Telling history like it is

A conversation with Professor Corinne Fowler of the University of Leicester, and Director of ‘Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted’

Home

The time is right to unravel the meaning of ‘home’ for our changing times. Why, and how?

Knowledge

Knowledge is power. While that’s true, those who choose a deliberate blindness to facts, suggests that a lack of knowledge is also a comfort, and empowering for some at the expense of others. It’s that liberality with other people’s existence which is under challenge, and which should be challenged. Now, I know there will be […]

English Passive Aggression

This piece grew out of a gently amusing thread I’d posted to Facebook on the subject of English passive aggression. Why?

Arts and Social Grants, tips and tricks

Arts and Social Grants, tips and tricks – if you work in the arts or with communities, or with a combination of both, this is probably something you’re in need of. In recent weeks various bodies from the Arts Council to private trusts and the National Lottery have started releasing funds for individual arts practitioners […]

Equal Stages

I’m featured in a book called Equal Stages: Standing Up for Identity and Integrity in the Performing Arts, Vol 1. It’s never going to be a best-seller, that’s not the point of the book. It is going to be something which helps to inform the journey that communities and cultures need to make as they come […]

Taking Positive Actions

We’re at a point in time where taking positive actions has become a conscious choice. We need change. In three short months we’ve gone from a situation where there was widespread support for Government actions to one where the exact opposite applies. This lack of faith carries across our social spaces – whether arts organisations, […]

Erasing TV and Film

Erasing TV programmes like Little Britain, League of Gentlemen, The Mighty Boosh, Fawlty Towers, or films like Gone With The Wind and others seems very of the moment.

Theatre, arts and culture

Theatre, arts and culture are under attack. Creatives, artists, institutions and structures which foster theatre, arts and culture are facing down the immediate effects of the Coronovirus pandemic while furloughed, without income or closed to the public. The delicate and fragile fabric of our national culture is unravelling to reveal a bleak future. Or is […]

The new normal

Nothing’s ‘normal’ any more. For all of us, what’s happening now can, to put it plainly, be a real headf*ck.