15.03.2013 / AI Profile
Big chair
 Sir Peter Bazalgette, chairman, Arts Council England Â
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15.03.2013 / Theatre
Common threads
 Europe’s publicly funded theatres are getting together to swap ideas on weathering the economic storm, writes Gloria Montero Â
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15.03.2013 / Dea Birkett
Why stand up for art?
 Should we be awkwardly reverential in the presence of great art, or would we appreciate it better if we were comfortably relaxed? Dea Birkett wonders why not enough museums and galleries are asking themselves that question Â
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15.03.2013 / Funding
Strange brew in Somerset
In the wake of the Brewhouse Theatre's sudden closure, Helen Dorritt looks at reverberations and a cause for optimism
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15.03.2013 / Galleries
Sunrise at Bexhill
Bexhill-=on-Sea's De La Warr Paviliion has made its international reputation. Now, as its new director Stewart Drew tells Simon Tait, it's turning to its local community
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15.03.2013 / Guardian Professional
Young, early, emerging
In the second in a series of articles looking at today’s generation of creative talent in partnership with the Guardian newspaper’s Culture Professionals website, Nancy Groves talks to Carlo Viglianisi and Nick Maylan of Empty Shop, Durham
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15.02.2013 / AI Profile
The big show in town
Julian Bird, chief executive, Society of London Theatre/Theatrical Management Association
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15.02.2013 / Dea Birkett
Royal Academy comes of age
Dea Birkett, director and founder of Kids in Museums, on how attitudes have changed in the charity’s ten years
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15.02.2013 / Theatre
Theatre for people with something to say
 Ovalhouse is 50, and AI talks to its director for 20 years, Deborah Bestwick Â
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15.02.2013 / Careers
Young,early, emerging
In a new partnership with the Guardian newspaper's Culture Professionals website, AI introduces a series looking at today’s generation of creative talent. In the first, Nancy Groves talks to Chloë Booker, director of the not-for-profit collectiv...
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15.02.2013 / Careers
Arts start
The National Skills Academy has been chosen to spearhead the Arts Council's £15m apprenticeship programme that should change the cultural economy for ever
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15.02.2013 / My Story
Amanda Bayley and Joe Duddell
Last September Bath Spa University, which specialises in creativity and cultural enterprise, announced the appointment of 16 new professors who included prize-winning novelists, poets, artists and composers. Among them are two new professors of music...
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21.01.2013 / AI Profile
A strep from street to stardom
 Matthew Peacock, founder and chief executive of Streetwise Opera Â
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21.01.2013 / Funding
Shrinking the Arts Council
 Simon Tait on how the new ACE will work Â
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21.01.2013 / Visual art
The Rembrandts of the East End
 They were a sensation in the 1930s, forgotten with the Second World War, but a new book rediscovers the East London Group of painters and their charismatic mentor Â
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21.01.2013 / Music
Rural rhythms
 It’s 15 years since the opening of a remarkable local project that has had national resonance. Julie Peacock reports Â
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21.01.2013 / Heritage
Landscape gods
The Royal Academy is uniquely placed to examine the origins of English landscape mastery – its principal creators were all members, as the exhibition Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape proves. Simon Tait reports
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21.01.2013 / Film
London's movie magicians
Patrick Kelly looks at the organisations that keep the capital's cameras rolling
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16.12.2012 / AI Profile
Bringing black into the theatre mainstream
Michael Buffong, artistic director, Talawa Theatre Company
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16.12.2012 / Theatre
The grand dame of Pantoland
  Berwick Kaler tells Patrick Kelly why he's the luckiest man alive     Â
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16.12.2012 / Theatre
Why EBacc won’t work for Teddies
An Oxford public school not only has its own theatre, it has a stand-alone theatre company and plans a concert hall for the community. Simon Tait reports
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16.12.2012 / Dea Birkett
The day the kids spoke back
Dea Birkett,director and founder of Kids in Museums, recalls how the charity was created in 2003 and what has change since
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16.12.2012 / Disabled arts
Why Ardent Hare’s demise matters so much
 For 18 months, since it lost its Arts Council funding, Dada-South’s struggle for survival has been chronicled by AI through its award-winning performances, relaunch as Ardent Hare and its eventual failure to gather the funding it needed to survive...
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16.12.2012 / The Word
Taking apart Taking Part
A recent item on Radio 4’s today programme by BBC arts editor Will Gompertz suggested that a recent government report said that less than 8% of the public attend ballet, opera or classical music, indicating that arts subsidy does not have much effect...
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16.11.2012 / AI Profile
The vision behind the doors
Alastair Upton, chief executive, the Creative Foundation, Folkestone
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16.11.2012 / Theatre
Kids’ theatre comes of age
Award winning children’s theatre company Tutti-Frutti are celebrating 21 years of touring. Patrick Kelly reports
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16.11.2012 / Funding
The winding road of the Pilgrim
  The Pilgrim Trust, founded in 1930, was once one of the richest charitable foundations. Its fortunes changed with the recession, but now it has as valuable a role as ever  Â
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16.11.2012 / Dea Birkett
The youth trap
Dea Birkett wonders whether we are too obsessed by the need to satisfy the self-proclaimed category of ‘young people’
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16.11.2012 / Theatre
Yarmouth’s great gesture
A magnificent redundant church in Norfolk has been turned into a professional standard theatre thanks to local authority determination. Simon Tait reports
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16.11.2012 / The Word
Yours, truly
 When you create a dance, how can you legally own it? Choreography copyright is a hazy area, as media lawyer Irving David, who advises Scottish Ballet and the British Ballet Organisation, explains Â
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17.09.2012 / AI Profile
The greatest show on earth
Jenny Waldman and Nigel Hinds, creative producers, London 2012 Festival
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17.09.2012 / Dea Birkett
What ever happened to the Fringe’s cutting edge?
Dea Birkett, fresh from Edinburgh, looks for innovation to bring the avant back to avant garde theatre
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17.09.2012 / Theatre
Why regional theatre works – without ACE subsidy
 Peter Wilson has been chief executive of the independent Norwich Theatre Royal for 20 years, and has developed a successful programming formula of risk and faith to make it profitable, as he explained to Simon Tait Â
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17.09.2012 / Culture
City culture states
 World cities are as important in culture as in finance and trade and the arts have a growing influence, says Chris Gibbon, senior consultant at BOP Consulting, who was asked by London’s mayor to take a closer look and has come up with the Worl...
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17.09.2012 / The Word
Fringe benefits
Storme Toolis on what teenagers can learn from Edinburgh
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17.09.2012 / The Word
Silencing Sound it Out
Sound It Out, one of the UK’s leading participatory arts companies has just closed after 20 years working with local communities. Matt Daniels, its last chief executive, asks why
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10.08.2012 / Funding
The Wong way to China
 Tonight a unique production of Britten Noye’s Fludde opens in Belfast Zoo, part of the mission of Lady Linda Wong Davies to meld two cultures, the Chinese and the British Â
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10.08.2012 / Heritage
The Great Wall
Hadrian’s Wall has been transformed – thanks to a unique experiment in the organisation of destination management
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10.08.2012 / Theatre
The Rose will bloom again
The unexpected historic find of an Elizabethan theatre was almost lost when developers needed the land. Now an appeal has been launched, starting with a bid to the Heritage Lottery fund, to take another look and then tell the full story of the Rose...
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10.08.2012 / Theatre
Bursting with life
The London Bubble changed community theatre for ever. Now a fixture in the capital’s calendar it is 40, and journalist and former Bubble chair Sandy Craig tells its early story
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10.08.2012 / AI Profile
Coming up Roses
 Stephen Unwin, artistic director, Rose Theatre, Kingston Â
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10.08.2012 / Dea Birkett
Three words in your ear
Messages, however brief, can be devastating – unnecessarily, says Dea Birkett
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12.07.2012 / AI Profile
City gold digger
Ian Ritchie, director, the City of London Festival
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12.07.2012 / Good Practice
Flourishing in the South West
 Plymouth’s Barbican Theatre is growing a creative pool of artists making their home in the South West of England. Kate Campbell explains how Â
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12.07.2012 / Dea Birkett
The wheelchair scandal
Venues are robbing the disabled and their families of their theatre enjoyment, says Dea Birkett
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12.07.2012 / Festivals
Dockland pleasures
 Simon Tait finds out how a 17th century theory of entertainment has inspired a modern reclaiming of derelict dockland Â
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12.07.2012 / The Word
Swiss (cultural) roll
Sebastian Scotney on why the Swiss presence in London for the Olympics really will make a difference
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12.07.2012 / Funding
Royal borough of artists
Kensington & Chelsea feels it has lost its artistic soul, but is determined to regain it
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15.06.2012 / Theatre
Tobacco habit
 Bristol’s Tobacco Factory Theatre has a new chair, a new business plan, a development that ACE’s Catalyst Fund is investing in, and an annual audience that has doubled in recent years. Ali Robertson, the theatre’s artistic director, explain...
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15.06.2012 / Dea Birkett
Step forward, volunteers!
...says Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, which has been highly commended for its Takeover Day
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15.06.2012 / The Word
One-in-six degrees of separation
 One in six of us is hard of hearing. Richard Lee, director of Jerwood Space and chair of Stagetext, takes to task the theatres and producers that ignore them Â
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14.06.2012 / AI Profile
Streets of steel
Kim Streets, chief executive, Sheffield Museums Trust
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14.06.2012 / Visual art
The thrill of the Chase
Art exhibitions are part of a recasting of a traditional local museum in the sylvan Cathedral Close of Salisbury. Simon Tait went to see the latest
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14.06.2012 / Theatre
Space for the best things in life
Times are hard for play-makers but in South London two inventive young women are developing a scheme to help through what they are calling The Last Refuge. Adam Tait went to Peckham to meet them
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18.05.2012 / AI Profile
The National’s Future perfect
 Lisa Burger, chief operating officer, Royal National Theatre Â
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18.05.2012 / Dea Birkett
It’s a dog’s gallery
Non-humans are getting a look-in at museums. Dea Birkett asks if it’s time to reconsider our attitude to animals
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18.05.2012 / Good Practice
Courses for dark horses
Learning disabled actos can and should share the stage as professional equals, says Vanessa Brooks
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18.05.2012 / Digital
Making social collections
A new online facility, Historypin, has been devised to help repair fractured societies
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18.05.2012 / Music
Our Simon Bolivars
We have a children’s orchestra system to rival Venezuela’s, but we have no La Sistema to support it. Simon Tait talks to the director of the National Children’s Orchestra, Roger Clarkson
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18.05.2012 / Heritage
The Sitwells and another jubilee
Simon Tait visits a revealing exhibition at the 17th century Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, home of the literary Sitwells
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19.04.2012 / AI Profile
To rule a wooden world
Neil Constable, chief executive, Shakespeare's Globe
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19.04.2012 / Digital
Filling the digital gap
 A collaboration between Arts Council England and the BBC is exploring a new arts world through The Space. Alison Cole, ACE’s executive director for the project, introduces it Â
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19.04.2012 / Festivals
The outsiders
 Some of our leading festivals are part of Without Walls, a consortium determined to promote ‘the outside arts’. Its new chair, Jo Burns, talks to Simon Tait Â
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19.04.2012 / Dea Birkett
Nostalgia’s not what it used to be
Dea Birkett sees Belfast’s Titanic grief-in and wonders what we’re weeping for Â
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19.04.2012 / The Word
Keeping Tamil Kool
 When the Tamil Tigers were finally defeated in Sri Lanka in 2009, Tamil cultural tradition all but disappeared. With her current one woman play called Looking for Kool in the boiler room of the Royal Festival Hall – on until Sunday - Rani Moorth...
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19.04.2012 / Museums
New life on-line
The National Media Museum’s eagerly awaited gallery devoted to the Internet has just opened. Patrick Kelly takes a look
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20.03.2012 / Heritage
Titanic task
 Belfast hopes to boost tourist numbers with an extraordinary tribute to the ship which sank 100 years ago, Patrick Kelly writes  Â
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20.03.2012 / Education
The Not Fame School
 ArtsEd is a unique vocational school in West London which an unprecedented cash award from Andrew Lloyd Webber has thrust it reluctantly into the limelight Â
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20.03.2012 / The Word
The art of economic growth
Anthony Bowne, principal of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, argues that the ‘soft’ unversity subjects can be the hard earners for the country
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18.03.2012 / Galleries
The last pearl
 The Jerwood Gallery opens tomorrow at Hastings, the last in the ‘string of pearls’ around the south- east coast, devoted to modern and contemporary British art. Simon Tait reports Â
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18.03.2012 / AI Profile
Leading Covent Garden into the community
 Paul Reeves, director of education, the Royal Opera House Â
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18.03.2012 / Dea Birkett
The end of the road show
 Dea Birkett, on the prejudices against traditional circus Â
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17.02.2012 / Dea Birkett
When timing isn’t everything
 Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, hopes a child’s day in a museum is really a lifetime Â
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17.02.2012 / Over to you
On track, on line
The creators of a successful global music listing website have moved out of their spare bedroom to create a big new arts resource
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17.02.2012 / Funding
Ardent Hare weaves its web
 Dada-South, now relaunched as Ardent Hare, has a new website, a milestone for how far the charity for deaf and disabled performers has come since closure loomed 11 months ago. Its chair, Graham Wiffen, explains how you can use it to help Â
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17.02.2012 / Festivals
Plymouth sound and sight
 This year Plymouth is celebrating 150 years of high education, and the university is marking it with a series of arts events organised by its own Peninsula Arts and involving partnerships throughout the South West. Sarah Chapman, Peninsula Artsâ€...
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17.02.2012 / Museums
The thin end of the Wedgwood story
 Cultural Britain is watching developments over the Wedgwood Museum and its threatened closure with growing alarm. Simon Tait reports Â
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20.01.2012 / AI Profile
Restoration man
 Graham Sheffield, director of arts, British Council Â
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20.01.2012 / Dea Birkett
Whose show is it, anyway?
 Dea Birkett is confused by the increasing reliance on audiences to make the play Â
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20.01.2012 / Museums
Canterbury’s past - and its future
 The Beaney, the cathedral city’s museum and library, is being transformed to fit a new culture-hungry generation Â
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20.01.2012 / Heritage
Raising the roof
 Patrick Kelly on efforts to combat the rising tide of heritage crime Â
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20.01.2012 / Communities
The MAC Factor
 Patrick Kelly on the little arts centre in Belfast that became the city’s biggest ever arts investment Â
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20.01.2012 / Communities
Dada takes the upward Hare course
 Since Dada-South, the Maidstone-based development agency or deaf and disabled artists learned last March that it had failed to get National Portfolio funding from the Arts Council, we have been following its fortunes as it looked towards what seeme...
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21.12.2011 / Simon Tait's Diary
The outstanding LBT
Plus... Glasgow's 15 cheers from Niki... Â Â A Place in the sun... Â Â Solved - Heatherwick's dilemma... Â Â Â
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20.12.2011 / AI Profile
The ‘arrogant pig’ that gave the arts business feet
Colin Tweedy, chief executive, Arts & Business
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20.12.2011 / Galleries
Edinburgh’s Cinderella has her day
120 years after it was built, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery at last lives up to its potential
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20.12.2011 / Funding
Rolex play
 Every two years Rolex gathers the arts mentors and protégés it sponsors, past and future, for a weekend. This time it was in New York, and Sebastian Scotney was there Â
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20.12.2011 / Theatre
Now...live from Shoreditch Town Hall
Simon Tait talks to the new director of the East End’s newest and most surprising arts venue
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20.12.2011 / Dea Birkett
Labellers – just who do they think we are?
Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, reads less into exhibition captions than meets the eye
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18.11.2011 / Heritage
Hogarth’s progress
 The country home of the creator of 18th century paintings series such as The Rake’s Progress and Marriage a la Mode has been restored, thanks to the persistent enthusiasm of local people Â
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18.11.2011 / Galleries
Warhol comes to De La Warr
 Sally Ann Lycett on the partnership behind Warhol is Here, the last exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion under the direction of Alan Haydon, who died last month Â
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17.11.2011 / Dea Birkett
Getting abreast of censorship
Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, on the anomalies in what art can and cannot be seen outside public galleries Â
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17.11.2011 / AI Profile
Theatre’s fiery champion
Edward Snape, producer and impresario
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17.11.2011 / Dance
Gillian’s Highland fling
Twenty years ago Gillian Barton thought she was settling down in the West Highlands to bring up her large family in rural peace. Instead, she is running an expanding international ballet school there Â
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17.11.2011 / Theatre
Oh yes she will!
After the Hackney Empire’s £19m refurbishment its problems should have been over. They were only beginning. Simon Tait talks to the trouble-shooter who has turned the former music hall’s fortunes around
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14.10.2011 / AI Profile
Creating well being
Godfrey Worsley, director, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
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14.10.2011 / Galleries
Home is where the art is
A former pickle factory in Bermondsey is being turned into an artists’ centre - thanks to a partnership between the homelessness charity Crisis at Christmas with Bow Arts. Simon Tait investigates
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14.10.2011 / Crafts
Laced in
 Next week the first exhibition ever to explore the qualities and possibilities of lace, not just as a fabric but as a medium, opens in Birmingham. It is curated by Lesley Millar, professor of textile culture at the University for the Creativ...
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06.10.2011 / Music
The multi Münsters
The sixth Münsterland Festival in northern Germany is this time featuring music - of all sorts - from Britain and Ireland. Sebastian Scotney, the editor of LondonJazz, was there. Â
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17.06.2011 / AI Profile
Awakening 'England's Michelangelo'
 Perdita Hunt, director, the Watts Gallery Â
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14.10.2011 / Arts centre
SQUARE DEAL
Much of the success of Halifax's arts centre is built on its unique relationship with its volunteers
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14.10.2011 / Dea Birkett
War war, not jaw jaw
 ... says Kids in Museums director Dea Birkett, after a dispiriting tour of the conference circuit Â
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16.09.2011 / Dea Birkett
Putting me on hold
 Why, asks Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, do so many museums operate a ‘no phones’ policy? Â
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16.09.2011 / AI Profile
Peeling the golden banana
Katherine Wood, director, firstsite, Colchester
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16.09.2011 / AI Profile
Canterbury’s calculated courage
 Mark Everett, director, the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury Â
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16.09.2011 / Crafts
Gold standard
Alarmed by the scaling down of teaching for its craftspeople, the Goldsmiths’ Company is creating its own institute, thanks to a 500 year old legacy
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16.09.2011 / Museums
The Big Brother House - 1840
An innovative partnership between a museum and a youth service aims to interest young people in their region’s history
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16.09.2011 / My Story
Nicole Vivien Watson...
...is creative director of the Surface Area Dance Theatre whose new show, The Hard Sell, recently opened at Dance City in Newcastle, the company’s home
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19.08.2011 / Dea Birkett
When is a child not a child?
 asks Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums – and fails to get an answer  ...and John Evans, editor of the guide to guide to sports museums etc, Sportcloseup (www.sportsupclose.co.uk), responds to Dea Birkett’s last article which questione...
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19.08.2011 / AI Profile
Enter Stage North
Erica Whyman, chief executive of Northern Stage
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19.08.2011 / Theatre
Round peg in a round hole
When the Roundhouse reopened five years ago there was little confidence that its troubled past was behind it. Now, as its chief executive and artistic director Marcus Davey tells Simon Tait, there are no doubts
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19.08.2011 / Festivals
Ideal home
 Patrick Kelly on the festival of ideas whose time has come Â
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19.08.2011 / Museums
Morris Major
Estelle Morris was asked to look at the Arts Council’s ten year plan and how museums and libraries could fit into it. Her report does much more.  ...and ACE rethinks Renaissance...
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19.08.2011 / Funding
Having our data and eating it
Official surveys can help us plan better for the future, but their data is not easily accessible. www.MyCake.org, an online benchmarking service for the creative & cultural industries, has found a way to break this barrier, as its founder Sara...
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16.07.2011 / Dea Birkett
Why I’m not carrying an Olympic torch
Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, on why museums racing to keep up with the 2012 Games are on to a loser Â
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16.07.2011 / AI Profile
The world of Scotland
Dr Gordon Rintoul, director, National Museums of Scotland Â
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16.07.2011 / Festivals
Live writing
 Miles Salter, writer, storyteller and musician, looks at the boom in literature festivals in the UK Â
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16.07.2011 / Theatre
Enter stage left... Igglepiggle!
 As In The Night Garden tours the country, the theatre’s newest audience is ga-ga for more. Simon Tait reports Â
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17.06.2011 / AI Profile
The tales of one city
 Dr Maria Balshaw, director of the Whitworth and Manchester Art Galleries Â
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17.06.2011 / Dance
A summer place
The Place Theatre has cleared its studios and theatre for dancers and choreographers, amateur, professional and avant garde, to learn from each other Â
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17.06.2011 / Communities
PECKHAM PRIDE
 Scarred by murderous gang disputes and the butt of jokes as the home of the Trotter family in TV's Only Fools and Horses, Peckham in South London is defying its image to become the capital’s creative centre, London’s Montmartre. Simon Tai...
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17.06.2011 / Funding
Because it’s good
 Last month we began our tracing of the fortunes of Dada-South, the Maidstone-based development agency or deaf and disabled artists, since it was told its Arts Council funding would cease from April 2012. Chairman Graham Wiffen brings us up to date  ...
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16.06.2011 / Dea Birkett
Museums’ private secret
Should fee-charging schools get museum concessions? Dea Birkett, the director of the Kids in Museums charity and co-director of TextWorkshop, cannot understand why museums think they should Â
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25.05.2011 / AI Profile
We are all Hogarth now
Caro Howell, director, The Foundling Museum
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25.05.2011 / Heritage
The changing world of 18th Century Bath
After an £11.2m transformation, the Holburne Museum reaches across four centuries, as Simon Tait reports Â
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25.05.2011 / Funding
Worthy
The Gulbenkian, the UK’s richest arts award, could see Shetlanders confronting their relationship with the internal combustion engine, street drinkers in a Bonfire Night play or cyclists taking over a central London street and theatre
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25.05.2011 / Funding
Swimming up-stream
Based in Maidstone, Dada-South was created eight years ago by a group of deaf and disabled artists to be a development agency for deaf and disabled artists, with core funding from the Arts Council. On March 30 they learned that their bid for Portfoli...
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25.05.2011 / Dea Birkett
Milking the sacred
Dea Birkett, the director of the Kids in Museums charity and co-director of TextWorkshop, on why admission charging is not the most important access issue
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25.05.2011 / The Word
Why are they halting theatre’s
asks Sean Aita, former artistic director of Forest Forge Theatre Company from 2003-2008 and now a senior lecturer in acting for the Arts University College at Bournemouth
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15.04.2011 / AI Profile
The museum maker
Sir David Chipperfield, architect of Turner Contemporary, Margate
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15.04.2011 / Festivals
The art of dining with Alice
Famous for its giant elephants and spiders, for its living sculpture on Trafalgar Square’s plinth, and for its light spectaculars, Artichoke is about to present a new phenomenon, with the help of a childhood classic.
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15.04.2011 / Dea Birkett
Small can be better
In her new regular column for AI, the director of the charity Kids in Museums, gives the view from where she is…
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15.04.2011 / The Word
Breaking the bounds
Michael Carlson argues that it’s time for film funding to get out of the box and on to the screens.
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15.04.2011 / Theatre
Back in the old routine
There is a new/old phenomenon in British theatre – repertory and the ensemble company. David Ward investigates
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15.04.2011 / Communities
Teatime top-up
Hybrid is committed to using creativity to initiate positive social engagement. Its director, Dr Samina Zahir, describes how tea parties can ‘pop up’ and bring art to inhabit community voids
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15.04.2011 / Over to you
OVER TO YOU
Last week’s TaitMail blog asked whether, in their grants for 2011-14, the Arts Council were being generous to arts organisations in the Olympic triangle of the East End at the expense of other parts of London. Moira Sinclair, ACE’s executive directo...
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15.04.2011 / Theatre
Soho bar stories
Soho Theatre is a new Olivier winner, has a new artistic director and starts a new season in May. Simon Tait talked to Steve Marmion about its new optimism
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15.04.2011 / The Word
Leadership Legacies
Five years after it was created with a special Treasury grant, the Cultural Leadership Programme has been closed, to be succeeded by the Arts Council’s new Leadership Works. CLP’s director, Hilary Carty, reflects on what it has achieved and wha...
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15.04.2011 / My Story
Nicola Conibere
Choreographer Nicola Conibere worked for ten years as an arts publicist before switching careers and becoming a practising dance artist. She has just represented the UK at dancEUnion at the Southbank Centre (15-17 March) alongside choreographers fro...
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18.03.2011 / AI Profile
Ivan Lewis
Ivan Lewis MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
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18.03.2011 / Music
Rich Mix
Rich Mix is an object lesson in public capital arts funding. It was almost a salutary disaster, but not any more.
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18.03.2011 / Culture
Connecting to the watershed
At King’s Place last week the BBC and the Arts Council revealed a new partnership to bring the digital revolution to the arts, with five full-scale seminars taking place around England followed by a series of workshops.
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18.03.2011 / Audiences
Global Regeneration
Globe Education is bringing the classroom to the stage, and now has a new centre to help extend its mission.
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18.03.2011 / Audiences
Breaking The Bard Barrier
Ask any student and they could probably list more reasons as to why they don’t like Shakespeare’s plays than why they do.  With such a heavy amalgamation of seemingly difficult language, characters who don’t seem to bear any semblance to moder...
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18.03.2011 / Museums
Choices For Change
Alison Turnbull, head of research and standards at Museums Galleries Scotland, explains how the organisations produced a toolkit to help museums and galleries handle change.
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18.03.2011 / Culture
Tribute At The Mill
A derelict site is to become the site for an insight into history of Bradford. Patrick Kelly reports.
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18.03.2011 / My Story
Fiona Chapman
Through Musical Connections, which last year won an NHS Award, Fiona Chapman is a pioneer taking music to those suffering with dementia in North Yorkshire.
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18.02.2011 / The Word
Why art?
Jenny Secker, professor of mental health at Anglia Ruskin University and the South Essex Partnership Trust, explains how artistic expression can help our mental health.
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18.02.2011 / AI Profile
Moira Swinbank, Chief Executive, Legacy Trust UK
Building a legacyÂ
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18.02.2011 / Funding
A thousand cuts
Local museums take the brunt of spending reductions in the sector
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18.02.2011 / Museums
Manchester’s second industrial revolution
The Museum of Science and Industry has major plans for the future, Patrick Kelly reports.Â
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18.02.2011 / My Story
Gavin Webster
After a year of forays into television and national touring, Geordie comic Gavin Webster is back on home soil for one man show on March 4 at Journal Tyne Theatre.Â
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04.02.2011 / Audiences
Art on another dimension
 Sky Arts are to broadcast the first ever 3D visual arts programme. Simon Tait went to watch it being made, and stepped into another world… Â
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21.01.2011 / Funding
Gilt cutting edge
A bank that serves the richest individuals has been encouraging them to become arts donors with a three night arts festival. Simon Tait reports.
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21.01.2011 / Good Practice
With extreme prejudice
Can you teach people to change their attitude and behaviour through theatre? Kate Campbell of the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth, suggests that it can help.Â
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21.01.2011 / The Word
The theatre is dead
If theatres are to have a future, they need to look at how they position their product and how to reach younger audiences, says Tim Sharp, design director at the strategic brand agency, Uniform. Â
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21.01.2011 / My Story
Justin Hammond
Justin Hammond has just created the second annual Catlin Guide to the best new talent emerging from our art schools. It was published on January 19 to coincide with the opening of the London Art Fair.
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19.01.2011 / Galleries
First, and built to last
Dulwich Picture Gallery is 200 years old, and as renowned around the world as it is loved by the residents of a South London suburb. Simon Tait reports.
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19.01.2011 / Music
Music's class act
Music education is back in the news again. Patrick Kelly looks at a pioneering project which brings professional orchestras right into the classroom.Â
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17.12.2010 / AI Profile
The Queen's man
The director of the Belfast Festival at Queens has enjoyed a hugely successful rise in audiences and box office, but it hasn’t always been plain sailing, he tells AI.  Â
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17.12.2010 / Culture
Olympic Culture
Art and sport are awkward bedfellows, but can the former learn from the latter to find new funding? Will Glendinning, managing director of the event consultants, producers and project management company Allium Opus, examines the options. Â
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17.12.2010 / Dance
Making space to create
Funding changes will affect the way dance companies work. Dave Edmunds of dep arts explains how by sharing other tasks, companies can focus on performing. Â
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17.12.2010 / Galleries
In the footstep of Turner
Turner Contemporary is nearing completion and will open in Margate in the spring, the launchpad for the seaside town’s revival. Overleaf, Simon Tait talks to its director, Victoria Pomery. Architectural images by: Imaging Atelier. Â
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17.12.2010 / Funding
The local problem
Alongside DCMS, local authorities are meting out even more draconian funding cuts, prompting Labour MP Alison McGovern, a former councillor, to table a Ten Minute Rule Bill in the House of Commons. Meanwhile, Dany Louise was at the Brighton annua...
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17.12.2010 / Theatre
The little national theatre
The under-funded but expanding Little Angel Puppet Theatre is 50 next year, and has a new collaboration with the RSC. Simon Tait reports. Â
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17.12.2010 / Museums
Maugham’s opening gift to Bath
A long struggle to upgrade a gem of a museum will open in May with a surprise new attraction. Â
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17.12.2010 / My Story
Robert Jackson,director of SPONSOR121
Robert Jackson is the managing director of Sponsor121, an online sponsorship marketplace.
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22.11.2010 / My Story
Sally Goldsworthy
Sally Goldsworthy is director of the Discover Children’s Story Centre in Stratford, East London, where a new exhibition about Lauren Child’s best selling Charlie And Lola children’s books among others has just opened. She is one of the Cultura...
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19.11.2010 / AI Profile
Opening the eastern gateway
Sir Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Centre
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19.11.2010 / The Word
Speed Kills
 Shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis responds to the CSR arts cuts. Â
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19.11.2010 / Careers
The way in, via South Ken
The cultural estate of South Kensington was bought out of the profits of the Great Exhibition in 1851 to create Prince Albert’s educational community, and so it still is. This weekend the institutions on it throw open their doors in a 21st centur...
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19.11.2010 / Arts centre
Devastating Brew
The Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre opened in purpose-built premises near the centre of Taunton in 1977. It has a 350-seat main house, an art gallery and a studio for film and small scale drama, its Cultivate Hub for creative making, and a cafÃ...
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19.11.2010 / Dance
Not just in passing
Transit is the kind of participatory project that will be under threat from funding cuts. It was an experiment which took place at High Wycombe last spring under the aegis of the Thames Valley Partnership in which 11 young people of 18 who originall...
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19.11.2010 / Arts Cuts
Selective thoughts
A few days before the fateful cuts decision, the Commons Culture Select Committee helpfully decided to have an investigation of what the impact might be. Simon Jenner, head of an RFO as director of Survivors’ Poetry, was there.
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19.11.2010 / Europe
No light at the end of the eurotunnel
Arts in the UK are not alone in facing major cuts in public funding. David Fulton surveys the state of the arts in our European neighbours.
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19.11.2010 / Theatre
Tales from the middle of town
Shoppers in Peterborough’s Queensgate shopping centre might have been surprised, even dismayed, to see a shop window full of kids wandering around telling tales. Alex Byrne, artistic director of NIE, explains what was going on.
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29.10.2010 / Museums
The Wandsworth experiment
Wandsworth's museum was off-loaded by the local council but taken on by a philanthropist as a private venture - with an admission charge. It has just reopened, and is set to be a paradigm for privately funded culture. Â Â
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29.10.2010 / Education
Bronze-winning Bard
Alice Young, Head of Arts Award Programme from Trinity College, London, talks about a new initiative that is bringing Shakespeare to life for young people and accrediting their achievements  Â
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29.10.2010 / Culture
Going for Gold?
Miles Salter examines the effect of the 2012 London Olympics on the UK's cultural landscape.Â
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29.10.2010 / AI Profile
Breaking the mould
Dr Lucy Worsley is chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces and a champion of popular history. She is one Cultural Leadership's 50 Women to Watch.
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28.10.2010 / AI Profile
A private challenge
Stephen Deuchar, director of the ArtFund   Â
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28.10.2010 / Arts centre
Waking Croydon
Croydon is not exactly synonymous with culture, but a new team is planning to change that. Simon Tait went to see them.  Â
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28.10.2010 / Culture
How big really is our bang?
Measuring the impact of the arts has never been an exact science, but it has to get better if we are to survive the coming austerity, says Andrew Barnett, director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK)  Â
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25.10.2010 / Arts centre
Derby's Quad equation
The arts centre QUAD opened in Derby's Market Place two years ago. Keith Jeffrey, its director, believes its success demonstrates how a mixture of subsidy and an entrepreneurial approach can show the way for other arts organizations  Â
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06.10.2010 / Crafts
How we are made
A new initiative is popping up around the country devised to show how our crafts are influencing and describing who we are. Craftspace director, Deirdre Figueiredo explains more Â
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06.10.2010 / AI Profile
In his Place
Peter Millican, property developer and creator of King’s Place
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06.10.2010 / Audiences
The real front line
Arts people know all about the funding crisis, but Tim Wood, AMA board member and director of communications at The Place, believes only audiences can prevent the fears coming true.
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06.10.2010 / Funding
The A&B of the arts economy
There has been a chorus of calls for Arts & Business to lose its subsidy, here its chief executive, Colin Tweedy sets out the role he believes only A&B can fulfil. Â
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06.10.2010 / AI Profile
Forging film’s British future
Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute Â
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06.10.2010 / Theatre
Northern Soul
Renowned theatre company, Northern Broadsides, are exceptionally busy this year. Patrick Kelly finds out more. Â
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06.10.2010 / AI Profile
Diamond cutting
Craig Hassall, Managing director, English National Ballet
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06.10.2010 / Festivals
Get the early spirit
This year’s summer festivals are finding it hard to get ticket-buyers to commit early, threatening their programming, Simon Tait reports
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06.10.2010 / AI Profile
Renaissance in the docks
Julia Fawcett OBE, chief executive of The Lowry
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06.10.2010 / Museums
Hands on museum
Staff have made their mark on the £2m revamp of the Yorkshire Museum in some unexpected ways, writes Patrick Kelly Â
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06.10.2010 / Arts Cuts
Mind where yer gannin’!
Much of the comment about the arts cuts has been centred on the London-based national companies, venues and museums. Here, the leaders of some of the North East’s principal arts organisations and prominent artists voice their concerns about wha...
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06.10.2010 / AI Profile
The North East’ringmaster
Carol Bell, head of Culture, Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative
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06.10.2010 / Opera
Mozart in the Dales
Dozens of young people in North Yorkshire have been discovering their first taste of opera. Patrick Kelly reports Â
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06.10.2010 / Museums
New passion for old pile
The Ashmolean, Blist’s Hill and Herbert Museum and Art Gallery have all been beaten by the rejuvenated Ulster Museum in Belfast to the £100,000 Art Fund Prize for the museum of the year Â
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06.10.2010 / Galleries
Collision!
Dublin’s Science Gallery is where art makes sense and sensibility of science, explain the gallery’s Anja Ekelof and Lynn Scarff
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Laughing all the way from the bank
Nica Burns, theatre producer and owner; director and producer, Edinburgh Comedy Awards
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IF you want people to look differently at Milton Keynes...
Monica Ferguson, chief executive of The Stables and Festival Director of IF: Milton Keynes International Festival, reflects on the challenge of staging a new festival from scratch within 18 months.
Find out more +06.10.2010 / Crafts
Value added
A new report on craft and the economic and social contribution of its makers is one of the most significant pieces of research by the Crafts Council for a decade, says Karen Yair, the council’s research and information manager.
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Performance!
In June a student’s fancy lightly turns from lectures and essays to thoughts of…  music in the sun. Adam Tait is one of them.
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06.10.2010 / Culture
The house where art lives
In an old school annexe in South London, a dance studio has become a hotbed of cross-arts creativity. Simon Tait explored Â
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06.10.2010 / Archives
Archive Eurovision
European countries are working together to create an international gateway to national archives, but the UKÂ is not joining in Â
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06.10.2010 / Dance
Chamber performance
A unique, fun, digital-dance event created by teenagers for themselves, their families and the general public is to open on 23 June in an empty shop in Coventry’s City Arcade. Cathy Connan reports Â
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