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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.

From in the room to on the air: new theatre, arts and museums programmes as part of Culture in Quarantine

2020-04-30T11:00:00+00:00

From the many Shakespeare plays that this blog highlighted last week as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine, I’m delighted this week to announce that we’ll be broadcasting more contemporary plays as part of our virtual repertory theatre giving audiences contemporary plays that they aren’t able to see as a result of the pandemic.

Like other parts of the BBC, BBC Radio 4 is finding new ways to team up with cultural institutions and bring artistic experiences into people’s homes as part of Culture in Quarantine. We, along with our colleagues at BBC Radio 3 and BBC Arts, are particularly pleased to be bringing listeners broadcasts of great stage plays that had runs cut short as part of Lockdown Theatre Festival.

The project was created by actor Bertie Carvel and we’ll be broadcasting the plays on Radio 4 and Radio 3 on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 June.It’s wonderful to be able to provide a new or different lease of life to these works whilst they can’t be on stage and bring them to a wide audience. The plays are: The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz and originally showing at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, Love Love Love by Mike Bartlett recently revived for Lyric, Hammersmith Theatre, Rockets And Blue Lights by Winsome Pinnock - sadly suspended before its world premiere planned at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, and Shoe Lady by E.V. Crowe - cut short into its run at the Royal Court Theatre.

Josh Zaré in The Mikvah Project, Rachael Stirling, Nicholas Burns, Isabella Laughland in Love Love Love, Rochelle Rose and Karl Collins in Rockets & Blue Lights, Katherine Parkinson in Shoe Lady.

On the project, Bertie Carvel told us: “All this work was going to waste! I wanted to create a cultural snapshot for posterity, because who knows what the future holds? Theatres up and down the country are facing an existential crisis. I hope Lockdown Theatre Festival will demonstrate our community’s positivity and resilience - but also shine a light on the challenges we face.”

Those involved in these plays, such as cast including Katherine Parkinson, Nicholas Burns, Karl Collins, Rachael Stirling and more, are rising to the challenge of doing something different. We are not simply broadcasting an existing audio recording taken from rehearsals or performances. Instead actors will record ‘down the line’ from isolation, drawing on the muscle memory of fully realised stage productions to reimagine their performances for the radio. Whilst it will be a different experience to going to a theatre, we hope they will be a reminder of the magic of live theatre and how precious it is, as well as a wonderful piece of audio in their own right. Produced by Jeremy Mortimer, a Reduced Listening production for Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Another programme I’m really pleased to be bringing to Radio 4 as part of this drive to ensure culture remains in the nation’s homes during lockdown is a special series with eminent historian Simon Schama. Following his project for BBC Four as part of Museum in Quarantine, he will take Radio 4 listeners on The Great Gallery Tours of four world class galleries, explaining their unique significance and why they draw him back time and again. Through the series Simon will share works which have moved him, such as Manet’s glorious A Bar at the Folies-Bergère from the Courtauld Gallery, London.

He’ll virtually visit the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, home to many paintings by Rembrandt, an artist much revered (and studied by Simon) who will look at both the artist’s grand and intimate works. In Madrid’s Prado Museum, we encounter Velazquez and Goya, and Edward Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun at the Whitney, New York. At each stage we also hear from the directors and curators of these museums as they reflect upon the current circumstances. Simon Schama: The Great Gallery Tours will begin 16:00 on Monday 13 July and is produced by Susan Marling, at Just Radio Productions for Radio 4.

At a time when galleries around the globe have closed their doors, Simon Schama will remind us of some of the stories and treasures they hold. This will sit alongside The Way I See It, a radiophonic art exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, featuring leading creatives including Roxane Gay, John Walters, Margaret Cho and Fiona Shaw; which first aired on Radio 3 and - with museums closed - we’re broadcasting on Radio 4 bringing it to our audience as well.

We asked Simon why he was so keen to be involved in the project he said: "Like many of you I'm badly missing the joy of museums and galleries during the lockdown. So I'm really delighted to be able to talk about four of my favourite treasure-houses of great art - the Prado, the Courtauld Collection; the Rijksmuseum and the Whitney in New York, and to convey in full-colour radio the transforming power of some of their greatest paintings.”

As Simon says, we know how much culture means to our audience. Our regular programmes such as Front Row are doing a brilliant job at continuing to bring the arts into people’s home. The team has risen to the challenge presented by lockdown, employing technical wizardry to connect with creatives, where ever they may be in the world. In the coming week, Front Row features music from Nicola Benedetti and Artist in Residence during lockdown, Víkingur Ólafsson performing Philip Glass from the Harpa Concert Hall in Rejkyavik. The programme also welcomes actor Emma Thompson, writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, director Damien Chazelle, and we look ahead to a special extended edition on Friday 8 May with Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller.

We have wanted to look at other ways too that we could support institutions in getting to the public. As part of the Culture in Quarantine initiative, the BBC has a special role at the moment in giving the audience access to artistic treasures, working with theatre productions and museums to bring listeners some joy and delight, and enabling institutions to give us all a reminder of the nourishment that arts and culture can give us now, during the pandemic, and in the future when the world starts to return to something that approximates to normal…whatever that will be.

The Bard comes to the BBC and launching Museums In Quarantine

2020-04-22T12:30:00+00:00

If I was looking for a manifesto for Culture in Quarantine, then Mary Beard and her contributors provided it on last week’s Front Row Late (henceforth known as Mary's Lockdown Culture).

"It’s in dark times like this," Mary said, "that art and music and literature and culture are more essential than ever… They can cheer us up, they can calm us down, but they can also help us to think harder about the state we’re in and what might come next." Artist Anthony Gormley agreed: "For our early ancestors, art was one of the most important tools of survival, was one of the most important expressions of our connection with all living creatures, and I’m beginning to feel that is coming back to us in this time of enforced hermit-like existence." The full interview with Gormley goes out in tomorrow’s episode.

These are sentiments that our greatest playwright knew all too well. Shakespeare’s lifetime was chequered by outbreaks of the plague and it is believed he wrote King Lear during a period of lockdown when his theatre was closed. For his public, the act of seeing a play was an immense and joyous privilege afforded by moments of relative good health across society. His plays celebrate human communion and never shy away from confronting those forces - like illness and death - that threaten it.

Tomorrow, 23 April, is World Book Night. It is also thought to have been Shakespeare’s birthday and - with the poetic symmetry we might expect - the day he died. For this reason, BBC Arts is delighted to join with two of the world’s greatest Shakespearean companies - the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe - in releasing first-rate productions of some of his greatest works in a Culture in Quarantine special on iPlayer, which will be available for over three months.

From the RSC, we are hosting Hamlet with Paapa Essiedu, Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo And Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello - all stella productions from the last five years. They will be joined by productions from Shakespeare’s Globe: The Tempest, with Roger Allam as Prospero, and Emma Rice’s brilliant interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They will be published on iPlayer on Thursday 23 April. Not only are these entertaining productions of great plays, but they are also on the curriculum and support home education.

These titles will be joined by the BBC’s own production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as adapted by Russell T Davies in 2016, which was repeated on BBC Four last Sunday. And from this Sunday, they will be joined by the BBC’s King Lear of 2018, directed by Richard Eyre and with an unforgettable cast of Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Florence Pugh and Andrew Scott. All together, this forms an iPlayer box-set of ten extraordinary productions of Shakespeare’s greatest works. We are also adding the beautiful BalletBoyz production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, featuring the stars of The Royal Ballet and set to Sergei Prokofiev’s original score instead of Shakespeare’s words.

On BBC Radio 3, a new production of Othello was broadcast last Sunday, starring Khalid Abdalla and Matthew Needham, and Henry IV, Part 1, featuring Iain Glen and Toby Jones, goes out this coming Sunday. These new productions join the huge back catalogue of plays and documentaries on BBC Sounds’ The Shakespeare Sessions.

And of course Shakespeare will feature elsewhere across BBC services. BBC Radio Ulster’s Culture Café, available on BBC Sounds, hears from director Zoe Seaton who is streaming a live performance of The Tempest in Lockdown with audience interaction via zoom. Mary's Lockdown Culture (BBC Two, Friday at 7pm) this week features Derek Jacobi reading Sonnet Number 98 and, as part of Get Creative at Home Masterclasses, Simon Callow will talk audiences through how to deliver the sonnets, while exploring the intriguing story of why - and to who - William Shakespeare wrote them. Finally David Tennant is joining Zoe Ball on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show tomorrow morning to talk about the experience of performing Hamlet and other Shakespeare roles.

Museums In Quarantine

Next week, Culture In Quarantine turns its attention to our museums and art galleries. These are buildings which carry our national collections and set the cultural agenda through exhibitions and artist commissions. They are, to an extent, the soul of our nation, revealing our history, our customs, our identity, and where we are heading. This is why free access is so fiercely defended in this country, and why the way they are run and the stories they tell are rightly debated and contested. When they close, we are to an extent untethered. We find ourselves wishing we visited them more when we could - and make mental plans to do so when the lockdown lifts.

Museums In Quarantine is a week-long celebration of the museums and galleries. We are offering extraordinary access to exhibitions and objects that are for the time being beyond reach. Like parents looking in on sleeping children, we will reassure ourselves that some of our best-loved treasures are safe and sound. Over the course of the week, four programmes (made by Swan Films) will run nightly on BBC Four that take us behind the closed doors of big national institutions. All four have been filmed in exceptional circumstances - when not only the public, but most of the staff, are unable to enter the buildings. To film in an empty gallery is normally every documentary director’s dream. When it happens, it is out of hours - early in the morning or late at night - so to do so in the middle of the day is eery and disconcerting.

Alastair Sooke’s solitary exploration of the Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern puts an unfamiliar light on this most iconic of late 20th Century artists. Those sumptuous stacks of soup cans seem more desirable than ever bearing in mind how empty such shelves have been in supermarkets in recent weeks. The other three programmes are collaborations between art historians, scripting and voicing remotely, while a lone camera roams the empty halls and galleries capturing the objects they talk about. Rembrandt’s warts and all celebration of human society, as revealed in an exhibition currently shuttered in the Ashmolean in Oxford, is more appealing than ever for Simon Schama in isolation. For James Fox, works from Tate Britain’s permanent collection - from William Hogarth to Mona Hatoum - remind us that artists have always tackled grief and despair, as well as offering signs of hope. And for Janina Ramirez, the British Museum is full of treasures revealing how great civilisations have confronted the mysteries of life. Both Fox and Ramirez recently recovered from coronavirus and they leapt at the opportunity to talk about works, from the safety of their homes, they long to see again.

These four films, running from Monday onwards, provide the build-up to MuseumFromHome: a whole day of broadcast and social media activity on Thursday 30 April delivered in partnership with Art Fund, National Museum Directors’ Council, the Museums Association and #MuseumFromHome.The ambition is simple: to ensure the public continues to have access to the collections and exhibitions they love even when they cannot enter the buildings that house them.

A MuseumFromHome live page will host content from museums and galleries across the UK with things to watch and do at home. This will include further commissions with BBC Arts: the Art Deco show at The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, and a blockbuster exhibition on The Clash (marking the 40th anniversary of London Calling) at the Museum of London. We're also going to be joining with Museum of the Home to ask audiences to share their personal experiences of home life in lockdown as part of a new national collecting project called Stay Home.

From the greatest plays ever written to the finest collections and exhibitions to be found anywhere in the world, over the next ten days Culture in Quarantine continues to provide precious access to the arts, helping to keep culture alive in our homes and our hearts.