This week we’re exploring Afrofuturism, the movement that blends fantasy, folklore and technology, to imagine a new future for African nations and people of African heritage. Four years after the smash hit movie Black Panther turned Afrofuturism into an unstoppable artistic force globally we’re asking: what’s next?We meet the next generation of Afrofuturism-inspired artists, with Congolese-Rwandan-Belgian rapper Lous and the Yakuza, who’s just been signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label and Nigerian fashion designer Adebayo Oke Lawal who recently dressed the new Doctor Who actor Ncuti Gatwa in Afrofuturist couture.Plus filmmakers Sharon Lewis and Dimeji Ajibola on the challenges of making Afrofuturist movies in Canada and Nigeria.And American poet Gary Jackson discusses the recent anthology of ‘superhero poetry’ he has co-edited called The Future of Black, showcasing a new literary sub-genre inspired by Afrofuturism’s love for comic book stories.Presenter: Tina Daheley Producers: Simon Richardson and Laura Northedge(Photo: Lous and the Yakuza. Credit: Charlotte Wales)

Making it as a musician can be a tough gig, but if you have a disability, things can get even more complicated. Inaccessible venues, negative attitudes and lack of representation in the industry are common challenges people have to contend with. Despite this, disabled musicians are making their voices heard. Award winning Nigerian-American Electronic Dance star Lachi has seven albums and millions of streams to her name. As a visually impaired musician, Lachi campaigns for the inclusion of disabled artists. As well as consulting on disability inclusion, including at the White House, this year she’s launched RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities.Popular playback singer and producer Ritika Sahni formed Pehli Baarish, an inclusive band of disabled and non-disabled musicians in 2014. They perform in venues including hospitals, orphanages and drug rehabilitation centres, in order to change the perception of disability in Indian society. Ritika talks to Tina Daheley, along with one of its members, blind keyboard player Sarfaraz Qureshi. Babsy Mlangeni is a celebrated South African musician, who lost his sight shortly after he was born. He started one of the first black-owned record label in South Africa and he now runs a foundation that inspires blind children to build up resilience and pursue their dreams. Babsy spoke to reporter Mpho Lakaje about his life and work. British singer songwriter Ruth Lyon cut her teeth fronting her rock band Holy Moly & The Crackers. She shares her experiences with The Cultural Frontline about how being a wheelchair user has impacted her career and driven her activism Producers: Kevin Satizabal Carrascal, Andrea Kidd and Laura Northedge(Photo: Lachi. Credit: Lachi Music LLC)

The Commonwealth is an association of 54 countries from across the world. It’s home to a third of the world’s population including from Australia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya to the UK, Canada and many island nations in between.The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition is the world’s oldest international writing competition for schools. Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall talks to Tina Daheley about the competition. She also shares her passion for books and how her father instilled in her a love of reading.The Duchess is also joined by two competition winners, Ethan Charles Mufuma from Uganda, Hiya Chowdhury from India.We hear from Nigerian novelist Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities. He’s in conversation with the Jamaican writer of Here comes the Sun, and Patsy, Nicole Dennis-Benn. Both novelists explore the peoples and culture of their respective countries in their work and encourage the next generation of writers.Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer best known for his cricketing novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, which won the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize and was recently chosen by the BBC as one of its Big Jubilee Reads, celebrating 70 books from across the Commonwealth. He told us about the work of art that has inspired him - the 1985 track 'Russians' by UK popstar Sting, about the Cold War threat of nuclear attack, a song that continues to carry a very human message.Producer: Andrea KiddImage: The Queen Consort during a reception for winners of the Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition, at Buckingham Palace in London, November 2022 (Credit: Kirsty O'Connor/PA Wire)

In the last few months two renowned comedians have experienced violence on stage. Chris Rock was slapped during the Oscar’s ceremony and Dave Chapelle was attacked during one of his shows by a member of the public. In this week’s The Cultural Frontline we explore the risks and challenges of performing comedy today.Indonesian comedian Sakdiyah Ma’ruf and US comic Gastor Almonte discuss the current situation for comedians and what can and cannot be said on stage. Ukrainian comedian Anna Kochegura lives in Kyiv and has been performing stand-up for the past five years. Like many comedians, she bases her work on her daily life. However since the Russian invasion in February, her daily life has turned 180 degrees on its head. She tells us about the role of comedy during a time of war. Sharul Channa is a rare thing in Singapore – a full time female comedian. Despite opposition she’s now a popular comic, determined to bring female topics to the stage and prove that women can be laugh out loud funny.Presenter Tina Daheley Producers Constanza Hola and Laura Northedge(Photo: Sakdiyah Ma’ruf. Credit: Goh Chai Hin/AFP via Getty Images)

How novelists working across popular genres like crime, horror and fantasy are overcoming literary snobbery to get their work the credit it deserves and broaden the definition of what makes truly great writing. South Korean horror writer Bora Chung, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, tells us what it means to see her work, a type of fiction often dismissed in her country as commercial and not ‘pure literature,’ nominated for the prestigious award.Crime novelists from two very different countries, Deon Meyer in South Africa and Awais Khan in Pakistan, discuss with Tina Daheley why theirs is a misunderstood genre, one with the capacity to offer a social critique, and even change society for the better, all in the process of telling a great story. Critically acclaimed New Zealand fantasy novelist Elizabeth Knox shares the magic of imagining fantastical new worlds, and how writing and reading fantasy can help us come to terms with traumatic experiences.Producer: Simon Richardson(Photo: Bora Chung)

Lola Arias is a well-known and influential Latin American theatre director, writer and filmmaker. Her powerful stage pieces are created from real life testimony. She gathers material for these works by talking to and workshopping with people who have witnessed, or been part of a particular, sometimes traumatic, shared experience. These people then become her actors, performing their lives in the theatre. She tells Tina Daheley about her working methods and her works including ‘Minefield’, where she brought together British and Argentinian veterans from the 1982 Falklands war, ‘The Day I Was Born’ which included people from different political sides during the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and her latest piece, Lengua Madre, Mother Tongue, exploring motherhood in the 21st Century. This year Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city, is one of the three European Capitals of Culture 2022. It’s a place with a troubled past and one the topics being explored during this year of Culture is its forgotten or suppressed history. One of the artists who’s exhibiting there is William Kentridge. His family emigrated to South Africa from Lithuania more than a century ago to escape antisemitism and the pogroms. For years, the internationally acclaimed artist admits he was reluctant to visit the land of his ancestors. Kentridge, who combines his trademark charcoal drawings with animation and sculpture, is well known for tackling difficult subjects such as racial and financial inequality. Lucy Ash met him at the National Art Museum in Kaunas at his exhibition called That Which We Do Not Remember. Sophie Jai’s debut novel Wild Fires is set on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. When her main character Cassandra returns home from abroad for the funeral of her cousin Chevy, she’s confronted by her intergenerational family, all living in different parts of the same house, together but separate, and the family secrets and hidden memories that have dominated their lives for decades. Sophie Jai herself was born and spent her early childhood in Trinidad until moving to Canada and she explains what drew her back to writing about Trinidad and the memories of her childhood.(Photo: An image from Lola Arias' Minefield. Credit: Tristram Kenton)

Sanctions, boycotts, bans, cancellations: from the Bolshoi to Eurovision - how the international arts world is responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the tension when arts meets politics.From world leading classical music, opera and ballet, to art, funding, film, pop concerts and streaming - how the international arts world has acted both inside and outside Russia.Peter Gelb of New York’s Metropolitan Opera on the institution’s decision to respond to the conflict.The Eurovision Song Contest: with Russia now banned, and Ukraine performing as favourites – we look at Ukraine and Russia at the world’s biggest televised song contest. We speak to Kalush Orchestra - the all-male band given permission to leave Ukraine to represent their country in Italy – and to Dr Dean Vuletic, leading academic expert on the history of Eurovision.Plus BBC Russian Service Arts and Culture Correspondent Alexander Kan explains the far-reaching scope of measures, and the push against bans.(Photo: The Ukrainian flag outside The Metropolitan Opera. Credit: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty)

Mamela Nyamza has been called a movement maverick and is one of South Africa’s most celebrated dancers. She speaks to Tina Daheley about how she uses dance to tackle the continuing inequality and social division in the Rainbow Nation.French Algerian ballerina Chloe Lopes Gomes made history by becoming the first black female dancer at the Staatsballet Berlin ballet company. In 2020 she spoke out about the racism she experienced, after she says, being told to ‘white up’ and ‘blend in’. Chloe speaks to Anna Bailey about the challenges of making the ballet world more inclusive.When the celebrated Chilean dancer César Morales was a young child, a school excursion changed his life. César was taken to see the ballet Giselle at the Municipal Theatre of Santiago in Chile and he immediately fell in love with the art form. He speaks to us about defying the expectations of his traditional Chilean family by taking up ballet not football.(Photo: Chloe Lopes Gomes. Credit: Dean Barucija)

The Venice Biennale was created in 1895 as an international art exhibition and after a year’s delay due to Covid, it’s just re-opened. Artists from across the globe have descended on the enchanting Italian city of canals and churches. There are over 1400 works on display, as well as the Pavilions from 80 countries, which will become part of the landscape of Venice over the next seven months. Finnish performance artist Pilvi Takala has impersonated a wellness consultant, a trainee at a global accountancy firm and even Snow White for her documentary style videos. For her Venice Biennale commission, Close Watch, Pilvi worked undercover for several months as a guard at one of Finland’s largest shopping malls and she explained the thinking behind her project to Lucy Ash. There are 5 countries participating for the first time at the Venice art Biennale - Cameroon, Namibia, Oman, Uganda and Nepal and one of the artists who’s representing Cameroon is photographer Angèle Etoundi Essamba. Angèle tells Anu Anand how she challenges the stereotypes of African women in her work and why it’s important for Cameroonian artists to be part of this Biennale. In the Patagonian region which covers Chile and Argentina are peatlands, a specific type of wetland that’s shaped one of the most remote landscapes in the world. Architect Alfredo Thiermann and filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor are two of the artists who’ve been collaborating on the Chilean Pavilion and working with the descendants of the Selk’nam people, the ancient indigenous group that inhabited that land many years ago. Their immersive video and sound installation “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol,” reflects the relationship between this ancestral culture and the landscapes that surrounds it, as they told reporter Constanza Hola. Like Cameroon, Nepal also has its first ever pavilion this year and the artist representing that country is Tsherin Sherpa. The title of the Pavilion is Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La, created to help dispel misconceptions about the country and to give Nepali artists and the entire country, a new voice in the world. Paul Waters went to meet Tsherin to hear more about his own work as well as the Nepali art scene. Producer: Andrea KiddPhoto: Dominga Sotomayor and Alfredo Thiermann finalising their immersive instillation. Credit: Dominga Sotomayor and Alfredo Thiermann)

Indigenous cultures have been suppressed since Europeans first arrived in Mexico. But increasingly, modern Mexicans want some sort of connection with their indigenous past.At its height, the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan had 100,000 citizens and was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. But the civilisation had no written language, and the sudden disappearance of its population is largely unexplained. Luckily, the civilisation left behind the remains of instruments. Adje Both and Osvaldo Perez are an academic and a potter that are part of a global network of musicians, instrument makers and archaeologists that are piecing these instruments back together and recreating them. In doing so, they can breathe life back into these lost instruments and rediscover the sounds of these ancient cultures.But for the indigenous cultures of Mexico, who are still oppressed, dispossessed and marginalised, these instruments take on a more significant meaning. Xiuhtezcatl is based in LA, but his father is Mexica - an indigenous group that used to rule the Aztec empire - and the instruments are a visceral link to his ancestors. Using the work of Adje and Osvaldo and matching it with digital manipulation, Xiuhtezcatl goes back in time and tries to discover what history sounds like.Image: A collection of instruments (Credit: Tolly Robinson)