Stonewall UK’s study of lesbian and gay representations in youth TV confirms that gay people are rarely explicitly present on screen and that positive lesbian identities are spectacularly absent. There are, though, a few assumptions and unanswered questions raised by that research which I want to draw out – not least because they suggest the …
Three election manifestos have been published this week, with varying discussion of arts policy. Some summaries, in order of arrival: 1. The Labour manifesto touches on the arts in two places: framing access to the arts as a part of a balanced primary and secondary education; and in the section headed ‘communities and creative Britain,’ …
Ed Vaizey’s recent speech on “cultural education” seems to suggest a near-future of cuts and centralization in arts funding. First, there’s the repeated suggestion of “confusion and duplication,” a “blizzard of initiatives” that represent wasteful effort. Vaizey doesn’t actually provide any real support for that claim, but it’s the rhetorical basis for the call to …
I’m introducing students to different models of devised performance – and, in passing, described Clay Shirky’s hierarchy of participation: starting with sharing, and moving in increasing complexity through co-operation and collaboration to collective action. Since that lecture, I’ve been thinking about the value of recognising the link beween these different kinds of participation – that …