Arts First

This is the first in a planned series of episodes on antisemitism in the arts. The savage attack by Hamas on a music festival and Kibbutz in Israel on October 7 2023 was not subject to universal condemnation as one might expect. Rather it seems to have exposed a seam of antisemitism, which should be surprising given Holocaust memorialisation has become an important part of Western culture over the past 50 years and more. Surprisingly perhaps, the arts have been far from immune to what some call the virus of antisemitism. The Palestinian cause has been taken up as a leftwing one and Art activists and activist celebrities have followed the line.

Many in the arts — including a number of institutions — have been turning a blind eye to the deep antisemitism within the pro-Palestinian movement, particularly among the supporters of Hamas. Not only did the massacre trigger vocal support for the Palestinian cause, it led to to Jewish artists, particularly if they have expressed pro-Israel views, being ostracised and cancelled. The art world should be seen as a safe space (to coin contemporary terminology) for Jewish artists. But the opposite seems to be the case.

What is going on? Why — if you express support for Israel — are you seen as fundamentally tainted?

This is an incredibly fraught discussion and in this, our first episode on the topic, we begin an examination of the problem. The participants in the discussion — Rosie Kay, Manick, Govinda, Maya Amrami and Jonathan Baz — each bring something different to the discussion.

Rosie Kay is a British choreographer. She co-founded Freedom in the Arts with Denise Fahmy after experiencing cancellation, and discovering just how prevalent the practice is in the arts. Their stories were told in one of our first podcasts, last year. She is also co-founder of Artists Against Antisemitism UK which was set up after Hamas’s brutal attack to highlight the problem and provide support for Jewish artists. starts off with a brief overview of the research she has done.

Manick Govinda is an independent writer, commentator, mentor, arts adviser and curator; and, like Rosie, a co-founder of Artists Against Antisemitism UK. He is a longtime warrior for freedom of expression.

Maya Amrami is a multidisciplinary artist and a doctoral student at University of the Arts London’s Creative Computing Institute. Her art exposes, examines and challenges the hatred targeted at her as a Jewish Israeli artist when she expressed her horror at the Nova massacre and her support for Israel.

Manick is curated a recent exhibition, Witness, which took place at JW3, the Jewish Centre in North Finchley, London, as part of a conference organised by the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Maya Amrami exhibit her work at along with two other Jewish artists, Mina Kupfermann and Benzi Brofman.

Previously Manick chaired and Maya took part in an event at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland which addressed antisemitism since October 7 2023.

And finally: Jonathan Baz is an accountant and a self-made and prolific theatre critic with his own website.

As a Jew, he has found himself increasingly aware of antisemitism in the theatre over the past few years and he questions the obsession with Jewish stereotypes in plays like The Lehmann Trilogy.

He recently reviewed the exhibition, Witness, that Maya and Manick were involved in.

Thank you to Marc Proviser for allowing us to feature his work ‘Lamentations - The Present’. You can see and find out more about Marc’s work at his website.

We are planning more episodes on antisemitism in the arts, so please bear with us and keep listening …

Note: We are keen to talk to artists who believe they have been subject to censorship and cancellation because they have expressed their opinions about Israel or other controversies.

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Cosmic Titans: Art, Science and the Quantum Universe is an exhibition currently showing in Nottingham at the Djanogly art gallery, lakeside, University of Nottingham Campus. It opened at the end of January and runs until the end of April.

It is a multi-media exploration of how we can attempt to understand aspects of the universe so small, too vast and so distant that they are beyond the comprehension of our five senses. The exhibition was four years in the making, and coincides with 100 years of quantum mechanics.

Dr Ulrike Kuchner is Senior Research Fellow, at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham university and is one of the two curators of this ambitious exhibition. With her co-curator, Professor Silke Weinfurtner (School of Mathematical Sciences), Dr Kuchner founded the ARTlab, the University’s first ArtScience experimentation space. The curators brought together nine artists to work in residence alongside quantum scientists, particle physicists and astrophysicists investigating the early universe and black holes.

Jo Herlihy studied art at college and her love has remained over time although her day job is supporting people in business change projects.

Jo Herlihy is the author of the 2019 book, Alchemy: A Search for Truth. Her review of the Cosmic Titans exhibition can be found here.

Visit ARTlab website. / Visit Lakeside Arts / Watch Quantum Lens video.

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We first met David during the Covid lockdown when he kindly agreed to do an online event for the Arts&Society Forum. I had seen his play ‘Cyprus Avenue’ at the Royal Court before COVID broke out and really enjoy its mischievous, dark humour.

He has a new play — The Fifth Step, a satire about alcoholism and the AA programme, opening in London’s West End in May, having opened successfully at the Edinburgh festival last year — and reviewed here in Episode 5.

Listeners may have seen plays by David, such as Ulster American — which was performed in London by Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis; Yes So I said Yes, Sadie, and Not Now. He has written episodes for several TV dramas and recently got his own TV series, ‘Lovers’, on Sky Atlantic. He has a great talent for using dark humour to expose conflict and contradiction.

In this episode we ask David what makes him write and how a play gets started. He talks about growing up in Belfast amid the tensions of the Troubles, and how his work has drawn from these experiences. Although he is now trying to move away from this focus it remains a touchstone for him, including in a new play he is writing about the Palestine/Israel conflict.

He explains why, in writing, he believes art must take precedence over politics and why he avoids preachiness: it’s not the message that counts but the artistic integrity of the work. Yet it is increasingly difficult to avoid politics in art and the ideological political polarisations of the present moment. He talks about the troubling long term effects of the COVID lockdown, about the return to faith, about the importance of being direct, and about the shocking value of violence in theatre… and much else… Enjoy!

Photo of David Ireland © Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

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What We See is Not Always Black and White is the title of an exhibition currently showing at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, by Manchester-based artist and photographer Steve Forrest. Steve and former gallery director Pauline Hadaway join Niall Crowley to talk about his work and the exhibition.

For more than three decades Steve has covered foreign wars, photographed Hollywood celebrities, artists and politicians - commissioned by major news organisations and newspapers such as The New York Times, and worked as a photographer for UK and foreign governments, the UN and international NGOs.

According to the museum website, “This exhibition is an examination of the artist’s own analogue / digital documentary photography archive. Once released from the rigid categorisation of the archive and from the burden of memory and historical documentation, the photographic image, as document, ceases to serve as archival memory, and is no longer bound by its historical duty to promote truth and accuracy.

These photo-montages are Steve’s response to what he feels are the limitations of documentary photography within an increasingly simplified and polarised view of the world.”

Pauline Hadaway has worked in arts and education since the early 90s and as director of Belfast Exposed Photography between 2000 and 2013, overseeing its transformation from a small scale, though politically significant, city based project into an internationally renowned gallery of contemporary photography.

Pauline has been undertaking doctoral research at the University of Manchester, while working in a freelance capacity as a researcher and arts development consultant.

Steve’s exhibition is showing from Sat 18 Jan 2025 - Sun 30 Mar 2025

Find out more at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery

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If you’ve been listening to previous episodes of Arts First you’ll know we are greatly concerned the future of our museums.

Our discussion of Tate Director Maria Balshaw’s book ‘Gathering of Strangers’ is probably a good example of the worrying trajectory of our museum establishment and their increasing preoccupation with placing social, political, environmental issues above the fundamentals of art, curation and conservation.

Also JJ Charlesworth’s discussion with author Prof Frank Furedi about his book the ‘The War on the Past’ was very useful for understanding why our museums and historic collections have come to be seen as ‘problematic’ (to put it mildly) by progressive art establishment, campaigners, politicians etc.

However we are always on the lookout for ‘green shoots’, novel approaches, people bucking trends, bravely doing their own thing and following their passion. We look for that in artists of course but also in new and experimental institutions.

So when regular contributor Prof Kevin Yuill told us about a very unusual and exciting gallery in Bishop Auckland we naturally asked him to find out more, and to see if he could persuade its founder, Jonathan Ruffer to tell us about the project in his own words. And we were absolutely thrilled that Jonathan agreed to talk to Kevin.

You can find out more about the Spanish Gallery and the Auckland Project here:

The Auckland Project // The Spanish Gallery

Jonathan Ruffer is an art collector, City investor, philanthropist and former barrister. In 2012, he purchased Jacob and His Twelve Sons, a series of paintings by Spanish Master Francisco de Zurbarán, as well as the 900-year-old Auckland Castle in Bishop Auckland, where they had been housed for more than 250 years.

Out of this he founded the Auckland Project to transform ‘Auckland Castle into an arts, faith and heritage destination’. This includes restoration of the Castle itself, as well as the establishment of the Spanish Gallery and a string of other local projects including the Mining Art Gallery, and Faith Museum.

Kevin Yuill is former professor of history at the University of Sunderland. He is currently CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. His books include Assisted Suicide: the liberal, humanist case against legalization.

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What is it like being a dissident artist in the UK right now? Two artists, Claudia Clare and Con-She, talk to artist Rachel Jordan about their art practices and what it is that makes them dissidents. Claudia Clare is a feminist artist who has exhibited widely within the UK and whose ceramics include works that challenge notions of gender, the sex trade, and religious fundamentalism. Con-She describes herself as a conscientious objector who makes artworks that push back against woke ideology in a wide array of forms, including video and text.

In the episode, Claudia Clare who’s been a potter since the 1980s, describes some of her experiences over the past 14 years of having work withdrawn from exhibition, having invitations to exhibit revoked, seeing publicly funded opportunities disappear and essentially reaching the point of having to rethink her career.

Con-She describes how finding herself caught in the game of art institutions’ identity politics drives her desire to make work that challenges it. Shunned both professionally and personally for her views on gender and disability, she has come out the other side fighting and makes art that directly confronts the ideologies that have been used to try and silence her.

Claudia Clare

View Claudia’s website and work here.

Daily TelegraphCeramic artist Claudia Clare in cancel culture row after her arts college talk is axed

Daily Mail Ceramic artist is CANCELLED over her 'gender-critical' views

UnHerdCeramicist de-platformed for being a ‘SWERF’

Con-She

“Art must be free to be nuanced, complex, and un-didactic.”

View Con-She's work here.

The Wokely Round-up with Con-She - ‘A back-room broadcast covering news events from a sceptical viewpoint’.

The Critic MagazineDisability is not an identity by Con-She

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What’s the appeal, or even the magic of choral singing? How has it endured as a tradition? Do they have a social or cultural value? Is it a declining tradition, are choirs in crisis?

We hope to return to these and other questions in future episodes. Here though we start with singers. We were pleasantly surprised how many friends of the podcast are involved in, and have a passion for choirs! So we invited a cross-section, who very kindly agreed to join us and talk a little about what they love about choirs.

Anna Berry is an artist and lifelong singer. Her favourite choral flavour is small consort-singing and renaissance polyphony, and she’s sung in most of the cathedrals in the UK over the years. She also sings folk and jazz.

Kevin Yuill is a retired academic. He has sung tenor - in Durham Choral Society, Ushaw Choir, and St Edmund's Consort for about 20 years. He has sung everything from Victoria's O Magnum Mysterium to Sting's Fields of Gold - but draws the line at Queen. No. Queen. Ever.

Josephine Margaret is a primary school teacher. She enjoys amateur dramatics and attends the theatre as much as she can. She attends a choir in Cambridge called Out of the Shadows who perform twice a year.

Thomas Deichmann is Communications manager, and a former journalist and author. His passion for choirs started early when he watched his father singing. When Thomas was 40, he started singing in a men’s choir in Frankfurt, become president of the singing club and actually saved it from extinction. Currently he sings in the small men’s choir of his Catholic church accompanying services once a month. And he has a very special passion for singing in Frankfurts biggest "wild choir" - that is on the terraces of Eintracht Frankfurt FC.

Ann Oliver is a former journalist, magazine editor and businesswoman, who has been singing in choirs since she was six. She is currently a member of the London Concord Singers and the Kodaly Choir of London. She says she’s an alto by default.

Niall Crowley is a member of Islington Choral Society.

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Harold Riley, Salford-born artist, is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at Salford's Museum and Art Gallery. Known for his diverse artistic styles and deep connections to his hometown, Riley captured the essence of Salford and its transformation over time.

Joining us to discuss the exhibition are Hilary Salt and Sebastian Moore, presenters of Take Me Home, the regular podcast of the Social Democratic Party. Hilary is Deputy Leader of the SDP as well as a longtime friend of the podcast.

Hilary Salt shares her thoughts on Riley's ability to blend humour and humanity in his work, while Sebastian Moore reflects on the artist’s impressive versatility. Both guests shed light on why Riley, despite his talent, hasn't reached the mainstream fame of contemporaries like L.S. Lowry.

The exhibition brings together all of Harold’s many disciplines and subject matter including painting, drawing, digital fusions, and photography. It tells the story of the man, showing works that portray places and people that were important to him.

Every Line is Me is on display at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery until the end of April 2025.

If you would like to review an exhibition or think there’s something we might be interested in covering, please get in touch.

And if you would like to make a donation to help us cover our costs, we have set up a Just Giving page. Every little helps, as they say.

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Sociologist and commentator Frank Furedi’s new book The War on the Past is a powerful and timely analysis of why contemporary Western society has become with attacking and renouncing its own history. From statue-toppling, decolonising the curriculum and the museum, rewriting history to be more ‘inclusive’ of present day identity groups, and even erasing and modifying the words we use, the past is seen as a toxic influence on the present that must be controlled in the name of ‘progressive’ values.

In this episode, Furedi talks with art critic JJ Charlesworth, about how the war on the past has come to affect the arts and culture. They discuss how the orthodoxies of identity politics end up projected onto how the cultural figures of the past are understood, and how developments like ‘colour-blind’ casting reflect the move to affirm today’s identities in narratives about the past.

Frank and JJ discuss the nature of novelty and boundary-breaking in the arts, in a culture which has lost its older commitments to artistic traditions or the idea of the artistic canon. Frank points out that today, much artistic activity poses itself as a transgression of norms and cultural traditions which in reality no longer command cultural authority. Transgression, Frank argues, has become conformism.

They discuss what the future might be for cultural institutions that have become aligned with this new conformist rejection of the past, and whether we should look for a new counterculture that reconnects creatively with the art of the past, experimenting with and developing its artistic legacy.

Subscribe to Frank Furedi’s Substack - Roots & Wings

Follow Frank Furedi on X

Follow JJ Charlesworth on X

Follow Arts First on X / Arts First on Instagram / Arts First on Youtube

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Craig-Martin is an influential conceptual artist and painter. He was born in Dublin in 1941, but grew up in the US, studying Fine Art at Yale. He has lived and worked in Britain since the mid 1960s and has been a major figure on the Contemporary Arts scene since the 1970s.

His work, according to Gagosian “fuses elements of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual art, his art transforms everyday objects with bold colours and simple uninflected lines.”

From the early 1970s Craig-Martin was a tutor at Goldsmiths College and is widely-regarded as having had a significant influence on the emerging YBA generation, many of whom went to Goldsmiths, including Damien Hirst.

Joining us for this episode is historian and writer James Heartfield, author of numerous books including The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained, ‘Britain’s Empires: a history 1600-2020’ and The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 1838-1956 : A History.

We are pleased to welcome back Rachel Jordan. Rachel is primarily a visual artist, but also one third of ‘naHs’ an experimental performance trio (Nothing’s Alien to me that is Human), which was launched earlier this year with a show in Norwich titled ‘Labour in Vain’, and now stage a regular cabaret in London called World of the Absurd.

James very kindly made this short video intro, where he shares some of his thoughts and observations as he makes his way around the exhibition .

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In this episode, our special guest, Andrew Doyle discusses the abiding genius of Shakespeare with Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, Richard Woolfenden and Jane Sandeman. They point out that Shakespeare has created, in his plays, an expression of how we can better understand what it means to be human.

They take up claims that Shakespeare can’t have written all those brilliant plays, that they must have been written by a well-educated aristocrat, pointing to the elitism within these challenges to the Bard’s unparalleled genius. And they draw out, looking at specific works, how Shakespeare presented the complexity of human beings, without making moral judgements.

At a time when activists in the theatre and in education threaten to turn Shakespeare into an instrument of ‘decolonisation’ this is an important discussion  … but is it still worth going to watch a contemporary production of a Shakespeare play? 

Andrew Doyle is a successful writer and comedian, and creator of the satirical woke character, Titania McGrath; he hosts Free Speech Nation on 

GBNews. He is also passionate about Shakespeare. 

Respondents — all passionate about Shakespeare!: 

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is Director of Don’t Divide Us and formerly teacher of English

Jane Sandeman, chief operating officer at The Passage charity for homeless people, 

Richard Woolfenden, English teacher and filmmaker.

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Podcast host Wendy Earle talks to artist Dido Powell about whether the National Gallery has repeated or avoided the mistakes Tate Britain made in their exhibition about William Hogarth a few years ago, where there was a widespread public outcry against the politicised character of the labels and information panels.

They also take a close look at the painting and what makes Constable one of the great English landscape artists, and The Haywain an icon of British art. 

Dido Powell is an artist and art history teacher. She leads the Arts & Society Forum tours of London museums and galleries.  

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An Arts Professional survey report published in 2020 showed that eight out of 10 people working in the arts agreed that if you speak out against the orthodoxy in many arts institutions you risk ostracisation. This is a shocking state of affairs given that the life blood of the arts is freedom of expression. 

Our guests in this episode are Rosie Kay and Denise Fahmy. They set up the campaign, Freedom in the Arts, after they discovered through bitter experience that a value that is supposed to be at the very centre of the arts’ existence is surprisingly undervalued in the arts world.

They tell us about how their careers in the arts were badly affected by hostility and betrayal from previously trusted colleagues after they expressed views that challenged dominant orthodoxies in the arts world. and why they set up their campaign.

To find out about their stories, their campaign and take their new survey, listen to this podcast and then go to www.freedominthearts.com

Denise and Rosie are also interviewed in today's Times newspaper about their campaign and the launch of their survey in this fascinating interview.

Thank you for listening and subscribing. Please help us grow by sharing our podcast and our substack, and if you would like to be part of Arts First in any way or have ideas for an episode please email [email protected] or message us here.

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Wendy Earle is joined by architecture curator and writer Vicky Richardson, historian Kevin Yuill, art critic JJ Charlesworth and co-host Niall Crowley to discuss Tate Director Maria Balshaw's book on the state and future of museums 'The Gathering of Strangers'.

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Niall Crowley is joined by Art History graduate Agnes Friend and her mother, Vicky Richardson the curator and writer to review MOCO – the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts.

MOCO is a new independent arts space that recently opened at Marble Arch in London, started by Dutch couple Kim and Lionel Logchies -Prin.

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In this episode of Arts First, Linda Murdoch, Megan and Daniel Brick review David Ireland’s controversial new play The Fifth Step at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow, with Jack Lowden and Sean Gilder.

With Wendy Earle and Niall Crowley

Please subscribe to our podcast on Youtube, Spotify, Sound Cloud or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode.

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Freedom of expression is a core theme of this podcast series. Although it is a central principle of western democracy, a censorious climate is undermining it. The arts world should be a space for experimentation and freedom but has become increasingly influenced by an ‘I find that offensive’ mentality, so that artists who express ideas that run counter to dominant tropes in social media find themselves cancelled and blocked. 

In this episode Wendy Earle interviews Manick Govinda and Agnieszka Kolek about their experiences in defending and promoting freedom in the arts. Agnieszka Kolek is a co-founder of Passion for Freedom, an organisation founded in 2009 to curate festivals of artists who have faced censorship and cancellation. (https://www.passionforfreedom.art)

It has organised events in London, Denmark, Poland and New York. Manick Govinda is a curator and writer working in contemporary art and also mentoring artists. Since openly supporting the campaign to leave the EU he has found himself increasingly ostracised in the art world. 

Agnieszka and Manick talk first about their experience of censorship in the arts in Europe and the work of Passion for Freedom, and then about their work in Warsaw, Poland, where they had an opportunity to put the principles of freedom of expression into practice, as the co-curators of “Culture Tensions” at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art from January 2022 until February 2024.

However, since the change of government in Poland at the last parliamentary general election held on 15 October 2023, the ruling Law & Justice Party (PiS) was eventually defeated by the formation of a new ruling coalition government led by Donald Tusk. The new government began a programme of “settling accounts”, ousting cultural leaders from public sector jobs. This “revenge politics” led to the dismissal of The Ujazdowski Castle’s Director, Piotr Bernatowicz and his three deputy directors this summer.

The new interim director announced that “due to the changes in the programme of the [Ujazdowski Castle], we decided that the Culture Tensions project does not fit into it”. Cancel culture in Poland is not new, many artists were censored, lost their jobs and silenced under Communist rule. 

From 2021 until the summer of 2024, the Ujazdowski Castle was a beacon of free expression, reshaping Poland's cultural landscape away from the usual tropes of globalist, social justice oriented contemporary art that has gripped most of the West. Many artists, writers and curators from the UK and USA who were cancelled in the West were invited to discuss pertinent issues around arts, culture and politics, to curate exhibitions and exhibit their art at this prestigious centre for contemporary art. The Culture Tensions programme is online - for now - and can be accessed on YouTube. 

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Niall Crowley is joined by David Adam - cultural and economics specialist. Dido Powell - artist and art teacher. Manick Govinda - an independent arts writer, curator and artist’s mentor. Jane Sandeman - chief operation officer at The Passage. Dr Michael Owens co-author of ‘Play the Game: How the Olympics Came to East London’....

As much as we love sports, we are in the business of talking about the arts, so why the Olympics? Quite simply, the Olympics are a global event that put the arts in the spotlight, as well as sport itself. And as we’ve stated previously, we are keen to experiment and try different formats and explore a range of subject-matter.

However, when we first discussed the idea of doing this - a couple of weeks before the games began – we were not entirely sure we would have something substantial and interesting talking about! But why wouldn’t there be? With the Olympics come great architecture and design - grand new stadiums, impressive sporting facilities and so on. Who can forget Ai Wei Wei’s incredible Birds Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics 2008? Or the fluid geometry of Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre?

Then of course there’s the opening ceremony, where the host nation draws on its best and brightest in theatre, film, costume, music, performance. Then stuffs them all into their breath-taking new stadium for the greatest, most inspiring show on the planet. We, the global and local audience, sit back while they inspire us with the retelling of their national story, remind us of our common humanity and set us up for the world’s greatest sporting spectacle. At least that’s the idea.

In Beijing a resurgent China powered onto the world stage with a polished and awe-inspiring ceremony. The UK tootled back into the global spotlight, as if on an old London bus, apologised for inventing the modern world and then threw the Queen out of a plane. Rio was supposed to put on the world’s greatest carnival but chose instead to deliver a stultifying NGO-style lecture about ‘deforestation’. And just when we were most in need of pick-me-up, Tokyo simply reflected back at us the lonely isolation of Lockdown.

Paris certainly gave us a show the likes of which we’d never seen before. And we’ve been talking, debating and arguing about it ever since. Is it the case that each successive Games comes to crystallise a growing contestation of how we understand our history, our culture and society? Well we may not have come up with all the answers but the Paris Olympics certainly gave us lots to talk about - more than we could have imagined when we originally planned the show. Joining us we have a really great panel.

David Adam is a cultural and economic specialist, whose work was at the heart of the London Olympics, organising exhibitions and cultural exchanges. He was responsible for London’s official Olympic brand at the Beijing Games. He’s an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California and the founder of Global Cities.

Dido Powell is an artist and art teacher who has exhibited widely in London and around the country. She’s regular contributor to Arts First and also organises the enormously popular and brilliant gallery tour series for the Academy of Ideas Arts and Society Forum.

Manick Govinda is an independent arts writer, advisor, creative producer, curator and artist’s mentor. He has worked with many award-winning artists in the field of contemporary visual arts and performance. Jane

Sandeman - is the chief operation officer at The Passage – a homeless charity in Westminster. She is the convenor of the Academy of Ideas’ Parents Forum. Always an insightful commentator on a range of issues, she says her family are ‘made about the Olympics’ and they are just back from Paris, having watched women’s volley ball and women’s rugby 7s.

Dr Michael Owens is a writer and lecturer with a career background in urban development. He co-authored ‘Play the Game: How the Olympics Came to East London’, building on research and his experiences working for the Mayor of London at the London Development Agency. He is a Board Member of Bow Arts Trust.

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Artist Rachel Jordan talks to some artist friends about their expectations and anxieties under the new Government.

Art critic, JJ Charlesworth, leads a conversation with special guests about the Labour Party policies outlined in their document Creating Growth, which asserts that ‘people make art, policies don’t’ — but is this just a cop out from giving the arts needed support?

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This episode’s participants: 
Wendy Earle, convenor; Arts&Society Forum; JJ Charlesworth, art critic; Tiffany Jenkins, writer and broadcaster; Niall Crowley, designer and writer; Dido Powell, artist and art history teacher.
 
Arts First is produced by the Academy of Ideas Arts & Society Forum: Find us on Facebook.

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