Beccy Smith reflects on Stoke’s Appetite programme and the challenge of valuing the arts July 2014 has been a month about money. The first day of the month saw the announcement by Arts Council England of their national portfolio organisations for 2015 – 2018, unleashing a flurry of discussion on social media and national newspaper […]

  Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF), founded in 1996, is now a well-established date on the UK outdoor arts calendar – the former Greenwich Festival developed, over the past eighteen years, into the cross-river cross-artform GDIF by artistic director Bradley Hemmings. The festival comprises numerous elements: the main programme presentation of large-scale national and international outdoor […]

Cinematography is a precise and demanding business. Juggling angling, light and shadow, the right lens, the challenge of a smooth pan or unforgiving close up. As a theatre maker, such preoccupations feel fussy: I’m interested in the freedom of the live moment, immediacy and mess! So it has been provocative and mind-expanding as both artist […]

Norwich ahoy! Tagged as ‘one of the UK’s big four’ festivals, Norfolk & Norwich (NNF) is also one the country’s oldest, if not the oldest, arts festival – it can trace its roots back to 1772, don’t you know! This year’s programme at NNF is a little depleted, compared to some recent years, it must […]

It is Maundy Thursday, the eve of the holiest day of the year in the Christian calendar (Good Friday). Here in the ancient Roman town of Vic in Catalonia, a procession is taking place. Processions of penitents are the norm across Spain in Holy Week. Wearing face-concealing black or purple pointy hats, dressed as centurions, […]