Front Row

Miss Virginia is a new film based on the story of Virginia Walden Ford’s fight to create positive educational opportunities for African-American students in Washington D.C. and stars Uzo Aduba. Elle Osili-Wood reviews.Australian singer Helen Reddy has died at the age of 77. Her biggest hit, I am Woman, became an anthem for the feminist movement. Writer Lucy O’Brien was an admirer and a fan, and she joins Samira to discuss why Helen Reddy is crucial to the story of women in popular music, and also feminism.Sarah Nicolls discusses her new composition, 12 Years, inspired by the 2018 IPCC report that said we have 12 years to prevent irreversible climate change. Sarah performs the narrative work that includes newspaper headlines and invented characters on her unique Inside-Out Piano, a vertical grand designed so that she can play the strings directly to create an array of incredible sounds.The choreographer Gary Clarke grew up in 1980s Grimethorpe, North Yorkshire, at the time one of Europe’s most deprived towns. So when he was asked to create a piece reflecting the experience of lockdown, his dance was inspired by a 1903 film of Alice in Wonderland, but draws heavily on the experiences of his youth. Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald

The 17th Century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi is the subject of a major new exhibition at London's National Gallery. Critic Waldemar Januszczak considers the importance of the artist who struggled against the male Establishment, but who gained fame, patronage and adoration in her lifetime.No Masks is a new co-production between Sky Arts and the Theatre Royal Stratford East; a TV drama based on the real-life testimonies of key workers during the pandemic, starring Russell Tovey and Anya Chalotra. Theatre Royal’s Artistic Director Nadia Fall discusses the series of monologues she’s co-written alongside playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz.As TV talent show winners Little Mix launch their own TV talent show (Little Mix: The Search) to find a band to accompany them on their next tour, we discuss the creation of manufactured pop bands with music journalist Roisin O'Connor from the Independent and Simon Webbe from the best-selling boy band Blue. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Oliver Jones

Earlier today the shortlist for the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced. Two time winner Hilary Mantel has not made the list for the final part of her Cromwell series and four out of six of the books chosen are by debut authors. John speaks to Chair of Judges Margaret Busby and critics Sara Collins and Toby Lichtig give their verdict on the chosen few.Today Arts Council England published two new pieces of research into the value of the cultural institutions it funds to our high streets and how they are reanimating local economies. For instance, more than 300 cultural venues are in unemployment hotspots. There are 500 cafes in cultural centres across the country – almost as many outlets as Pret a Manger. Sir Nichola Serota, the Chair of ACE, unpicks this work with John Wilson, who will ask him, too, what is happening with the £1.57 billion pledged by the government to save the arts and livelihoods of artists. Last week on Front Row Lucy Noble, who runs the Royal Albert Hall, said that no one had yet received any money.Sarah Hall has been nominated for the National Short Story Award for the fourth time for her story The Grotesques. Ahead of the story being broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow, we speak to the writer about exploring covert control, scapegoating and dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships in her story.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Dymphna Flynn Studio Manager: John Boland

Michael Kiwanuka said he was seriously surprised when he won the 2020 Mercury Prize last week. Tom Sutcliffe talks to the singer-songwriter about dropping out of his music degree, hanging out in Hawaii with Kanye West and asks why such modesty when his self-titled album had rave reviews on release, and reached number 2 in the charts. Director Joe Mantello on his new film version of The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley’s ground-breaking 1968 play about a group of gay friends at a birthday party in New York. As the Covid crisis continues, last week Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced viable jobs will receive support. As the creative industries rely on freelance workers Front Row discusses what this means for them, first talking to set designer Rebecca Brower, who has lost most of her work this year because theatres are closed. Plus Philippa Childs, head of the union Bectu, to which many freelance creatives belong, explains why so many won’t qualify for help. And director Fiona Laird offers an overview, suggesting ways to create future work for freelancers in the industry. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: John BolandMain image: Michael Kiwanuka Image credit: Olivia Rose

Dove Cottage Grasmere is the heart of Romantic poetry and is hosting part of this year's Contains Strong Language festival. We'll be asking what the Romantics have to tell us now, with the poet Kate Clanchy who has adapted Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished poem Christabel with a newly commissioned score by composer Katie Chatburn. Novelist, poet and playwright Zosia Wand was born in London but didn't speak English till she went to school and spent all her holidays in Poland. Now she's written a radio play Bones - set on the sandbanks of Morecambe Bay - exploring how it feels to be a migrant and the emotional impact on the generations that follow.In 2005 the award winning poet and novelist Jacob Polley’s home town of Carlisle flooded catastrophically after heavy rain. Three people died and thousands were left homeless in an event that was supposed to be a one in a hundred year event. Now Jacob Polley’s returned to that time for a new play Emergency. It’s a love story set against a merciless storm voiced through ancient Anglo-Saxon riddles about the power of nature. And we discuss the impact of poetry in isolation with the young poet Hannah Hodgson who is living with a life limiting disease. She'll read from her lockdown collection and discuss how poetry managed to say what we needed to say this year from zoom poetry slams to tik tok haikus.

David McKee has just been named as the recipient of the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award 2020. Author and illustrator of the Elmer books which with vivid colour and humour make a case for inclusion and acceptance, and the creator of the magical Mr Benn, he also wrote and illustrated Not Now, Bernard, a funny and perceptive plea for children not to be ignored. Now 85, he is still working. Front Row talks to him about his life and career.It has been reported that the Royal Academy in London is considering selling off its rare Michelangelo marble masterpiece known as the Taddei Tondo in an effort to avoid sacking 150 of its staff, as a result of lockdown. Axel Rϋger, Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy, and Alison Cole, Editor of The Art Newspaper, discuss the RA’s dilemma. A brand new bi-monthly magazine – Cocoa Girl – is unusual in many ways. First the editor is 6 years old, second it’s an actual physical magazine, not just an online offer and third it’s been a great success, selling more than 15,000 copies since its launch in June. We speak to Serlina Boyd, founder and publisher of the UK’s first magazine for Black children (and mum to editor Faith!) Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jerome WeatheraldMain image: David McKee drawing Elmer the Elephant Image credit: Jean Marc Chautems

Doctor Foster creator, Mike Bartlett, has come up with a new drama for BBC1. Set in Manchester, Life follows the stories of the residents of a large house divided into four flats, and explores love, loss, birth and death, and features some of the characters from Doctor Foster. Nick Ahad reviews.Channing Godfrey Peoples talks about writing and directing her debut film, Miss Juneteenth, about a beauty queen pageant commemorating the day slaves in Texas were freed – two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Life for Turquoise Jones didn’t turn out as beautifully as winning the title promised, so she is cultivating her daughter, Kai, to become Miss Juneteenth, even if Kai wants something else.Show Trials: The Lowry in Salford has come up with a unique way to bring in revenue whilst its regular artistic functions are paused because of pandemic regulations and social distancing. They’re going to become a temporary ‘Nightingale Court’. Julia Fawcett, Chief Executive of The Lowry, reveals how it’s going to work and what the implications will be. Susanna Clarke, who enjoyed enormous success with her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, talks to Kirsty Lang about Piranesi, not a biography of the C18th Italian artist, but a novel set somewhere he might have imagined. The House is an endless sprawl of halls lined with statues, but it is falling apart, flooded by tides and populated, at first, by just the eponymous narrator and someone he knows only as The Other. An intriguing story of parallel realities, interrogating reality itself, unravels. She discusses her new novel with Kirsty.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Simon Richardson Studio Manager: Donald McDonald

Lead singer of Britpop band Skunk Anansie, Skin has headlined Glastonbury, sold millions of albums, and recently competed in The Masked Singer. As her memoir, Skin - It takes Blood and Guts, is published, we ask her about channelling rage into her performances and if she thinks her achievements as queer black woman have been overlooked.After a six-month Covid delay, Plymouth’s new £40m arts and heritage museum space The Box is due to open next week. This weekend also sees the Plymouth Art Weekender, a city-wide festival of art and events. Sarah Gosling, BBC’s arts and culture presenter in Plymouth, considers the role of art and culture in helping to transform the city. It is the season of moths and spiders. Many people strive to keep these out of their houses. Not so the poet Sean Borodale whose new collection, Inmates, records close encounters with all manner of insects, in all stages of their existence – egg, maggot, flight, in death and decay. He talks about co-existing with the natural world and writing the process in poetry.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Announced by Theresa May in 2018 and quickly dubbed the “Festival of Brexit”, submissions are now being made for the UK government funded £120 million festival that will celebrate British creativity in 2022. Creative director Martin Green tells us what kind of projects and ideas he’s looking for.Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on winning the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series at last night's awards.English National Opera are staging Europe’s first drive-in opera, Puccini’s La Bohème, at London’s Alexandra Palace, where the audience watch the singers from their cars. Will this be an exciting new way to experience opera? Alexandra Coghlan reviews. Writer Gwyneth Hughes discusses her new ITV drama, Honour, starring Keeley Hawes. It’s the story of the real-life detective who brought five killers to justice after the so-called honour killing of Banaz Mahmod, a 20 year old Iraqi Kurdish woman from Mitcham, south London, who was murdered for falling in love with the wrong man.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins Studio Manager: Donald McDonald Main image: Soraya Mafi in ENO La bohème (c) Lloyd Winters, Courtesy ENO

The Los Angeles-based American artist Mark Bradford, who represented the USA at the Venice Biennale in 2017, discusses his new series of Quarantine Paintings. The three works – only available to view online – explore the nature of art in isolation and how he responded when his city was suddenly shut down unexpectedly.Nick Hornby, the writer who gave us Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About a Boy, discusses his new novel Just Like You, which features a relationship between a black man in his early 20s and a white 42-year-old English teacher and mother. The novel is set in 2016 and it’s not long before the social and political divisions brought about by the looming Brexit vote are becoming unavoidable.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May