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2020-06-05T07:50:15+00:00

Eleven weeks ago, the BBC launched Culture in Quarantine - a broadcast and digital festival of the arts during a time of national lockdown. Since then we have been working tirelessly, collaborating with almost every major arts organisation as well as many smaller institutions. The result has been a remarkable roll-call of fast-turnaround programmes and events.

It has brought us everything from World Book Night and the Big Book Weekend to Friday dance classes with the Birmingham Royal Ballet and National Dance Company Wales; from #MuseumFromHome and Headlong’s Unprecedented theatre project to Women of the World and our Get Creative at Home masterclasses.

Our bespoke programming has included BBC Four’s Museums in Quarantine and BBC Two’s Lockdown Culture with Mary Beard, showcasing exclusive new work from major artists such as Margaret Atwood and Martin Scorsese. And there has been a daily schedule of Culture in Quarantine classical music programming on Radio 3, with the BBC Orchestras and Choirs, and the continuing support and coverage of Front Row and other topical shows on Radio 4.

At the start, the goal was simple. As exhibitions were shuttered, performances postponed, and access to the country’s cultural wealth curtailed, we wanted to keep the arts alive in people’s homes. And because we knew the impact on cultural organisations, freelance artists, and the wider arts community would be immeasurable, we wanted to do so in a way that could support the sector as much as possible.

The route ahead

Like many, I began by looking forward to the day the doors of UK cultural institutions would swing open once again and we could pick up as before. And like many I was quickly forced to realise that there will be no return to ‘culture as usual’.

While the weeks ahead may see many forms of retail opening again, culture will effectively remain in quarantine for some time. We will be living with the repercussions of this period for many years to come, and it’s already clear that certain parts of the sector will be more severely affected than others. Many theatres have had to face up to the fact they are unlikely to be able to produce new work until the second half of 2021. For some the consequences will be devastating.

What is heartening - and this is something that couldn’t be taken for granted - is how strong the public appetite for cultural experience has proved. Whether on the BBC or global platforms like the National Theatre’s YouTube channel, audience figures for cultural content are sky high. Book sales are up. And more people are creating at home than ever before.

Last month, our call for the public to join forces with BBC musicians in a ‘lockdown orchestra’ inspired over 1,500 video submissions in a single week. BBC Four’s Life Drawing Live saw over 26,000 people uploading pictures in just a few hours. Half a million people watched Museums in Quarantine while Museum from Home brought 75,000 visits to the site in one day.

The biggest challenge for the world of arts and culture isn’t a question of public appetite then, but of recovery and, in some cases, survival. Culture in Quarantine was set up as a short-term initiative to deal with the crisis as it unfolded day-by-day. But even as this first phase of lockdown comes to an end, it is clear that the role of the BBC remains as important as ever in serving audiences, supporting new work, and reflecting what is being done by cultural organisations and individuals across the UK.

The last three months have been defined by a spirit of co-creation - curating, commissioning, and producing with other organisations. As the whole cultural sector tries to get through the next few years, these new ways of working together need to become the norm. The collaboration must continue. And the BBC needs to be more, rather than less, present in the lives of artists and arts organisations in the future.

Imagine: This House Is Full Of Music

The second phase of Culture in Quarantine

What does this mean for Culture in Quarantine? In short, it will continue. So much is still uncertain, but I see it running in three phases through the year.

The first phase has been defined by frenetic activity and lo-fi ‘lockdown production’ methods. The results have been extraordinary, with highlights such as Headlong’s Unprecedented proving to be outstanding examples of what is now called ‘lockdown art’. But this phase is now coming to an end as certain forms of broadcast activity become possible once more.

The second phase of Culture in Quarantine will run through the summer. Last week we announced that the Proms will go ahead with a fantastic programme of new concerts in August and September - while adhering to social distancing guidelines. This week Radio 3 brought back live classical music to the nation with a series of twenty special concerts from Wigmore Hall that will run throughout June in the Lunchtime Concert slot.

During this time we will also broadcast the Lockdown Theatre Festival on Radio 3 and Radio 4, and a weekend of broadcast and digital activity supporting the spirit of the Edinburgh Festivals. And at the end of the month the BBC is recreating The Glastonbury Experience on air over the Glastonbury weekend, with classic performances from previous years.

Now we can announce that Radio 3 and BBC Four will broadcast the Royal Opera House’s first performances since lockdown with Tony Pappano. Radio 3 will broadcast the first concert live on 13 June. And in July, after the rebroadcast of Pappano’s acclaimed Opera Italia series, BBC Four will broadcast highlights from all three Royal Opera House performances. Alongside this, as part of a wider focus on opera, a number of performances will be made available on iPlayer from opera houses who have had to cancel their runs due to the present restrictions. They will include The Barber of Seville from Glyndebourne and The Turn of the Screw and The Marriage of Figaro from Garsington, and a performance filmed from backstage in La Traviata from Opera North.

We’ll also have a major new Beethoven series on BBC Four and a pre-lockdown performance from the Royal Opera House of Fidelio. This programming will join the wider pan-BBC Beethoven focus in the lead up to the BBC Proms and a Beethoven moment on the first night. BBC Radio 3 will also be broadcasting an audio drama of Beethoven with Peter Capaldi confirmed as the great composer, as well as regular composer of the weeks from Donald Macleod, essays and more.

We’re also delighted to have some stand-out classical documentaries on television. Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his family’s lockdown experience will be featured in a new Imagine on BBC One presented by Alan Yentob which was shot remotely and will lead up to a concert that the talented family perform in the absence of open concert halls. To mark the retirement of one of the world’s most admired conductors, John Bridcut’s film for BBC Four, Bernard Haitink In His Own Words, will explore the secrets of the conductor’s art with Haitink himself and the international musicians who’ve worked with him in his 65-year career. And BBC Four will air Britten on Camera in coordination with the Aldeburgh Festival.

Meanwhile, BBC Children’s will be launching a huge focus on Shakespeare in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of BBC Bitesize Daily, our biggest ever push on education. It will see famous RSC actors including Niamh Cusack, Bally Gill, Natalie Simpson and Jamie Wilkes do readings for schoolchildren and will include special online lessons.

Phase 3: Raising the ambition

The third phase of Culture in Quarantine will begin in the autumn. We will continue to run the BBC Arts and iPlayer pages as we have been the last few months, under the title of Culture in Quarantine, and ensure that our regular cultural programmes stay on air whether from living rooms or safe and appropriate spaces. And we will continue to launch new initiatives and programmes designed to connect audiences with the cultural experiences they need.

Meanwhile, BBC Radio 3 will keep its crusade to keep live classical music alive in a time of closed venues. Following the success of the Wigmore Hall live concerts, we will return to the venue again for more specially-created live performances after the Proms Season.

But we want to raise our ambition still higher. That means building even further on some of the collaborations we began over the last few months, including special projects focused on museums and galleries, the performing arts, and the world of books and poetry.

In many cases the public will remain unable to return to the cultural spaces they love, but they will still crave the experiences they used to find there. And they will more and more expect high-quality production to return to our televisions and devices. Our goal will be to rise to this challenge, and harness and reward the increased spirit of cultural participation we have seen over the last months.

The programme is still developing, but I want to pick out two important initiatives. Off the back of the Proms, we plan to launch a new online classical experience to open up access to the BBC’s unique archives. Listeners will be able to explore hundreds of performances in our classical treasure-trove, and delve deeper into the music and composers behind them through episodes of Composer of the Week, The Listening Service and many more.

I can also announce that we’re starting work now on a landmark, seven-part new arts series for 2021. It will be our follow up to Civilisations, which has now become the most-watched arts programme of the last 50 years with nearly 5 million requests to view on iPlayer alone. The Making of Us: The History of British Creativity will be told through a wide cast of artists, makers, creators, and historians who will explore the artistic revolutions that have driven the nation’s story over the last thousand years.

I’m proud of what the BBC has achieved during this crisis, hand-in-glove with the whole cultural sector. It has been a period of incredible invention by artists and arts organisations, but the fact that the BBC can connect their work with our audiences has proved hugely powerful.

It has left me more convinced than ever that the BBC has an essential role to play as ringmaster and champion for the arts in this country. In a period of extreme difficulty, we must work harder than ever to secure the future of British creativity and support the arts and artists that make British culture the envy of the world.

Orwell statue unveiled

2017-11-07T15:00:00+00:00

A statue of George Orwell, commissioned and paid for by the George Orwell Memorial Fund, has been unveiled in the piazza of New Broadcasting House. Sculptor Martin Jennings talks about the process of bringing his work to fruition.

George Orwell

There could not be a more appropriate time to erect a statue of George Orwell in central London. An ethical and intellectual hero, he anatomised totalitarianism and the misuse of language for political ends with unequalled precision. In our own febrile times he illuminates the path for those who seek clarity, decency and honesty in public discourse.

By nature he was ill-disposed towards received wisdom and could almost be described as the patron saint of independent thought, particularly in the realm of political journalism. So there could be no better site for his statue than BBC New Broadcasting House. He worked for the BBC himself for two years during World War Two before resigning – he was never a man moulded for employment.

Scale model of the statue

The statue needed to express both his mental and physical angularity. Orwell was forever a member of the awkward squad and his tall bony frame was almost purpose-built to express this. Several inches over six feet tall, with cabbage-patch hair and a lamentable moustache, consumptive, built like a scarecrow and with a potting-shed wardrobe to match, his physical appearance stands as a joyful counterpoint to a monumental intellectual acuity.

He was disparaging about statues in his writing: “That seems to be a fixed rule in London: whenever you do by some chance have a decent vista, block it up with the ugliest statue you can find”. He would never have been one to occupy a plinth with ease. I’ve represented him leaning perilously forward from his own as if from an orator’s soap-box.

Watch how Jennings' creation went from steel frame to the finished statue

Orwell was so dedicated a smoker that he even continued the practice when TB presaged an early death. Smoking was so much a part of his identity that it would have been unthinkable not to represent him with a roll-up between his fingers. Nowadays smokers are ‘outsiders’ both figuratively and literally. I like to think that had Orwell still been working for the BBC today, he would have cemented this outsider status with repeated retreats for a quick gasper at the windy corner of the building where his statue will now be found.

With one pugilistic fist on his hip and the other hand jabbing his cigarette at us as we pass by, he demands that we direct our thoughts to the quotation inscribed in the wall next to him: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. These words from his proposed preface to Animal Farm are a rallying cry for the idea of free speech in an open society.

I’ve wanted to express Orwell as candid and forthright, a pointed and interrogative figure forcefully enquiring of each of us whether we too will take his stand on behalf of intellectual liberty and truth.

Martin Jennings is a sculptor and creator of the George Orwell statue.

Introducing BBC Two's Poetry Night

2016-09-30T12:33:02+00:00

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

That's not me, by the way: it's Percy Bysshe Shelley. But it's a line that came back to me while we were programming BBC Two's poetry night this Saturday. Great poems are bottled spirit, capturing the mood of a country or a people at any given moment. They are little word bombs that resonate far beyond the page, able to change the way we think. Take the First World War as experienced by Siegfried Sassoon or the north of England in the 1950s as lived by Philip Larkin. This, I think, is what Shelley means by legislators of the world - although it's a long time since my English degree and my memory is a little rusty.

We wanted to programme of a night of poetry a few days before National Poetry Day, which has done so much over the last twenty years to bring poetry to a wider audience. But we knew, in doing so, we wanted to say something about Britain today, to create a state of the nation address through the mouths of poets.

In Railway Nation: A Journey in Verse, a film inspired by Nightmail, six of our leading contemporary poets join a train travelling between London and Glasgow. The poets are Sabrina Mahfouz, Liz Berry, Imtiaz Dharkar, Michael Simmons Roberts, Sean O’Brien and Andrew MacMillan: some of the best poets writing today, bringing a wide range of experiences and approaches to the film. Each poet observes and listens to their fellow travellers and turns their experiences into poetry: a mother visiting her child in foster care, a man visiting his own mother who has dementia, two students worrying about the cost of living. What emerges is a story of human resilience - a nation surviving, if not quite thriving - and all in one train carriage!

This singing line conveys an epic

Where the extras all have stories of their own,

With casts of the thousands we shall never meet,

As real and strange as those we find

Aboard this time machine with sandwiches

And Wi-Fi where we work or natter,

Vanish off the clock and read, or simply gaze

At what the restless window offers up.

Afterwards, we head to the Rivoli Ballroom in South London for Performance Live: Kate Tempest - an exclusive performance by spoken word poet, Kate Tempest and her band, courtesy of the Battersea Arts Centre and supported by Arts Council England. Let Them Eat Chaos is modern Britain as seen by Tempest, or at least the seven characters at the heart of her story. Seven characters struggling with alcoholism or anxiety, eviction or bereavement.

Bare branches sway in the front garden.

The lionmouth door knocker flaps in the breeze.

Streetlights glint on the Beware of the Dog sign.

The beer cans and crisp packets dance with the dead leaves.

It’s 4:18 a.m.

Tempest's last show, Brand New Ancients, was one of the hits of 2013. Since then she has put out an album and published a novel as well as a poetry collection. In Let Them Eat Chaos, we see a poet at the height of her powers. Afterwards, there are turns from three of her favourite poets: Deanna Rodger, David J Pugilist and Isaiah Hull, who was one of the stars of Words First (Radio 1Xtra's partnership with Arts Council England and The Roundhouse) earlier this year.

The evening will end with an Artsnight special Poets At The BBC, which mines the archive for encounters with some of our greatest poets, including Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith and Seamus Heaney. And because we pedantically wanted everything in the evening to be poetry, we also commissioned three leading poets - Jackie Kaye, Lemn Sissay and Ian Duhig - to write and the read the links between each programme.

To accompany the evening, iPlayer present a collection of poetry films curated or commissioned by The Space. There are extended performances of the Rivoli Ballroom poets. The Roundhouse is sharing its recording of its latest poetry slam. There's a rare outing of We Are Poets, the brilliant feature length documentary from Leeds Young Authors. And there is We Belong Belong Here, a thirty minute programme with interviews and performances by Hollie McNish, Lemn Sissay, Raymond Antrobus, Joelle Taylor, Jack Underwood, Madi Maxwell-Libby, Salena Godden and Sabrina Mahfouz.

All of this adds up to a snapshot of contemporary Britain as seen through the eyes of over twenty contemporary poets.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts

Poetry Night airs on Saturday 1 October, from 8.10pm on BBC Two

Don't underestimate toddlers, they like Shakespeare too

2016-09-19T09:17:51+00:00

CBeebies Midsummer Night's Dream

CBeebies Controller Kay Benbow gave an interview to The Telegraph's arts correspondent, Hannah Furness. Talking about the BBC's pre-school audience she said: “the very young deserve the very best”. The article goes on:

"There are so many things that people assume young children won't be interested in, and I think that's very much an adult perspective,” she said. “If you give children the opportunity to listen, to look, to participate, they will seize it.

“Of course not everyone's going to love classical music, but it's about putting the opportunity out there and giving them a chance to experience things.”

She said previous broadcasting wisdom had laid down that young children can concentrate for between three and 15 minutes before becoming distracted.

“I've never really subscribed to that,” she said. “If you engage a child, they will sit for a huge amount of time.

“You mustn't prejudge what children will and won't like: give them the opportunity to experience and make their own choices.”

You can read the piece in full on The Telegraph website.

Read also Tears at the CBeebies Prom
Watch the CBeebies Prom on iPlayer

Introducing #LoveToRead 2016

2016-05-30T11:30:00+00:00

Director of BBC Arts Jonty Claypole introduces a new BBC campaign for 2016 designed to inspire reading, and a new selection of book-related programming across radio and television.

#LovetoRead is a BBC campaign for 2016, bringing together a range of leading literary partners to encourage reading for pleasure and to create a national conversation about books.

Authors and books have always been at the heart of the BBC but our pledge to book lovers is to push reading even higher up the agenda, to include more people, inspire a new generation, and let everyone have a say on the books that matter most to them.

Over the course of 2016, we want to inspire audiences with a broad range of special programming about great authors and their novels on all our platforms – nationally, regionally and locally. Across the nation our radio stations are in the process of launching book clubs in partnership with their local libraries and the autumn will see the launch of a nationwide social media campaign to share book recommendations. In the summer, we’re putting a focus on children’s books and celebrating Roald Dahl’s centenary and many of the ‘Awesome Authors’ at work today.

In the autumn, we’re celebrating some of the Books That Made Britain and asking the nation to share the book that matters most to them through social media. There’ll be 14 national and regional documentaries identifying the books that have defined different parts of the UK and discussions on all local networks. In October on BBC Two, Saturday night will be Book Night with a host of programming celebrating authors, reading and much, much more.

Meanwhile Mariella Frostrup, Simon Mayo, Harriett Gilbert and James Naughtie will drive the campaign on radio and online. On Radio 2 Simon Mayo will be talking to celebrity authors about the books they couldn’t live without and there will be a wealth of programming across Radio 3 and 4 including a new series within Open Book and a special Radio 4 Bookclub. The season will culminate with the #LovetoRead weekend in early November when the BBC and partners hope to inspire everyone everywhere to read something new.

Throughout the year, we’ll be encouraging the public to get writing as well as reading, through our schemes such as 500 Words, the BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers Award.

No other broadcaster celebrates authors or encourages reading like the BBC. With so many of our services committed to books, we want to make it easier for audiences to find what they want. Now BBC Arts has enhanced its Books site, bringing audiences the best of what we do.

Our ambition for 2016 is to get the nation reading more, talking about the books they love, and by doing so inspiring a new generation of readers too.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts

Watch Hay Festival highlights on the BBC Arts Books website
Listen to the finalists in BBC Radio 2's 2016 500 Words competition

Open Call for 'Performance Live' - 15 new performances for TV

2016-04-27T09:29:34+00:00

Last November, the BBC joined forces with Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre to broadcast a night of performance On Stage: Live From Television Centre. Five groundbreaking theatre companies from across the UK devised short productions that went out on BBC Four and iPlayer.

It was a rare intervention from the world of independent theatre - familiar to those who love festivals and live performance - into the television schedules. The result was a daring and genre-busting evening of entertainment and great art. There was dance, anarchy, provocation, heartfelt confession and Keith Chegwin holding a giant toothbrush.

On Stage: Live From Television Centre piloted new ways of funding, commissioning and producing arts programming and forged new relationships between theatre makers and television crews. For all involved, it was one of the most scary, white-knuckle but inspiring productions we'd been involved in. And by all accounts, audiences felt the energy too.

An editorial in The Guardian hailed the spirit of the evening:

Sunday’s experiment showed how much can be brought to TV by a collision with the fresh thinking and spirit of independent artists. Live From Television Centre should not be left as an intriguing one-off, but the start of a new spirit in the BBC.

Well, last week the BBC, Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre launched an Open Call for Performance Live - a scheme that will see us broadcasting up to fifteen new performances, devised especially for television, over the next two years.

As with On Stage: Live From Television Centre, we want to put the artists and performance organisations at the heart of the production process. We want to capture a broad range of performing arts talent in the UK - theatre, dance, spoken word, but also those who innovate and merge genres. We want to see familiar talent doing something new and the big names of tomorrow showcased for the first time. And we want to see performing artists and production teams taking risks and learning together to create great art.

As Fry and Laurie once said, 'the first rule of the game zone is: there are no rules. The second rule is: don't go into the kitchen. It's out of bounds.' Well, the only difference here is that with Performance Live you can go into the kitchen. Whatever that means.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts

The open call for Performance Live closes 19 May. More details can be found on the Battersea Arts Centre website.

Celebrating Shakespeare

2016-04-22T15:17:29+00:00

It was a wonderful teacher who unlocked the magic of Shakespeare for me by bringing his work to life. That is what the BBC aims to do this 400th anniversary weekend with help from stars like Dame Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Lester, Meera Syaal and many, many more.

Our big ambition for the 400th anniversary is to make Shakespeare’s work irresistible to all our audiences. I truly believe our festival will offer something for everyone. This weekend audiences can join us through live events in Stratford, Birmingham and elsewhere in the West Midlands, or via landmark dramas with the best of British acting talent, through learning events up and down the country, new documentaries into the world of Shakespeare, musical collaborations and a myriad of children’s projects online.

Benedict Cumberbatch, Judi Dench and Hugh Bonneville star in The Hollow Crown: War of the Roses

It really is a fresh look at Shakespeare for everyone. We have landmark television dramas like the reimagined Midsummer Night’s Dream on BBC One, adapted by Russell T Davies and starring Maxine Peake as Titania and Matt Lucas as Bottom.

Over on BBC Two this May, The Hollow Crown: War of the Roses, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s History Plays stars Tom Sturridge as Henry VI and Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III.

Upstart Crow also on BBC Two is written by Ben Elton and is a comedy based on Shakespeare’s life starring David Mitchell as Shakespeare.

Meanwhile in factual programming on BBC One, The Best Bottoms in the Land (the character, not the posterior variety) follows the Royal Shakespeare Company’s search for actors across the UK to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Over on BBC Four Redefining Juliet follows the Creative Director and wheelchair user Storme Toolis (above) and her cast of actors, all with disabilities and differences in the lead role, as they attempt to bring a new interpretation of Romeo and Juliet to the stage.

The celebrations start this weekend. On Saturday 23 April at 8:30pm we’ll have a very ambitious live event broadcast on BBC Two and around the world called Shakespeare Live! From the RSC hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate. The show celebrates Shakespeare’s plays and their enduring influence on all performance art forms - from opera to jazz, dance to musicals. It features a staggering list of acting talent including Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tim Minchin, John Lithgow, David Suchet, Rory Kinnear, Joseph Fiennes, the cast of ‘Horrible Histories’. Partners who are working with us include The Royal Ballet, English National Opera (ENO), Birmingham Royal Ballet and Stratford-upon-Avon’s Orchestra of the Swan amongst others.

For the first time in a single documentary, Arena explores the rich, global history of Shakespeare in the cinema, with a treasure trove of film extracts and archival interviews with their creators.This still shows Sir Laurence Olivier talking to Kenneth Tynan. 'Arena: All the World's a Screen - Shakespeare on Film' is on Sunday 24 April, 9pm on BBC Four.

In radio, broadcasting live from a pop-up studio, BBC Radio 3 is resident in Stratford with Sounds of Shakespeare, looking at his culture through music and performance. Highlights include the premiere of a new work by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, as well as performances from the BBC Singers from Guild Chapel and Rufus Wainwright will perform in a special World on 3. In the oncoming weeks there will also be new plays including Naomi Alderman's

In the weeks that follow there will also be new plays including Naomi Alderman's Wolf on Water which imagines a world for Shylock’s daughter, reimagined sonnets set to music by the BBC Philharmonic, and there’s an all Scottish production of King Lear featuring Ian McDiarmid’s first ever casting as Lear.

Over on BBC Radio 4 they look at love across the racial divide in Shakespeare’s plays as well as his influence in India and relevance today.

Alongside our broadcasting, we’ll be experimenting live with digital formats like never before through Shakespeare Day Live, which launches a six-month online festival in partnership with the British Council bringing together the most comprehensive collection of interpretations of Shakespeare’s work in one digital space. We’re aiming to bring the best of Shakespeare to the world for over six months. Highlights of Shakespeare Lives will be made available on BBC iPlayer and it is also the first time programmes from not-for-profit arts organisations will have been brought to wider audiences through the BBC in this way. Infrared analysis of ‘Will’s Will’ uncovers new secrets about Shakespeare, you can download emojis to liven up texts and tweets, and BBC Sport are encouraging those running marathons this weekend and participating in other sporting events to generate bespoke inspirational quotes through #shakespeareme.

Online contributions for Shakespeare Lives come from the Royal Opera House, Shakespeare’s Globe, the BFI, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Hay Festival and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The cast lined-up for the festival includes Mel Giedroyc, Meera Syal, Peter Capaldi, Adrian Lester, Germaine Greer, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale, Lauren Cuthbertson, Edward Watson, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, amongst many others bbc.co.uk/shakespearelives.

Like a great play, we could not put on this extravaganza without a remarkable cast of players. We’ve worked with some of the best partners in the business for our celebrations including the Royal Shakespeare Company, The British Council, the Royal Opera House, Hay Festival and the British Film Institute.

We all want more people to enjoy Shakespeare than ever before by interpreting his work in bold ways and placing it at the heart of the schedules – across TV, radio and online – and we hope that audiences will enjoy discovering new, exciting aspects and interpretations of arguably the greatest playwright who ever lived.

Whilst I’ve run through some of the highlights in this blog, there’s so much more to see and do, so I urge everyone to look online at our Festival overview.

It’s truly extraordinary to see the organisation coming together in this way. David Tennant eloquently said back at our launch in January that the characters in Shakespeare’s stories are 'catnip for actors'. My hope is that our celebrations and interpretations of Shakespeare’s work will be so irresistible they will be catnip for our audiences too.

Introducing the BBC Shakespeare Festival

2016-01-21T11:29:30+00:00

The BBC Shakespeare Festival - a celebration of Shakespeare's genius - was launched at a special event in Broadcasting House on Thursday 21 January 2016

A great teacher turned me onto the joys and fascination of Shakespeare and I am eternally grateful to her. Not everyone is so lucky.

Lots of people get put off early because it's something they 'should learn'. Yet if you ask audiences if they are interested in Shakespeare, many of them have a huge desire to explore the enduring magic of our greatest ever writer.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death gives us an opportunity not just to celebrate Shakespeare's work but to liberate it from something you 'should do'. We want Shakespeare to be as gripping, moving and powerful for modern audiences as it was for his contemporaries. And we want it to be fun.

From searching for the 'Best Bottoms in the Land', to new exciting drama commissions across TV and radio; from documentaries to an irreverent online game using Shakespearian quotes, our aim is to make Shakespeare simply irresistible.

Our ambition is wide and deep. BBC Two for example, returns to The Hollow Crown with an extraordinary line-up of international talent including Benedict Cumberbatch and Judi Dench. A Midsummer Night’s Dream receives two utterly different interpretations from Russell T Davies and CBeebies, both engaging their audiences with the power of Shakespeare's storytelling.

We will broadcast live from Stratford-upon-Avon over the Shakespeare anniversary weekend in April. BBC Radio 3 will take up residency at the RSC’s brand new theatre and BBC Two broadcasts the RSC's Shakespeare Gala ‘Shakespeare Live From the RSC!’ with outstanding international talent including Dame Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Joseph Fiennes, English National Opera and Birmingham Royal Ballet.

And we want this anniversary to reach out to every generation and all parts of the UK. So for example, in front of an audience of local children, BBC Learning, in partnership with the RSC, will broadcast Live Lessons from the Library of Birmingham to schools across the country.

Actor Simon Russell-Beale and director Sam Mendes joined Tony Hall at the BBC Shakespeare Festival launch

BBC local radio will use their websites to document where and how Shakespeare’s plays have been performed, starting in his own lifetime and marking the most iconic and unusual performances through the ages up to the present day.

We will bring Shakespeare into all four corners of the UK, including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Glasgow School of Art, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of Glasgow who are coming together for the first time to create New Dreams, an ambitious, multi-arts experience spanning several months, combining performances, screenings, music and exhibitions, and involving hundreds of students, designers, and academics.

Partnership is key to making Shakespeare accessible to everyone and alongside the RSC, we are also working with The British Council to bring Shakespeare online to a global audience, and with other UK arts organisations on a multitude of different projects to bring Shakespeare to life for audiences both nationally and globally.

I cannot possible do credit to all we have on offer in one short blog post, and you can read all about it here.

Shakespeare may have died 400 years ago but his legacy is not just alive, it is thriving. All you have to do is try it ...

Helen Boaden is Director, BBC Radio

Read about the BBC Shakespeare Festival on the BBC Media Centre website.
Discover more on the BBC Shakespeare Festival and follow @BBCShakespeare on Twitter

Introducing BBC Radio 2's 500 Words Competition 2016

2016-01-18T11:37:04+00:00

Today marked a day I never thought we'd see, as 500 Words launched on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Radio 2 for its sixth blockbusting year. Yes, that's six years, which have seen over 450,000 stories and over 170 million words pour into Radio 2 Towers; as well as the development of the world's first Children's Corpus by Oxford University Press - which studies the way language changes and develops as we age. This is all thanks to the seemingly inexhaustible well of bonkers and brilliant creativity that springs from the imaginations of children all over the UK.

I remember very clearly the day Chris Evans came bounding into the 3rd floor offices at Radio 2 with his customary zeal, fizzing with excitement about his latest scheme.

"I'd like to run a story competition on the radio show" he said. "You know, for kids who think books, reading and writing are not for them. I want to show them that ideas and imagination are the only currency that matters."

"Well that's amazing..." said I, instantly loving the idea and his obvious enthusiasm it, but already feeling the gears click and grind into action at the back of my mind - we broadcast to nearly ten million people on the R2 Breakfast Show, but we'd never run a major on air competition so far, let alone one aimed specifically at children. What kind of response would we be likely to get? How would we judge what came in? Who should judge it? What would the prize be? And most importantly of all...what would you hear on air?

"Great, I'll leave it with you then" said Mr E, and cheerfully bounced off to his next appointment.

What happened next is testament to the drive and resilience of those who have worked on what has become one of the BBC's most prestigious projects. All of them have ultimately gone on to do great things both inside and outside the corporation. Back in 2010, the show’s assistant producer, Day Macaskill, was sent on a fact-finding mission on the inner workings of BBC competitions for children, and also to talk to experts in child literacy and child protection about what we should do to enable the project would run with credibility and authenticity. We worked closely with the Hay Festival who provided us with impeccable guidance and advice throughout. They hosted our final for the first four years of the competition.

We encouraged the nation's teachers and librarians to get involved by signing up to judge the first round – we simply could not run this competition without their support; attracted expert assistance (from the likes of The National Literacy Trust; The Scottish Book Trust and The Reading Agency) to manage the intermediate adjudication stage; and then engaged the biggest children's authors working today to act as our final judging panel. We called on celebrities who would excite the children, their parents and the wider Radio 2 audience to come and read the winning stories at the final.

Chris was across every detail. It was important that what we developed ultimately reflected (and eventually transcended) anything he had originally envisaged that evening when he dreamt the whole competition up.

Our friends at Blue Peter advised us that if they received 25,000 entries to a competition then they knew they had a hit. Well, the first year of 500 Words saw 30,000 children enter. This number swelled to 74,000 in year two; 92,000 in year three; 118,000 in year four and 120,421 in 2015.

Our judging panel has subtly altered throughout the course of the competition, and we are proud to count the likes of David Walliams, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child amongst our alumni. This year's returning panel of Charlie Higson, Malorie Blackman, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Francesca Simon are joined - in a very special turn of events for 2016 - by new judge HRH The Duchess of Cornwall.

Finalists joined Chris Evans and the HRH Duchess of Cornwall at St James' Palace for last year's 500 Words Final

Jeremy Irons, Amabel Smith - winner of the Gold Award 10-13 for her story 'It's a Wide World' and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall at the 500 Words Final 2015

We were hugely honoured when The Duchess helped us launch last year's 500 WORDS with Chris Evans at a primary school and even more thrilled when she offered to host the 2015 final at St James' Palace and hold a reception for the children and their parents afterwards.

HRH and her team could not have been more helpful and supportive last year - even when we brought with us two live acts (The Vamps and Will Young), a full strength gospel choir, a host of superstar readers including the likes of Sir Kenneth Branagh, Charles Dance and Jeremy Irons, fifty excitable children and their parents, a full production team and OB crew…and our ringleader in chief Mr Chris Evans himself!

Anyway, not unduly put off and keen to continue her interest with 500 Words for 2016, as mentioned, the Duchess has agreed - for the first time ever - to act as judge in a competition. And in another Royal first, thanks to a fantastic idea from AP Vicki Perrin - HRH has agreed to appear in animated form for our launch film.

Also new for 2016, we are holding this year's final at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Bankside in London, which not only ties in with the BBC's celebration of Shakespeare, but means that we can offer every single child who enters the competition the chance to be at the event on Friday 27th May - as they will all be entered into a random ticket ballot to win a seat alongside a parent/guardian.

And coming to Radio 2 next month is 500 Words: The (Short) Story So Far – presented by Sheila Hancock which tells the story of the first five years of 500 Words (Thursday 18th Feb at 10pm).

So the stage is set. Chris Evans has announced 500 Words 2016 is now open for business. We have judges aching to read your tales, and actors limbering up ready to bring your words to life. The children of the UK are poised over their keyboards scratching their heads, desperately searching for that moment of inspiration. Which all begs the question...What story will your son/daughter/niece/nephew/neighbour write?

Helen Thomas is Editor, BBC Radio 2 and Radio 2 Digital

Discover more about BBC Radio 2's 500 Words short story writing competition on the Radio 2 website.
Read about the 500 Words Final 2014 in a blog post written by blog editor Jon Jacob
Read about the BBC's journalism learning project BBC School Report

Inspiring people to get reading

2015-11-17T08:57:54+00:00

Reading is one of life's greatest pleasures. But the benefits go beyond pleasure alone. Reading is how we broaden our horizons and sharpen our imaginations - not just as children, but right through life. What's more, the authors and books we read form a shared culture that binds us as a nation and communicates our story to the rest of the world.

That's why authors and books have always been at the heart of the BBC. And whether you're catching an author talking about their latest book on BBC Breakfast,listening to the CBeebies Bedtime Story with your child, celebrating the lives and works of our greatest authors on television or being transported by our many radio book shows and television documentaries, you are joining millions of others in a shared love of books and reading.

But in 2016 we're going to push reading even higher up the agenda - to include more people, inspire a new generation, and let everyone have their say on the books that matter most to them. With the help of key partners who include BookTrust, The National Literacy Trust, The Reading Agency, The Society of Chief Librarians, Scottish Library and Information Council we want to revisit the ambition of The Big Read of 2003 and encourage everyone to Get Reading. Over the course of the year, we will inspire audiences with a broad range of very special programming about great authors and their works. This begins with our BBC Shakespeare Festival in the spring, as well as a season on the Brontë Sisters across BBC Two and BBC Four and programming on Rudyard Kipling and Jeanette Winterson. In the summer, we'll be focusing on Children's Books, celebrating Roald Dahl's centenary and manyof our greatest living children’s authors.

In the autumn, we'll be finding out The Books That Inspired Britain, and asking the nation to share the book that matters most to them through social media. Leading the charge will be a team of well-known faces who are going to take their own favourite books into schools for a new season of programmes on BBC Two. Simon Mayo and Mariella Frostrup will be driving the campaign on Radio, while the BBC Nations & Regions will be finding out the books that define the different parts of Britain. A special BBC Two show will gather the results of the campaign, offering a revealing insight into British taste and reading habits in the 21st Century - not to mention an irresistible list of books that can't fail to please simply because they've pleased so many others.

And as the winter nights draw in, we'll be asking the whole nation to Get Reading and curl up with one of those books in the first ever Get Reading Weekend, when the BBC and partners will inspire everyone everywhere to read something new.

Throughout the year, we will also be encouraging the public themselves to write, through schemes like Chris Evans’ 500 Words children’s story writing competition on Radio 2, which is supported by The Reading Agency, Radio 4’s National Short Story Award and Radio 1’s Young Writers Award, both of which are supported by BookTrust.

This is our ambition for 2016 - to inspire audiences and get them reading and talking about books.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts

Discover more Books at the BBC on the BBC Arts website

Last month on BBC Arts

2015-11-13T10:31:07+00:00

I was disappointed when I read an article in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday this week describing the BBC's television arts output as, variously, ‘unimaginative' and 'middle brow'.

Rupert Christiansen's article focused in on the current run of BBC One's Imagine, which has so far featured two critically acclaimed documentaries with leading British artists - Howard Jacobson and Antony Gormley. The latter was described elsewhere in The Daily Telegraph as the BBC 'at its cerebral best'. The third and no less acclaimed film in the current season, My Curious Documentary, went out on Tuesday night and follows the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident on the Dog in the Night-Time, focusing on the research around children and autism that informed the production.

The article also talks about an 'erosion' of the BBC Proms this year, which is plain wrong. The BBC broadcast the same number of Proms as in previous years on radio and television. And let's not forget: who else but the BBC would host the biggest broadcast festival of classical music in the world, with television coverage on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights for eight weeks, and every Prom live on Radio 3?

I think what Rupert Christiansen means by 'middle brow' is our commitment to putting the arts in the mainstream - after all, there are few countries in the world where intelligent profiles of living heavyweight writers and artists feature on the nation's most popular television channel. This is true also of Simon Schama's brilliant series The Face of Britain, which recently concluded on primetime BBC Two – and is still available on iPlayer. And also of our single play The Dresser, starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Anthony Hopkins, which went out on BBC Two last week.

But these mainstream productions are just one element of a much more rounded arts commitment at the BBC. Over the last three weeks, Artsnight on BBC Two has seen Lynn Barber interviewing conceptual artist Marina Abramovic, Josie Rourke (artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse) talking to Abi Morgan and Erin Brockovich about the hero in popular culture, and George the Poet delivered an entire episode in verse, focusing on black talent.

Meanwhile, on BBC Four, BalletBoyz took us behind the scenes of the world of contemporary dance and their own practice in a new documentary. And last Monday night, John Cooper Clark delivered an essay on de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater. We've also just released one of our most innovative and experimental projects - a feature length archive film entitled Fear Itself by young filmmaker Charlie Lyne - as a special commission on iPlayer.

Only last month, our poetry season - Contains Strong Language - had at its heart a terrific profile of Ted Hughes, featuring a great deal of 'original research', and which, in bygone days, would have been a central film in any run of Monitor or Omnibus. As, indeed, would AN Wilson's Return to Larkinland - a thoughtful and provocative re-assessment of a major poet by a major living writer.

The Dresser, incidentally, is just the flagship of our much broader On Stage season. This Monday, the BBC English Regions put out eleven documentaries simultaneously on BBC One, celebrating the everyday heroism and challenges of regional theatres across England - from Liverpool Everyman to The Curve in Leicester. It was a huge and coordinated push from teams across the country, but the result was that over three million people watched a documentary about a theatre close to them. Who else but the BBC could and would do something on this scale? And, something we've never tried before, a series of one-act plays from innovative, independent theatre companies - including Gecko and Common Wealth - will go out Live From Television Centre on BBC Four this coming Sunday. These plays aren't 'middle brow': they're about the experiences of teenage Muslim boxers or what it's like to go on stage with Tourettes Syndrome. 'Unimaginative? Tell that to the directors, writers, actors and technicians who are rehearsing with white-knuckle intensity as I write.

I've only touched the edges. This week Clara Amfo is authoring Artsnight, Dominic Sandbrook is continuing his BBC Two series on British culture since the Second World War, and David Hare is in conversation with Mark Lawson on BBC Four. Look at the television schedules from the 1960s or 1970s and I think you'd be hard-pushed to find a month featuring such a range of imaginative and fascinating arts programming - both mainstream and eclectic - as this last one.

Jonty Claypole is Director of BBC Arts.

Keep up to date with the corporation's Arts coverage on the BBC Arts website
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Read Jonty's blog 'Our plans to celebrate Shakespeare's life and works

Our plans to celebrate Shakespeare's life and works

2015-11-05T09:30:00+00:00

'He who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe...'

December 12th, 1992, is a date seared onto my memory. It's the day Miss Johnson, my A-Level English teacher, made me rap Duke Vicentio's speech at the end of Act III of Measure for Measure before twenty classmates in an attempt to prove Shakespeare's relevance. Needless to say, the merciless seventeen-year-olds in my class never let me forget it. But to be fair to Miss Johnson, while the rap was her idea, she never actually told me to impersonate Chuck D.

Like many, I have a love-hate relationship with Shakespeare, although the hate has gradually given away entirely to love. Even the bad memories - the dismal school productions, the even worse university productions, the revising for exams - have melted away. Two weeks ago, I saw the Young Vic's superb production of Measure for Measure, staring Romala Garai and about fifty sex dolls, and found myself merrily mouthing along to the Duke's speech (there's a fair amount of hip-hop in the production too, so I guess I was before my time). Earlier in the month, I was knocked for six by Lindsay Turner's brilliant interpretation of Hamlet, which - oh, yes - also happened to feature Benedict Cumberbatch.

There's no getting over the fact Shakespeare can be a tough sell. Bad school experiences can put people off for life. However much a production is dressed up, you still have to work hard to follow a dialect which is now over 400 years old. And yet, Shakespeare has never been bettered. Romeo and Juliet is still the best love story, endlessly imitated. House of Cards is just Richard III re-heated. And we still use his language in everyday speech, whether we realise it or not. 'Mum's the word', 'too much of a good thing', 'eaten out of house and home', and 'a wild goose chase' are just some of the phrases he coined.

A master of story, a master of language - and a master of emotion. Whether Othello's jealousy, Hamlet's doubt, Lear's rage, Shakespeare captured human experience unlike any other writer. That's why even in translation he is loved around the world.

So next year, the BBC is joining many others in marking 400 years since his death. We're doing it because understanding Shakespeare is the key to understanding and enjoying the English language, British history, life itself. And let's not forget, he's in our DNA HERE AT THE BBC: last time I looked, there was still a vast statue of Prospero and Ariel above the doors of our London headquarters.

A year ago, when we formed the poetically named BBC Shakespeare Steering Group (chaired by our Director of Radio, Helen Boaden), we asked ourselves what it was the BBC could bring to Shakespeare celebrations in 2016 that few others could deliver. We quickly agreed an ambition to make Shakespeare irresistible and put him right in the mainstream, by using the full range of our services and working in partnership with arts organisations across the country.

We've already announced some of the highlights of our BBC Shakespeare Festival. There's Russell T Davies' star-studded re-imagining of A Midsummer Night's Dream on BBC One, The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and a live birthday celebration with the Royal Shakespeare Company on BBC Two. All three projects, plus a superb range of plays and documentaries from BBC Radio, will harness the power of a vast array of British talent in the way only the BBC can.

And today, we're announcing another round of commissions, all of which have one thing in common: Birmingham. Shakespeare was the Midlands lad who conquered the world, so it always felt appropriate that teams in the Mailbox, just twenty-three miles as the crow flies from where Shakespeare was born, should be at the heart of our output - locally, nationally and globally.

Three projects in particular stand out:

The first is an unprecedented partnership between the BBC, the British Council and some of the nation's greatest arts institutions - from the Royal Opera House to the BFI to Hay Festival - to create a global Shakespeare festival online using world-class content from each organisation. Shakespeare Lives, the work of a team in BBC Birmingham, will launch on April 23rd and will remain live for six months.

Then there's Shakespeare On Tour - a special project from BBC English Regions. Working in partnership with the British Library and REED (Records of English Drama), using academic research spanning 40 years, Shakespeare on Tour will create a digital map showing the location of performances of his plays - from the 16th Century until more recent times. Through it, audiences will be able to discover town halls, pubs and private houses around the country where Shakespeare's plays were performed. And - cover your ears, Equity! - how much his players were paid. The stories that emerge from this data, including villages where Shakespeare himself performed, will be broadcast across BBC Local Radio. The project will be hosted by BBC Online from Birmingham.

Finally - it's not clever, it's not grown up, but I still find this next programme title funny after nine months - there's The Best Bottoms in the Land. Needless to say, this is not a competition to discover the most shapely posteriors in England but a unique collaboration between BBC English Regions and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It follows a traveling production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that recruits the parts of Bottom and the Rude Mechanicals from amateur actors in each town it visits. Nine half-hour programmes will be produced for BBC One, all overseen by BBC Birmingham.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts

Read more about our plans for marking the Shakespeare anniversary next year on the Media Centre website.
Discover more arts related content via BBC Arts online.

BBC Radio 4's 'We British: An Epic in Poetry'' on National Poetry Day

2015-10-06T09:11:00+00:00

'Waiting for a poetry reading in a Washington bookstore' taken and published by J Brew on Flickr.

Arts and Poetry Editor James Cook introduces Radio 4's contribution to National Poetry Day later this week.

I know lots of people don’t like poetry (or at least find it boring, confusing, a bit serious and occasionally terrible) but I implore you to stay with me. Poets are warm and funny, rude and angry, scared, lustful, political, annoyed, quizzical, devout, profane – in others words they are a bit like us.

I’m the Arts and Poetry Editor at Radio 4, I look after a small (but perfectly formed) poetry unit in Bristol and, unsurprisingly, I’ve always loved poems. I like the way poems hang around and in my head (scraps of lines never whole ones), beguiling me with their beauty or the way some person, across 400 years or more, seems to know exactly how I feel.

And I’ve always thought that poems could tell the story of Britain – from the earliest verses written on these islands to the latest. A different story to the one we’re taught in school, more intimate, funnier, with more gossip, more honesty and in many more voices.

When I said all this to my commissioning editor, Tony Phillips, I didn’t really expect him to take it seriously. But, he did. And so here I am staring at an enormous whiteboard covered in post it notes with ten days go until we’re on air. I’m four fifths excited and one fifth terrified which feels about right.

So what are we doing? Well, over six hours on Radio 4 we’re going to tell the story of Britain in poems – from the 700s to the present day. Andrew Marr is presenting and we’re going to weave in and out of the Radio 4 schedule like a gossipy, sinewy river of words, kicking off a huge pan-BBC season of poetry called Contains Strong Language.

We British preview: The specially-crafted 'Frankenpoem' . How many famous poems do you recognise?

But which poems, whose poems and, firstly, why poems?

Because poems reveal a history of human experience, they tell us what it was like to be alive in Tudor England or Victorian Scotland. They are good documents to an age because poets admit things that other people do not. They say things anew and are often on the cusp of new ways of thinking, new emotions, experimental ways of living. So poetry tells a uniquely intimate history.

But poetry is also the place where we laid down the first stirrings of our national identities, of the really big stories we tell ourselves about Scotland and England, Ireland and Wales.

The challenge is immense – trying to find a way of telling this story that is fair to all the poetic brilliance of our history; that feels like a collective story and yet accounts for the huge diversity in this country both past and present. There’s so much good stuff we’re going to leave out; so many voices that we cannot include. But we’ve made a big declaration so we’ve got to find a way to tell it.

One way to do this, a brilliant way, is to ask Andrew Marr whose grasp of history is profound and passion for poetry immense.

As a result, Andrew and a team of brilliant producers and I have been saying things like ‘but if we have the Rossetti we can’t have the Tennyson’, horse-trading our literary history for the sake of a good story. And it really is a good story; it’s the collective experience of the people who have lived on these islands – of war, invasion, religious change, science and innovation, empire and trade, oppression and class, And the poets have been there all along, writing, chronicling, confessing and describing.

I hope you can join us on the day.

James Cook is Arts and Poetry Editor, Radio 4

We British: An Epic In Poetry is on National Poetry Day throughout Thursday 8th October starting with Foundation Stones presented by Andrew Marr at 9.00am.
Poet Murray Lachlan-Young will present The People's Shipping Forecast using submissions made by listeners via Twitter, Facebook and email on Thursday 8 October. For more information on how to take part, visit the Radio 4 website.

The picture at the top of this post was taken and published by J Brew on Flickr. We've used it in accordance with the Creative Commons Licence.

Inspiring Arts for Autumn across the BBC

2015-10-02T11:06:31+00:00

The next few months are particularly action-packed for arts at the BBC so we've put together a brochure on some of the highlights...

BBC TWO has two ambitious landmark series with Simon Schama's Face of Britain and Dominic Sandbrook's take on the arts in Britain since the Second World War - both of which feel like substantial statements on key areas of our culture. Also on the channel, Artsnight is back on air with an impressive line -up of hosts from Irvine Welsh to Hofesh Schecter, George the Poet to Ana Matronic. While BBC TWO Scotland has a new four part landmark on The Story of Scottish Art with Lachlan Goudie.

I'm hugely excited by Contains Strong Language: A Season of Poets and Poetry Across the BBC, which will put poetry right in the mainstream of national consciousness in the way only the BBC can. It focuses around National Poetry Day on 8 October when Radio 4 is embarking on an ambitious project to tell the story of Britain through poetry in one day, hosted by Andrew Marr with many of our leading poets. There are also powerful new documentaries on Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and Tony Harrison on BBC Two and BBC Four. And I'm thrilled BBC Four is playing Simon Armitage's Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster, originally commissioned by the brilliant Katy Jones for BBC Learning. Poetry at its most powerful and urgent.

And in November, we're bringing the whole BBC together again in the 'BBC On Stage' theatre season. Richard Eyre has directed Ian McKellen and Anthony Hopkins in an astonishing new adaptation of The Dresser for BBC Two, using the original play text and shot in a single location. BBC Four is putting some of the nation's leading independent theatre companies in the spotlight with a series of one-act plays Live From Television Centre. The project has been created in close partnership with Arts Council of England and Battersea Arts Centre. It's a new way of working for us - joining in with the Battersea Arts Centre on a series of 'scratch' days with the theatre companies from across the country - and has proven eye-opening, invigorating and humbling too. And the power of our local services is at its most evident in no less than eleven documentaries from BBC English Regions putting a focus on the everyday heroism of our regional theatres - from Liverpool to Leicester.

I'm loving the way Radio 3 has been integrating its music and speech output more closely. The Proms Plus Literary has become as important to me as the music. And, likewise, music is going to have a greater role in this autumn's Free Thinking Festival. Radio 4 has been placing arts output - like a Front Row Edinbuergh special and an edition of Open Book on the pleasures of reading - more prominently than ever in the schedules, in that much coveted 9am slot. As ever, it's hosting the BBC National Short Story Award, and there will also be a brand new Young Writers Award with Book Trust: a major commitment to emerging talent.

Arena turns forty at pretty much the same point I do. Anthony Wall and his team have created a 24-hour film experience that matches extracts from the Arena archive to the times of the day. So you can have lunch with Warhol, tea with William Burroughs and wait outside the pub at 10.55am with, well, far too many artists and writers who ought to know better. It's an extraordinarily ambitious and moving experience that drives home the sheer importance of what Anthony Wall and his colleagues have been doing the last forty years.

There's so much more besides: BBC Two's Great British Pottery Throw Down will be encouraging the nation to get creative with clay, a December Dance season will showcase Carlos Acosta and the Ballet Boyz. Imagine is back on air with a brilliant line-up of profiles ranging from Howard Jacobson to Anthony Gormley, and throughout all this our day-in day-out arts strands will be keeping us plugged into the best of British arts and culture.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts.

Read/download the BBC Arts Autumn 2015 Brochure.
Find out more at the BBC Arts website.
Like BBC Arts on facebook.
Follow BBC Arts on twitter.

A new UK arts platform for the internet age

2015-09-29T09:20:00+00:00

Over the last year, we've been having lots of conversations with arts organisations and leaders, not to mention artists and audiences from all different walks of life, right across the country. The idea is to find out what the BBC can do to support creativity in Britain better than we already do. In turn, for us to find new ways of working, new forms of art, and engage with a broader range of audiences.

The main mechanism has been a BBC Arts Advisory Group, set up by Sir Nicholas Serota last year. It consists of a handful of arts leaders from different backgrounds: Maria Balshaw from the Whitworth in Manchester, Vicky Featherstone from the Royal Court, Marcus Davey from the Roundhouse, Indhu Rubasingham from The Tricycle and Amit Sood from Google Cultural Institute. Each of these leaders led workshops in different parts of the country, reaping the insight of over 20 arts organisations - big and small, national and regional - looking in particular at how we might do more to engage younger audiences and support grassroots creativity throughout the country.

Alongside this, the BBC Connected Studio led a day during the summer focused on arts and digital technology, which brought together 30 organisations - from Hull, UK City of Culture 2017 to the Edinburgh Festivals. Meanwhile, our Get Creative partnership with the What Next? movement (consisting of hundreds of arts leaders from across the country) has opened up dialogue on an unprecedented scale with organisations like Voluntary Arts, 64 Million Artists and Culture 24.

Lots of conversations. But one message coming back clear and loudly: the desire for a more open, generous and enabling BBC.

But why?

Our economy has changed greatly over the last 10 years and the challenges facing arts organisations - those crucibles of world-renowned talent - and the audiences they serve are vast. Many have had to scale back or, indeed, close entirely. The benefits of digital technology, which should be the great liberator, are far from universal, dividing the haves from the have-nots. The ability to digitally capture and distribute art requires resources and expertise that many smaller organisations just can't afford. Some of this underpins the alarming revelation by a report published earlier this year (the Warwick Commission's Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth) that the most culturally active part of the population is also the wealthiest, better educated and least ethnically diverse.

Meanwhile, the BBC, for all the challenges it faces, has a degree of stability that means it can think far into the future. Its services reach over 96% of the population a week, so it can deliver access to the arts and culture like nobody else. And it has a precious and sophisticated infrastructure of local services that can connect artists and audiences at regional, national and international levels. More than most other organisations, the BBC can enable the wider sector to continue making Britain one of the most culturally exciting nations in the world.

Last week, we announced our vision of a more open BBC for the internet age: working with partners to both tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities surrounding arts and culture in 21st Century Britain. This requires working in a new way - listening hard, contributing with commitment, developing ideas with partners that will actually achieve what is needed for a wide range stakeholders each with their own unique challenges.

At this stage, the key thing is not the individual content ideas, but creating the right framework and working practice for those ideas to emerge. This is the single most important principle behind the 'new UK arts platform' described on page 72 of our 'British, Bold, Creative' report.

The word 'platform' is one of those deceptively simple-sounding words which is actually rather hard to pin down. My own understanding of it is informed by brilliant thinkers in the wider arts and tech sector, as well as within the BBC, who have been engaged with this stuff far longer than I have. A 'platform' does not mean 'a website', although it will certainly have digital outlets and may be digitally led. A platform is a framework for collaboration as much as anything else, enabling a wide range of partners to work together on a regular basis: sharing technology, collaborating on forward plans, as well as broadcast, online and physical expressions of those collaborations. This is why the description of the 'new UK arts platform' avoids being dogmatic about what it looks like, but rather what it needs to achieve.

In Monday's speech and report, the words 'open' and 'partnership' were used a lot, and there were also revealing insights into what some of the tools might be. The Director-General talked about 'co-commissioning' with partners. We have some precedence with this already, like the 'EIF Conversations' with Juliette Binoche, Sylvie Guillem and others, created by BBC Arts Online and Edinburgh International Festival together last month. Or the ongoing BBC, Arts Council of England, Battersea Arts Centre 'Live from Television Centre' project with BBC Four.

Creating a framework for enabling more of these collaborations and developing a shared forward plan of seasons and themes that other partners can opt in or out of has obvious advantages in achieving both impact and savings for all involved.

Likewise, the 'British Bold Creative' report talks about how the arts platform will sit within a broader Ideas Service that will work across broadcast as well as online, suggesting a modern and nimble commissioning approach. This should be reassuring to those organisations who cite the reach of the BBC's services as its greatest asset and are rightfully wary of projects which exist only online.

The next few weeks and months are crucial in getting the 'new UK arts platform' off on the right footing. Since partnership is to be at the core of the service, then partnership needs to be at the core of the creation of it - from development to realisation. We are consulting a range of partners and independent voices about how best to frame this development process and we will make announcements soon about how it will work. Later in the autumn we will hold a series of consultation days for those who want to input. Finally, we will be looking for short-term opportunities to test and pilot the ideas that emerge, which will inform and prepare the ground for the longer-term vision.

Did I forget to say how excited I am? If we get the process right - honouring that spirit of openness and partnership - then I truly believe we'll succeed. Thoughts, insights and suggestions will be welcomely received at jonty.claypole@bbc.co.uk

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts