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The Turner Prize winning artist explains why he hates the word creativity, the impact of his alter-ego Claire at exhibitions, and the role of vulnerability in art-making and art appreciation. Grayson Perry is one of the judges for the 2014 Poetry Society’s Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry; he discusses the role  of emotion in the poetry that has been shortlisted. The shortlist was announced this week and includes work by Carrie Etter, Patience Agbabi, Andrew Motion, Imtiaz Dharker and Alice Oswald.  

For writer and mythographer Marina Warner ‘creativity’ is a process rather than a noun. She reads Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Burned Child’ and discusses the place of older women’s creativity in fairy-tales. She also explores  the status that has been given to the men who wrote down stories (as opposed to the women who passed them on verbally), and the place of cross-dressing males in fairy-tale. Marina Warner’s latest book is ‘Once Upon a Time: A Short History of the Fairy Tale (OUP)

The MOBO award-winning artist began singing at a young age because of her desire to write songs. She talks about the relationship of scatting to creativity, and performs her song  ‘Woman in the Olive Grove’, explaining why she was inspired to write the lyrics. The song is from her album ‘If You Knew Her’ (Brownswood).

We asked the composer, performer and sound historian Sarah Angliss to compose a piece of music for us, an homage to the pioneering electronic musician Daphne Oram, Her live performance in the Verb studio involved a theremin and a carillon to produce a performance style which has been called ‘spooky nursery’.  Sarah also explains her involvement with the ‘maker movement’ which attempts to marry sustainability and technology, and how she has embraced being seen as a ‘strange aunt’ when she performs.