Tag Archives: #ArtsEmergencyUK

A Love Letter For the Arts on BBC Radio Kent

BBC Radio Kent presenter, Dominic King

BBC Radio Kent presenter Dominic King has recently launched ‘A Love Letter for the Arts’ on his show, in which creative people from the region are invited to respond to the threats facing the arts during the current times.

Last night’s show featured Deputy Director of Music, Dan Harding; if you missed the feature, the text is reproduced below, or listen back on BBC Sounds at the 1hr 14mins mark here.


Hello.

Just stop what you’re doing for a moment. Just – put down the book; put Spotify on pause; pause watching something on YouTube or Netflix, stop listening to that CD.

Now wait a minute; all those that you’ve just stopped doing. They’re arts, aren’t they ? Without really realising it, those are the arts with which you’ve just been engaging; those things which you’ve all just stopped doing are the product of many hours of work from a whole infrastructure of people – craftsmen, performers, practitioners, professional and freelancers, all coming together to deliver that product that you just watched – or read – or listened to – or looked at on a wall, in an art gallery.

Just think about all those individuals involved in creating those things. Now imagine what happens if the arts, under grave threat in the current climate, were to disappear; venues to close; freelancers are no longer able to do what they do – they’re no longer able to pay bills, to put food on the table, to make ends meet.

Now imagine a world where lockdown has finished, life has returned; you want to go out in the evening, or at the weekend. Let’s go to a concert! But wait; the venue is closed, the concert-hall dark, the piano lid shut, the pianist and the singer have taken up other jobs, to be able to pay bills, to make ends meet.

Image: Aaron Burden via Unsplash

We’ll go to the theatre! But wait: the curtain is lowered, the auditorium empty, and the freelancers – the set designers, the costume-makers, the actors – have all taken up other jobs, to pay bills, to make ends meet. Let’s go to an art gallery! But wait; the gallery is shut, the curtains are drawn; there are no paintings to see, because the artists aren’t painting any more; they’ve put down their brushes to re-train as an HGV driver, a delivery man, to work in a supermarket, to pay bills, to put food on the table, to make ends meet.

Let’s go to the cinema! But wait: there are no films being made; there are no directors, no cinematographers, no set-designers, no set-builders, no model-makers, no film composers, no caterers; they’ve all taken up other jobs, in order to pay bills, to put food on the table, to make ends meet.

Let’s go to a live gig! But wait: the venue is closed, converted into a trendy wine-bar; the stage is dark, the bar is empty; the musicians have laid down their instruments – the guitarist put down his strings, the drummer given up her sticks, because they’ve all taken other jobs; to pay bills, to put food on the table, to make ends meet.

There’s a real danger that, as we emerge into a post-COVID world, that venues will have been lost; there will be fewer creative activities for us to enjoy. Libraries would be shut; there will be no books being written, because people won’t be writing any more because the writers will have laid down their pens and taken other jobs, to pay the bills, to put food on the table, to make ends meet.

We’re also at risk of losing the opportunities to inspire the artists and practitioners of tomorrow; that children who would have sat in the concert-hall, or gone to a live gig, or visited an art gallery or the theatre and had that revelatory moment of thinking ‘Yes! THIS is what I want to do,’ are not going to able to have that moment of career-defining inspiration

The arts are at risk; we need to save them, and the people that create them. We need the government to write its own love letter for arts on the back of not just one large cheque, but several, each of which will filter down to the grass-roots venues, the freelancers, the venues at the beating hearts of their communities.

As Joni Mitchell put it so memorably once upon a time in a bitter-sweet ballad in 1970 whose message still endures to this day:

“Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone…”

Many thanks to Dominic King for the invitation to contribute to the series.

Hallowed music in hallowed halls: thinking outside the (musical) box

Music is usually with us most of the time; on streaming platforms whilst we work, on the radio or mp3 player while in the car, running, cycling; it announces the mood of the film we’re about to watch (usually in the cinema: more likely, on Netflix these days…), or draws the programme we’re watching on television to a close. It identifies particular brands or products in adverts; it accompanies times of celebration, of mourning, enhancing public pageants and private moments.

Image: Larisa Birta via Unsplash

In the current climate of various states of lockdown and social distancing, many of us are finding we need music now more than ever; being deprived of the opportunities to either perform or experience live music is affecting musicians and listeners everywhere. The recent resumption of tiny live concerts from the Wigmore Hall – delivered from behind closed doors with only one or two performers and a skeleton technical staff – and performances from the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra have come as a reviving musical burst of oxygen for many.

We’re all looking for solutions at the moment, that will allow us to keep performing and experiencing music during the current pandemic. We look for models, for ways in which others are responding to the challenge in different, creative ways, to see what we might learn from them; what might work, what might offer the possibility of keeping music alive.

Kate Romano: image by Bella West

It’s easy to be afraid; traditional models of classical music, in particular, rely on delivering hallowed music in suitable venues. As musician, producer and creative whirlwind Kate Romano put it recently in an impassioned article by Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian, we cling to “the idea that music of high stature has to be performed in buildings of high stature,” a concept that “closes things down and prevents people from thinking about different ways of people hearing music.”

If we can, for a moment, relinquish the idea that audiences need to experience music in traditional venues (a concept looking increasingly untenable as concert-halls, churches and clubs look to be least suited to allowing live musicians and audiences to occupy the same space), and look instead to other spaces that might allow performers and listeners to come together, in whatever shape or form may be possible, things start to get a little more positive. Think, for instance, of the Proms in the Car Park series that began a few years ago, bringing exciting music to a multi-storey car park in Peckham.

Of course, performances benefit from taking place in ideal, purpose-built venues, in concert-halls and opera houses that have been designed especially to enhance acoustic properties, lines of sight, managing people and instruments and all the trappings of concert-giving. And this is not to undermine their importance, especially when they engage and support their local communities. But these venues rely on packing people together – musicians and audience alike – in order to enhance the electricity that derives from (and is necessary to) live performance – and also to maximise ticket sales, to keep venues operating, and musicians, box office, front of house and technical staff paid. And whilst repertoire benefits from being experienced in exactly the right conditions for the ears and (sometimes) the spirit – sacred polyphony in resonant churches, symphonic repertoire in concert halls, jazz quartets on club stages – the current climate is forcing us to consider the need to move outside of these places, if social distancing requires more space between the players and more seats between the audience.

Rather than trying to realise traditional music in spaces that aren’t designed for it, necessitating amplification or the imposition of ways to improve the configuration to avoid a disappointing experience for the audience, composers would instead write more pieces with non-traditional venues in mind.

Most music is written expressly to be performed in dedicated venues (I recall watching a broadcast of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s About Time in which the sonorous opening brass-call came from the players spaced around the tower of Ely Cathedral, in dialogue with the period-instrument orchestra and modern ensemble below). What happens if organisations started commissioning new works especially for performance in unusual spaces; for car-parks, libraries, art galleries ? Rather than trying to realise traditional music in spaces that aren’t designed for it, necessitating amplification or the imposition of ways to improve the configuration to avoid a disappointing experience for the audience, composers would instead write more pieces with non-traditional venues in mind. Initially, it would be about working on the smaller-scale; using different ensembles, spaced to exploit a venue’s characteristics and draw directly upon them rather than trying to get around them.

I realise of course that this isn’t a short-term solution to the problems we’re facing. And some communities are doing this already. But drawing on this approach particularly at this moment might wed musicians, artists, composers and curators closer to their local communities, encouraging collaboration between artists, the places and the communities in which they live in the way that some festivals already work, resulting in a closer creative dialogue between people and place. The danger, of course, of successfully engaging the local community is that the focus of creative groups and organisations becomes somewhat more inward-looking, or locally focused; but it would be important to keep being aspirational, challenging, and with a view to building towards a return to the concert-hall but wielding a new, imaginatively different approach to programming. Having established a loyal, local audience, what you would then aim to do is to take your community audience with you when the time came that those traditional venues reopen. “You enjoyed listening to us HERE; now listen to us HERE as well!” Building up a faithful, local listenership that then follows you into the concert-hall or opera house might help also reassure those involved that the classical canon in general, and the contemporary scene in particular, isn’t always something of which to be afraid. Those local followers might well be the open-minded, open-eared listeners happy to take the risk, especially if they were engaged enough to have come with you through odd venues, unusual spaces with quirky acoustics and perhaps unusual (or even non-existent) seating…

Now’s the time to think about looking to those imaginative ways of presenting music as models for the future, rather than as Novel But Ultimately Forgettable Sidesteps from the Traditional Ways of Doing Things. There is room for both opportunities: for traditional repertoire in customary spaces, and for traditional and imaginative (and new) repertoire capitalising on the novel possibilities afforded by unorthodox spaces. We need to support and develop organisations prepared to take on the challenge.

And, as Kate dryly tweeted in response: ‘Yes. And channel funding into them.’

Even though a rescue package of £1.57bn towards the arts was announced yesterday (and there are still concerns about how that will be implemented, and whether it will support freelancers and grass-roots venues…), the conversation is still intricate, fascinating – and urgent. We need to keep it going.

Show your working: now is the time to be spoiling the illusion behind creating performances

Lights, camera – action.

Or, currently, more likely: lighting (pulling curtain, adjusting angle-poise lamp), camera-phone (or webcam) – tripod (or dodgy pile of precariously-balanced books) – internet signal (strength variable but should suffice) – crossed fingers – Go Live / Start Stream.

Photo by Claudia Wolff on Unsplash

The lifting of the curtain, the hushed expectancy of the audience as the music begins or the first words are uttered on the stage. The first moments of what, hopefully, is a magical, captivating, challenging performance, created after hours of endless work in crafting a flawless experience that hides well the hours spent in making it. At the moment, that’s all gone.

Whilst lockdown has afforded new ways of realising creative ideas, it also underlines how hard it is to bring about a ‘traditional’ live event. Performers can’t engage with live listeners in the same way, with a packed house, an eager audience.

Continue reading Show your working: now is the time to be spoiling the illusion behind creating performances

Are the performing arts more accessible in lockdown? A reflection on accessing live music in lockdown, shielding and solitude.

As part of our occasional guest series, a reflection on the arts in lockdown by Dr Francesca Bernardi, RSA Fellow and independent researcher into children’s rights, dis/abilities and the arts.


Sometimes people like to use the phrase ‘wearing different hats’ as an expression of versatility, in different contexts or in a single space that requires one to assume different guises to get through the day (at the very least). I suppose that might be a good way to start a brief introduction of my own different hats. I would describe my self as a children’s rights and dis/ability activist, but then feel I am neglecting the very medium of such activism: the arts, visual and performing.

Francesca Bernardi

In this time of crisis I have worn a new guise which has been with me always (unnoticed) and has positioned me in a place of vulnerability and, consequently, I am shielding. Responding to this heightened vulnerable self, has caused me to look at personal ideas, hopes and ambitions in a very different light. I have also been hit financially by the changing shape of academia and my potential role within that space. An added sense of displacement comes from my inability to return to Italy (my home) where I would like to continue my research with communities that are seldom heard, in research, the media and their own social spheres.

Continue reading Are the performing arts more accessible in lockdown? A reflection on accessing live music in lockdown, shielding and solitude.

Rewriting the dimensions of the world: the arts in lockdown and a global audience of one

In the current climate of getting your cultural fix online – music, theatre, dance – I’ve found myself, like many, watching pre-recorded and streamed live performances of musicians and actors from around the world. I’ve written elsewhere of witnessing the courage of cellist and composer Anne Müller’s livestreamed Wohnzimmerkonzert (pictured below); I’ve also watched the troubling Frankenstein from the National Theatre, Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III from the Nottingham Playhouse, and last night’s broadcast of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa from Glyndebourne, a compelling blend of Erwartung, Bluebeard’s Castle and the more menacing waltzes of Ravel.

Continue reading Rewriting the dimensions of the world: the arts in lockdown and a global audience of one

Different risks for the New Normal: a concert by Anne Müller

In an era when musicians (and in fact artists generally) are adapting to the current climate by presenting and performing online, I had the fortune recently to watch a streamed Wohnzimmer performance by cellist, composer and music-and-electronics exponent, Anne Müller.

Continue reading Different risks for the New Normal: a concert by Anne Müller

Creativity in the time of corona: guest post by Livy Potter

Former University Music Scholar and History gradaute, Livy Potter, now works at York Theatre Royal. In a special guest post, she reflects on the impact of the current climate on theatre-making.


The creative industry, like many others, is having a rather turbulent time of late (unprecedented, you might say – but if I hear or read that word one more time, I may scream). York Theatre Royal, along with theatres and cinemas up and down the country, closed its doors and cancelled all its upcoming performances following government advice on Tuesday 17 March. I was faced with the strange prospect of being the Marketing Officer for an organisation whose usual function is to entertain large groups of people in a confined space…

But can a theatre still have a purpose even if its doors are shut?

Continue reading Creativity in the time of corona: guest post by Livy Potter

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore: the Virtual Music Project and making music in isolation

‘May you live in interesting times,’ runs the ancient saying. The second part, possibly lost in the mists of time since it was first uttered, may have been something along the lines of ‘and may you also have to adapt your working practices to cope with sudden, profound change.’ Maybe.

Continue reading Don’t Get Around Much Anymore: the Virtual Music Project and making music in isolation