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EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
Radical counter-culture winning war against neoliberal ideas
CHRIS JURY, co-founder of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival, draws inspiration from a new generation of artists taking on the political and artistic establishments
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
I’VE been working at the intersection between politics and popular culture since the mid-1970s and, for all those four decades, people have been saying to me things like: “Relax, Chris, it’s only television... only a film... only a song... only a play... it’s only entertainment... the arts never changed anything... art for arts sake, money for God’s sake...”
But, as Bob Dylan once said in one of those supposedly pointless political songs, “The times, they are a-changin’.”
I am a co-founder of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival, Creative Director of Public Domain Arts & Media and Producer of the GFTU’s Liberating Arts festival. For the last couple of decades raising money and generating enthusiasm for counter-cultural initiatives like these have been a pretty hard slog.
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