose response to a question about whether he wrote to be truthful or funny was, "be truthful, always truthful. And funny will come." I think that was the point Jeremy was making.

Richard Pryor also talks a lot about "voice". He thinks it took him fifteen years to find his. No matter: when he got there, it was good and true and funny. Katori Hall has already found hers and she's only 28 years old. As the Royal Court says, it's not about age, it's about having something to say and a new way of saying it.

And if you can crack that, then as Katori Hall has said, there's no place better than Britain right now to see your words performed in a professional theatre. Maybe see you at the Oliviers some time?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The press release says: "The Lost Man Booker Prize Shortlist Announced". Two bullet points follow: novels that have stood the test of time and a shortlist that is being thrown open to a public vote. It is a publicity stunt. Hyperbole and factual information conflate like a candy-covered oatcake. It doesn't matter; .

The Booker Prize started in 1969. The original concept was to award a prize to the best fiction book written by a Commonwealth citizen in the previous year, 1968. Then, in 1971, the rules were changed. It was decided the prize would be awarded to the best book of the current year. So 1970 missed out.

Interesting hooks like this anomaly are often spotted by a rookie PR with fresh eyes to see that the trees can be made into column inches. Insight leads to action.

Three judges were appointed to each choose two books from 1970 to create a shortlist of six. They are Rachel Cooke, Katie Derham and Tobias Hill. The main criterion for their selection was being born around 1970. A corny conceit - but, again, it doesn't really matter. Here's what they have chosen and why.

The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden
chosen by Rachel Cooke:

"I really hoped we would find a domestic novel set in 1970 by a woman writer because, after all, it was the year both The Female Eunuch and Kate Millet's Sexual Politics were published.
Ìý
"I suppose you could say I wanted a thwarted woman (or a liberated one)!
Ìý
"Anyway, this novel fits the bill, and is also a beautiful, well-written-one. This is behind-the-eyeballs writing."

Troubles by JG Farrell
chosen by Rachel Cooke:

"I love Troubles. I think it's Farrell's masterpiece, for all that the Siege of Krishnapur is better known.
Ìý
"The rumblings of what will eventually become the Irish civil war can be heard, and in the wider world, the Empire is in crisis.
Ìý
"Trouble is brilliant: funny, sad, original, prescient, wholly eccentric, elegantly written. Fascinating ending. I'd love this book to win."

Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
chosen by Katie Derham:

"The story of Alexander before he became Great. This is Alexander the child prodigy, and Alexander the teenager.
Ìý
"Slightly sulky and confused about his parents, but already charismatic and beautiful, he wins unswerving loyalty from friends, lovers, armies, entire nations and the vast readership of Mary Renault's spectacular trilogy."

The Boy of Noon by Shirley Hazzard
chosen by Katie Derham:

"A quiet, rather beautiful and poignant coming-of-age story of a displaced young English woman, Jenny, and at the same time a love letter to Naples, the colourful, fractured, decrepit and dysfunctional city she finds herself in just after the Second World War.
Ìý
"It's thoughtful and observant; a lovely read."

The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
chosen by Tobias Hill:

"Slim and cruel, jarring and sexy, Spark's tenth novel is the mirror image of its protagonist, Lise, who flies abroad in search of 'A man of her type'.
Ìý
"In a way that few novels do, The Driver's Seat strives for perfection, and perhaps achieves it: Spark's prose is as muscular and lucid as poetry, and Lise's narrative journey into nihilistic darkness as spare and memorable as those of the best short stories."

The Vivisector by Patrick White
chosen by Tobias Hill:

"Hurtle Duffield is White's vivisector, a painter in love with the beauty in people, but never with the people themselves.
Ìý
"Ambitious in its exploration of the life of a genius, The Vivisector considers the paradox of artistic coldness; how can the artist love beauty, and yet be so cold and clinical in the exercise of that love?"

Now which of the six will be voted Lost. We'll never know, of course, if this would even have been the shortlist had there been a Booker for the books of 1970 - but that's not really the point. What we do know is that the event has encouraged readers to look again at a period in the recent past, at the novel before the era of McEwan, Rushdie or Amis.

It's interesting to let your imagination get captured by an event that is not obsessed with newness. Similar thought-experiments are possible: who might have won the Turner Prize in the 18th Century?

I asked Nina Bawden how her book of forty years ago might be seen in 2010. "Good writing is good writing," she said. "It doesn't matter when it was written."

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

I was in the middle of writing a post about what makes so special when I saw this performance by the historian David Starkey. So I stopped; Dr Starkey says it all.

So that's the exciting end of the story covered. I'll tackle the prosaic by answering the question: what do you do if you strike gold when out metal-detecting?

According to the 1996 Treasure Act, applied to the whole of the UK apart from Scotland, the first thing you must do is report your find to within 14 days.

An inquest is then led by the coroner who determines whether your find constitutes treasure or not. If it is deemed to be treasure, ownership then goes into limbo. The , which is run through the , takes over and is responsible for safekeeping on behalf of the Crown.

Next, a of experts is convened, the job of which is to decide the value of the find. There is then a four-month window in which interested parties can bid for the treasure, with national institutions given preference. The price remains the same regardless of the number of bidders.

The money raised by the acquisition of the treasure by an institution is then divided between you and the owner of the land where it was found.

If nobody steps forward in the four-month window, the ownership of the treasure goes back to you, whereupon you can decide to keep it or to sell it on the open market.

Whatever the outcome, this is probably a good time to celebrate.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

Rupert Goold makes flamboyant theatre. Last night's opening of featured movie-like sound design, lighting cues as busy as a fireworks display and a stage that hissed and erupted.

Exciting and energetic; although some I spoke to felt it was a little much. Difficult, they thought, for the star-crossed lovers to properly emote while being goosed by a jet of steam from stage left. Still, the actors appeared to enjoy the experience and received warm, but not tumultuous, applause.

One seasoned Stratford-goer said during the break, after the lively first half, that the show was "rather over-produced; reminds me of one of those so-called Saturday night television spectaculars." At which point a thought struck me.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the Cultural Olympiad, reporting that a new boss with a new vision has been put in place, with a brief explanation as to why we have a Cultural Olympiad. I didn't mention the major events that do not come under the auspices of the Olympiad: .

These are the responsibility of the Ceremonies team at the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG).

It's an awkward gig. More than any other moment during the Olympics - save perhaps the 100m final - "the eyes of the world" is not a hackneyed phrase; it is the stark truth. Billions will be watching. Most will be thinking one thing: how does this compare to Beijing? Now, there are many arguments to be had about the political messages in Beijing's opening and closing ceremonies, but few could argue that they weren't spectacular - unlike .

Boris Johnson waved a flag, not completely convincingly, before presenting the world with some of the oldest cliches about London. A slow red bus; queues; bowler hats; lots of umbrellas. This was not the hip, modern or funky city that London has been presenting itself as over the last couple of decades. Leona Lewis might as well have told those watching that "the food's awful, too".

It was clear at that point that the Ceremonies team at London Olympics headquarters needs help working out how best spend its budget of around $50m (£33m). It is well placed to find some. The UK is a global hub for the arts, with many of the best conductors, choreographers, directors, dancers, technicians, artists and so on, either living here or regular visitors.

This summer, it is announcing the appointment of artistic directors for the four main ceremonies. A good idea might be a call to Rupert Goold or a theatre director of his ilk to see if they could be involved. The team needs someone who is a natural collaborator, who has a contemporary approach and who knows exactly what spectacular looks like. On the basis of last night, some RSC-style fireworks in this context might well not be a bad thing.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

"I just want to do the right thing," the artist Steve McQueen announces. "Help me to do the right thing."

He is talking about his dispute with the Royal Mail which is refusing to make stamps out of his artwork . It's an argument which has been going on a long time and which is clearly beginning to weary McQueen. "I'm just an artist - a geezer. What can I do?"

Steve McQueen is also a big man. But today, tired after a 5am start, he had the air of a prize-fighter who has taken on one bout too many: deflated; defeated.

When he came up with the idea of creating a stamp for every UK soldier killed in the Iraq war, he thought it was the answer to what had, until that moment, been a frustrating experience.

Named as the official artist for the Iraq war, he flew home after only six days of inactivity in Basra and was never allowed to return. Stumped as to how one could possibly be a long-distance war artist, he got on with the minutiae of life.

He says he was sticking a stamp on to an envelope containing his tax return when he noticed it carried a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. Inspiration struck.

Queen and Country consists of 160 photographic portraits that have been made into facsimile sheets of stamps. Each sheet contains a single picture of a British serviceman or woman who has been killed in the war in Iraq.

Each image has been supplied by the family of the dead serviceman or woman. McQueen describes the project as collaboration with them. Nearly all the families who have experienced loss have agreed to participate.

The Royal Mail has not; it is adamant that it will not turn McQueen's artwork into a special edition of stamps. The artist points out that you either have to be dead or a member of the Royal Family to have your image on a British stamp.

"What," he asks, "could be more appropriate than commemorating those that have died serving their country?"

The Royal Mail has three reasons for refusing to publish. The first is that it would set a precedent. The second is that it is too soon. And the third that it might upset people to see a mark made by the Post Office frank over an image of a soldier's face. Poppycock - or words to that effect - is McQueen's response.

The work opens today at the National Portrait Gallery, the final leg of a national tour that has been supported by the Art Fund, which is also running a petition to give to the Royal Mail.

In four months' time, the artwork will go into storage at the Imperial War Museum. McQueen hopes that, before then, this work of art will get the stamp of approval.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

What is the Cultural Olympiad? This is a question I am sometimes asked. It is often followed by "where?" or "why?" or "how?". It's an idea that so far appears to have failed to connect with most people. And even among those who are aware of its existence, there is a certain amount of confusion.

Here are the basics. The concept of a Cultural Olympiad is embedded in the founding principles of the modern Olympic Games as conceived by the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin at the end of the 19th Century. For a city to be awarded the games it has to commit to provide a festival of arts and culture known as the Cultural Olympiad. The idea dates back to ancient Greece and Rome: mind and body in harmony.

The London bid team latched onto this aspect of the Olympic ideal, added some steroids to the idea, and promised to provide an epoch-defining, nation-changing, world-beating . It would be a four-year festival starting the moment the Beijing Games finished lasting through to the culmination of the Games in London.

Since then there have been problems. Several of the original ideas have been dumped, money has been tight and the project leadership has not been at gold-medal standard. What started as an odd eyebrow raised in the corner of the room at the time of the announcement has developed into broad cynicism towards the project. Which is not unreasonable when the ambitions of the original Cultural Olympiad team can still be heard in some of the rhetoric on its website.

On one page, it claims that the Cultural Olympiad is "the greatest show on Earth". Really? This great show has been going on in the UK for the last 20 months and almost nobody knows about it. To even the most reasonable person, this immodest claim feels a bit Eddie the Eagle.

But today there was a new dawn. A new boss has been drafted in together with a team of arts heavyweights to help and advise. Ruth Mackenzie, the project's new boss, is a no-nonsense arts pro, whose experience at making festivals and playing politics should be a winning combination. She's made a good start.

While not publicly admitting that the words "Cultural Olympiad" are enough to turn the most ardent arts supporter off, she is quietly dispensing with them and the whole concept, instead focusing on an arts festival that will run from mid-June 2012 until the end of the Paralympics. This event will simply be called Festival 2012. Clarity at last.

The Cultural Olympiad will continue to exist - it has to - but as a sideshow and training camp for the main event. And as MacKenzie rightly points out, there have been many good and worthy projects already undertaken or shortly about to commence that are part of the Cultural Olympiad. It's just that individually or as a group, they have not amounted to even a quite good show on Earth.

Festival 2012 on the other hand, really could be something. But as with the athletes training for the Games themselves, there's a lot of hard work ahead.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

These images are from an exhibition called . It opens on Thursday and features lots of shoebox bedrooms made by artists.

They are either replicas of their childhood bedrooms or contain allusions to their state of mind at the time. The artists are well-known.

You can buy one at or you can just go and look at them.

There are also some shoebox bedrooms on show by artists who are not at all famous. They have been created by young people who have been or are being helped by the charity . It's for them that the artists have made their shoebox bedrooms and to them that all the proceeds will go.

These young people have had a tough start to life, a fact that is apparent when you look at their shoeboxes and the accompanying texts. You would have to be made out of stone not to be moved.

• Interview with Kids Company's Camila Batmanghelidjh on the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Belief programme
• Shoebox Art discussed on Radio 4's Midweek

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

, guest-starring Beyonce, has been watched more than 14 million times on Youtube in two days (). That's a lot of interest.

By contrast, has attracted a third of a million views in over two months.

Even Beyonce's Single Ladies - a global Youtube hit which inspired multiple homages and spoofs - never hit those Gaga numbers in its original form.

They are all good in their own way. The Scott-Heron imagery, albeit in HD, has a grainy texture that suits the song, a re-working of an old Robert Johnson blues number. The talk is that Telephone is the new . Perhaps Single Ladies better deserves that accolade: Beyonce nails the choreography/pop mix as surely as Michael Jackson did a generation ago.

directed the Gaga promo. He has form. At the saucy end of the scale, his videos for German metallers Rammstein make Telephone look like an episode of Andy Pandy. And he's been making pop-kitsch promos for ages; Mika's We Are Golden is a high point.

Nobody truly minds that Gil Scott-Heron is slowly building an audience for his new tracks, while millions have instantly gone gaga over the new Gaga. In fact, both sets of fans will be pleased in their own way. The people at should take heart.

Last week, they published a survey which tells us that among 13-to-14-year-olds, "99.4% have been to the cinema, but one in three has never been to the theatre, whilst four out of five have never seen a Shakespeare play."

The way the release is written suggests disappointment in the uptake of theatre in general and of Shakespeare's plays in particular. It doesn't seem so awful if you change the emphasis. Nearly 70% of the surveyed group of young teenagers have been to the theatre, while 20% have been to see a Shakespeare production.

That's 13-to-14-year-olds who have actually been to the theatre. Not those who have read a text at school, or seen their older sister perform in a school production of Flashdance; this lot have experienced a professional theatrical production. You might equally be surprised that it's so high. This is an age-group that has many calls on its time: school, friends, sport, video games, social networks, shopping, flirting, partying, learning.

The education departments in the UK's arts institutions work very hard; these figures are testimony to that. But they need to be realistic. An exciting new movie is always going to be more popular than a production of Twelfth Night, just as Gaga will pull a larger crowd than Scott-Heron. So it goes.

PS: Another slice of the new Gil Scott-Heron album comes in the form of a fan video where the album's title track .

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

As he is happy to acknowledge, Dai Smith, the Chair of Arts Council Wales, is not a tall man. But he is an experienced television performer who knows the game. So when Carl, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ cameraman, whips out a large box for an interview, Dai hops on with all the enthusiasm of a Crufts champion.

Behind Dai, three illuminated signs spell out NATIONAL THEATRE WALES. They are cheap but effective; an appropriate symbol for . at London's Southbank turns over more than £50m a year. receives an annual public subsidy of about £4m.

National Theatre Wales will have to get by with a subsidy of £1m a year. Whether or not that is enough to run a national theatre company, it's certainly going to have to be very bright to shine among the other "nationals" if it is not to run the risk of being seen as a poor relation.

Dai may not be tall, but his ambition is sizeable. Why, I ask, did he fight so hard to create a national theatre of Wales?

"To give the Welsh people a distinctive voice - a distinctive accent. We've got a Welsh-language national theatre; the missing piece of the mosaic was a national theatre in the English language, which is the language of the majority of the Welsh people. The time is right."

He goes on to say how he feels Wales differs from Scotland and England, in that it doesn't have a large theatre-going middle class. The job of National Theatre Wales, he says, is to build an audience for high-quality, contemporary theatre.

Our discussion is taking place next to the first-floor bar of the Blackwood Miners' Institute, a 40-minute drive from Cardiff. The miners are long gone; in their place, a theatre has appeared. Real life replaced by fantasy. It is the venue for National Theatre Wales's inaugural production, .

They'll be performing future shows all over Wales. One will be on a beach; another on a military firing range. There is a touch of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses as they follow the trend for site-specific theatre. But it is also out of necessity. They have decided to adopt the Scottish model: National Theatre Wales is homeless. A practical, get-on-with-it decision that reflects Dai's can-do approach to the whole project.

He is keen to point out that National Theatre Wales is not funded by reducing money given to pre-existing theatres, but is being supported with new money from the Welsh Assembly. He doesn't like the expression, but refers to the project as "nation-building" - a natural next step in the process of devolution and an important act of self-expression. He thinks that politicians in Westminster are slow to recognise and respond to what he sees as the future: a federal Britain.

So the neon graphic could be seen as more than a logo; it could be read as a political statement: a sign of our times.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

If you visit the theatre much, you'll know that to appreciate the work of cast, crew, director and writer, your seat matters. Sometimes it can matter a lot - if, say, you spend an evening doubled-up in a roof peering at indiscernible people making noises, it's likely you'll miss some of the nuances of the performance.

Last night, I saw a final preview of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies at London's Adelphi Theatre. Any comment on the production itself is embargoed, but I can mention what we could describe as "pay and conditions".

My ticket was free, but the Austrian woman to my left had paid £65 to sit in the "gods". The experience is not celestial, with the stage so far away, you have the sense that you are watching other people watching a show. My neighbour tried to use her "opera glasses" - a pair of small red pay-per-view binoculars of limited telescopic power - but didn't have the necessary contortionist's skills to whip her right leg behind her head to create the room needed to pull them out.

The loudspeaker carrying the voices to us was tinny like an old Fidelity record player. The woman in front of me had a nice hairdo, which was a plus, as it took up most of my line of vision. And where her hair wasn't, the ceiling was. I tried craning to my left to peer between heads, but the Austrian lady indicated I was moving our relationship on too quickly.

Later, we compared notes. Both of us lost sensation in the right leg first, and that meant we both stopped feeling the pain of the opera glasses embedding themselves into the right knee. We talked about the show and discussed the prices. She thought they were disgraceful.

I pointed out that tickets are advertised for our part of the theatre - the Upper Circle - from £25 to £47.50. Then a large man from the back row interjected. I can't remember whether ballerinas sweat or perspire, but he was doing both. "Bloody marvellous," he beamed. "The wife's had a lovely time and I've done all my e-mails."

Later, I checked some of the internet chatter about the production; sightlines and audience experience were topics of discussion. One post from Finland reads (with details of the show itself redacted):

Nobody could deny the huge risks impresarios take in creating new shows or should begrudge them their success when they have a hit. But the audience doesn't expect to have to shoulder a burden of risk too. Ideally, when they buy such a ticket, the quality of their experience should always be a hit.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

That's it, then. The film awards season is finally over. Bigelow done good. A Prophet missed out. Steve Martin had Alec Baldwin as a co-host. Why not Tina Fey, by the way? Is Sam Fox to blame? The End.

And there is now a short intermission before the whole awards / festivals / frock thing swings back into action. A good time to reflect and to consider which, of all the awards and festival prizes, is the best guide.

Berlin, Venice, Cannes, the Baftas, Golden Globes, Sundance and the Oscars are but a small selection of the myriad events where gongs are given around the world each year. Each has its own editorial niche and perspective, but is there one that is truly simpatico with the art of film? An event that overcomes the pressures of marketing, nationalism and sponsors and consistently succeeds in recognising truly great films?

The Hurt Locker was shown at the Venice Film Festival in September 2008 and then embarked on a tour the Rolling Stones would consider extensive: Toronto, Montreal, Oslo, Dallas, Edinburgh... It won at some stops; it didn't at others. Why? Are the American and British Academies wrong? And if so, who's right?

People use awards as a way of choosing a movie. Laurel leaves sell. But which is a better guide to a great night in or out: an Oscar or Palme d'Or?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A semi-casual , which is due to be published this September.

Dressed in a black open-necked shirt, his piercing blue eyes lock onto the passer-by like laser-guided missiles.

The image portrays a self-confident, middle-aged man who - if we didn't know better - could be anything from a successful European lawyer, a member of a 70s prog-rock band or a perma-tanned TV personality.

All careers that might well have crossed the ex-prime minister's mind at some point during his life.

And the choice of this image, the styling and the crop is not flippant. Hours, days and quite probably weeks will have been spent choosing the cover image for a book that pundits think will be the biggest-selling political memoir since .

Never-judge-a-book-by-its-cover is a cliche that has at its root an anti-superficiality message. But the truth is that publishers and authors do want us to judge a book by its cover, otherwise they would simply produce books wrapped in block colours to denote a genre.

At a talk I recently attended by , the Turkish writer, he explained that not only did he personally source and choose the cover image for his new book, , he also rolled up his sleeves, switched on his computer and spent many hours on Photoshop to create what he felt was the perfect visual metaphor for his novel.

Book cover design is an artistic practice that goes back centuries and includes the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages.

But it is in the 20th Century with the emergence of the professional graphic designer in concert with mass-market publishing that the visual language of book cover design has found a place in everyday life.

One pioneer was the great publisher . Design writer and critic, Phil Baines, wrote an excellent illustrated book published in 2005 called .

It shows and tells a compelling story of modern graphic design, which really only got truly underway at Penguin when they acknowledged the importance of cover design by appointing as the full-time Cover Art Director.

But even before that Penguin had the aesthetic sensibility to employ the great modernist typographer and designer to help them bring some design rigour to their books, which were already well known for their distinctive branding.

The ensuing Penguin Book covers now have a significant part in the history of graphic design.

And as from the 17 April the publishers where they will, "put on display items from its historic archive in a display describing its dedication to book design."

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for book design as we move towards a digital age in book publishing. It is easy to imagine a digital version of the book cover with a groovy 3D image that animates like a movie.

But then again, sort of did that with his book in 2001. That was a good cover.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

Last night the three political big guns in arts came face-to-face for a pre-election showdown. In front of a packed audience of arts grandees, the three strode to the stage to deliver their party-defining rhetoric.

Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, spoke first. He told the audience of his belief in maintaining arts funding at its current levels.

He confirmed his commitment to "arms length" state funding. He talked about the importance of the arts to the health and wealth of the country. He received gentle applause.

Then it was the turn of his Conservative shadow, Jeremy Hunt, to have his say. The audience sat forward. Let the argument begin. But he said pretty much the same as Bradshaw.

Oh, well, maybe Don Foster, the charismatic Liberal Democrat would stoke things up a bit.

Nope. He agreed too. In fact if you were to create a tag cloud of what was said last night, the words "agree" and "consensus" would feature large.

There were some points of difference. Bradshaw and Hunt said they hoped that their parties will maintain funding at its present level, while Foster confirmed the Lib Dems would.

Hunt spoke about the idea that arts institutions should create endowments as a source of funding. Bradshaw was sceptical.

There was a small spat when Hunt said that the Conservatives would return lottery funding of the arts to its previous level. Bradshaw admitted that they had reduced the amount the lottery gives to the arts, but pointed out the Labour has significantly increased arts funding in general.

Europe was mentioned, but by then the room was so over-heated the audience could only think of the cool white wine waiting to be served next door.

Afterwards, as the arts grandees sipped their wine and nibbled at their nibbles, there was almost universal disappointment. They had come for a heated debate but only got lukewarm platitudes.

Another, thought they had their heads in the sand, unwilling to talk about contingency plans and priorities should arts funding be cut. An outcome that everybody to whom I spoke felt was inevitable.

All agreed that the real players in the arts field are those that will hold the purse strings, Messrs Darling, Osborne and Cable.

Sir Andrew Motion was asked to sum-up the evening up and did so with the intelligent brevity you'd expect from an ex -poet laureate. He said "You'd have to have the mind of a goldfish if you if you need [what we've just heard] summarised".

There's another arts hustings planned for next Tuesday at Tate Britain, chaired by Joan Bakewell. She is also the chair of the National Campaign for the Arts and therefore very close to all the important issues.

If she can't generate some proper debate and help identify some real policy differences then nobody can. As one of last night's attendees asked afterwards, "Where's their vision?" Perhaps on Tuesday we'll find out.

PS: I discussed the arts debate on Thursday 4 March on the Today programme:

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

My colleague Caroline Briggs filmed this interview yesterday with Richard Hamilton, the eminent British artist. The location is London's Serpentine Gallery on the eve his show .

Both films show a thoughtful man whose gentleness belies a deep intellect and continuing concern with contemporary life. His work speaks for itself.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

On the whole people like to give and they like to take. What they tend not to like is having things given to them and then taken away again.

They might not have used the toy or played with the gerbil, but it's theirs and that's that. But to have something taken away for which you have helped to pay, well that can be annoying.

So, it's no great surprise to see that over 77,500 people have already signed up to the , plus , after the.

Whether or not the ´óÏó´«Ã½ takes this action will be revealed in due course, but it does throw up some debating points about what platforms the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should be providing for popular music.

As I understand it 6 Music fills a gap between Radio 1 and Radio 2, mixing old with new across a wide musical spectrum from indie to jazz and most stops in-between.

A generation ago this role of pop eclecticism was fulfilled by giving a late evening slot on Radio 1 to the likes of John Peel and Andy Kershaw.

That's when pop music could be contained within two or three categories in your local Our Price Records. I worked in one of their shops and think it went something like: Rock/Pop, Soul/Reggae and Country/Easy Listening.

Now there are loads of categories that then have sub-categories which then cross-over via collaborations into completely new categories. Times, they have a-changed.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ set up new digital radio stations 1Xtra and 6 Music in an attempt to serve this burgeoning area of the contemporary arts. And they have found an audience.

So why would they chop 6 Music now, when in the ears of many, it has just started to find its mojo?

It's unlikely to be because of the ratio between its running costs and audience size; if that was the case Radio 3 would have been axed years ago.

It might be because it serves an affluent audience profile which the corporation feels it already caters for, and by having 6 Music is not leaving room for the commercial sector to play a part.

That's perfectly reasonable, but would the commercial sector run 6 Music in its current guise?

A successful national radio entrepreneur I talked to told me that he made his station work by having a very limited playlist, which was then repeated throughout the day. That's the polar opposite to 6 Music's approach.

Then there are all the arguments about the future of digital radio, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ licence fee and how it should be spent. But perhaps the most important debate to have is with the artists themselves and their producers and labels.

Is 6 Music the right platform for them? Could Radio 1 or Radio 2 be re-shaped to cover 6 Music's ground? Would they prefer a non-´óÏó´«Ã½ platform? In short, how do they feel they would be best served?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?