In her documentary Taming the Garden, which premiered at the Sundance film festival this year, the award-winning Georgian film-maker Salomé Jashi captured the transplantation of trees from Georgia’s coast to a controversial new park and arboretum. She tells presenter Sophia Smith Galer about evoking conflicting feelings on film.Music and sound artists at this year’s Helsinki Biennial are inspired by listening to trees. The BBC’s Lucy Ash hears from Teemu Lehmusruusu, a Finnish artist converting the sounds of decaying trees into organ music and Finnish-British artist Hanna Tuulikki, whose soundscape and choreography blend the folklore of the past with present-day eco-anxiety. The Jamaican poet Jason Allen Paisant has just published his debut collection Thinking with Trees, exploring identity, belonging and the right to roam. He is joined in discussion by fellow poet Craig Santos Perez, a member of the Indigenous Chamorro community, originally from the Pacific Island of Guam, who protests with trees against the climate crisis in his latest poetry collection, Habitat Threshold. They tell Sophia how they’re each reinventing nature poetry to reflect their roots and their rights.Plus, we take a trip to the park with Dian Jen Lin, the Taiwanese fashion designer and co-founder of sustainable design studio Post Carbon Lab, who designs with trees to create carbon-capture clothing, using bacteria foraged from tree trunks.Presenter: Sophia Smith GalerProducer: Kirsty McQuire, Lucy Ash, Lucy Collingwood, Paul Waters(Photo: Taming the Garden film. Credit: Salomé Jashi)

BBC Arabic reporter Dima Babilie marks 10 years since the Arab Spring and speaks to poets, film-makers and artists about how that moment of revolutionary change transformed their lives, their countries and their art. When the protests first broke out in Syria, Dima was a student studying English Literature at the University of Damascus. Everything changed as anti-government protests took hold in Syria. One of the most creative forms of protest from that time was the satirical puppet show Top Goon by the Syrian collective Masasit Mati. Dima spoke to one of the team behind the show Rafat al-Zakout about creating art in Syria and now in exile. Capturing the mood, or reflecting the feeling of a people is a great challenge for any artist, particularly during a conflict. The Palestinian film-maker Najwa Najjar has dedicated her work to just that – telling the story of ordinary Palestinians through film. Dima spoke to Najwa about her reflections on the Arab Spring, the lives of Palestinians and her career in film.Plus Algerian poet Samira Negrouche talks to Dima about how the politics of the past and the present both set her home country apart and connect it with its neighbours in the Arab world, through a shared cultural and natural landscape. Presented by Dima Babilie(Image: Top Goon. Credit: Art collective Masasit Mati)

Beatie Wolfe is a musician and experimental artist whose been described as a “musical weirdo and visionary.” Now in her latest work, From Green to Red, she is tackling climate change. Beatie tells Chi Chi Izundu how she created the work which is part music video, part protest piece using 800,000 years of historic NASA data.This week sees the opening of the Serpentine Pavilion, one of the world’s most prestigious architecture commissions. The creative mind behind the 2021 design is South African architect Sumayya Vally. Sumayya speaks to Chi Chi about how her upbringing in apartheid South Africa influenced her community focused vision of urban design. A new exhibition on borders has opened in Belfast from the Turner Prize-nominated artist Willie Doherty. The exhibition is called Where and it features video, imagery and text to explore issues of division at borders around the world including Northern Ireland and the United States and Mexico border. Chi Chi Izundu talks to Willie about the exhibition and why he hopes it will challenge assumptions and thinking. Plus French shoe designer to the stars, Christian Louboutin, talks about how his childhood visits to one of the most notable Parisian museums sparked his creativity and may well have helped launch his career.Presented by Chi Chi Izundu(Photo: Beatie Wolfe. Credit: Ross Harris)

In his new book Unbury Our Dead With Song, Kenyan-American author Mukoma Wa Ngugi celebrates Ethiopian musicians in exile in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, as they search for the perfect performance of the iconic song of their homeland, the Tizita. Sri Lankan Kanya D’Almeida has written a short story which is the Asia winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and in the running for the global prize announced at the end of June. Kanya shares her story I Cleaned The – and reveals how it addresses universal issues such as motherhood, class and how we deal with our own bodily waste, as well as being firmly anchored in the country of her childhood.In Lebanon, new public art has emerged from economic and political crisis. The street art movement, Art of Change, has been using murals as a powerful voice against corruption, inequality, high unemployment and increasing poverty. Reporter Frank McWeeny speaks to the artists behind the project.Plus Nigerian Afrobeats star Joeboy talks about recording his debut album Somewhere Between Beauty and Magic during lockdown and why the music of Burna Boy inspires him Presenter: Colleen Harris Producers: Paul Waters, Kirsty McQuire, Anna Bailey, Frank McWeeny and Nancy Bennie(Photo: Mukoma Wa Ngugi. Credit: Cornell University)

This week, a year since the death of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, writers and artists reflect on the impact of those events. After George Floyd’s death, thousands of people took to the streets calling for change and an end to systemic racism. US Politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has been working to bring about that change. She’s also an acclaimed author who has written her first political thriller, While Justice Sleeps. Reflecting on events of the last year, Stacey Abrams tells Sherri Jackson how storytelling is the common thread through her work and a powerful tool in politics.During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, statues representing slavery and oppression were torn down and murals started going up in the US and all over the world. From the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, Kenya and the highways of Sao Paulo, Brazil, we hear why street artists near and far from the States have taken up the cause of Black Lives Matter and made it their own.Hailing from Ferguson, Missouri, Grammy award winning jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold ‘s powerful ‘MB Lament’ responded to the 2014 death of Michael Brown in his home town. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, Keyon Harrold has spoken out against racial injustice and turned to music to process trauma and pay tribute. Keyon speaks to Sherri about using jazz as a language when words fail him. And how do we talk about racism and anti-racism to children? Jason Reynolds, poet, author and the US National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, explains how he tackles difficult subjects through his writing for teenagers. Presented by Sherri Jackson(Photo: Kenyan mural artist Allan Mwangi, also known as Mr.detail.seven, paints a graffiti mural in the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: GORDWIN ODHIAMBO/AFP via Getty Images)

This week, The Cultural Frontline explores family, legacy and creativity.Studio Ghibli is one of the biggest names in animation, famous for films such as The Wind Rises, My Neighbour Totoro and the Oscar winning Spirited Away. For years, Studio Ghibli was led by its co-founder, the visionary director, Hayao Miyazaki. Since Hayao‘s retirement in 2014 there have been changes at the iconic animation house, with the emergence of Hayao’s son, Goro Miyazaki as a new leading force. Our reporter Anna Bailey speaks to Goro about the challenges of continuing his father’s legacy and his new film Earwig and the Witch, a story about magic and family.Is there a work of art - a song, a poem or a film that makes you think of your family? The music producer Fatima al-Qadiri shares the story of how the soundtrack to her favourite game evokes the memories of her childhood in Kuwait during the First Gulf War.Two mothers determined to do what’s right for their children. That simple premise is the starting point for the new novel What’s Mine and Yours, a multigenerational story of race, family and identity in America by the acclaimed writer Naima Coster. Chi Chi Izundu speaks to Naima about how her novel was shaped by her experiences of childhood and motherhood.Family history, identity and voicing the challenges faced by young working class women, that’s the focus of the poetry collection, Where the Memory Was, by British-Somali poet Hibaq Osman. For The Cultural Frontline, Hibaq shares the influences that shaped her writing and reads one of her poems.Presented by Chi Chi Izundu(Photo: Earwig and The Witch. Credit: Studio Ghibli)

Ten years on from the Arab Spring, the musician dubbed ‘the voice of the revolution’ has rediscovered her musical roots during lockdown. Emel Mathlouthi talks to Nawal Al-Maghafi about her new found perspective on her home country, the Tunisian Revolution and the song that spread hope.When the protestors took to the streets of Cairo in 2011 political murals and graffiti soon followed, providing a visual commentary of the Egyptian Revolution. One of the most prominent street artists was Ganzeer, whose murals became emblematic of the protests. He tells us how a particular mural provided a political battleground for local residents. How has the Arab Spring been reflected through fiction? Yasmine El Rashidi is the Egyptian author of Chronicle of a Last Summer which follows a young girl who lives through the Mubarak regime and 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Mohammed Alnaas’ short story collection Blue Bloods explores the psychological impact of surviving the Libyan Civil War . They join Nawal to discuss processing historic change and trauma through fiction. Plus finding your voice when your country is in conflict - we speak to a Yemeni photographer about capturing the everyday stories of the people living in a divided nation. Presented by Nawal Al-Maghafi(Photo: Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi. Credit: Tommy Lindholm/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Joshua Hopkins is an award-winning Canadian baritone who is using his voice to call out violence against women, after the loss of his sister in 2015. Joshua tells Sophia Smith Galer how collaborating with Booker Prize winning author Margaret Atwood on Songs for Murdered Sisters offers consolation, while opening up conversation about gender-based violence across the world.Sun and Sea is a Lithuanian production that takes its international audiences on a playful trip to the beach. For The Cultural Frontline, the director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and writer Vaiva Grainytė share how they use humour to highlight the climate crisis.Opera is an enduring, evolving art form, but is everyone invited? Rising stars J’Nai Bridges from the US, Angélica Negrón from Puerto Rico and Adrian Angelico from Norway tell Sophia how they’re opening up the genre to make it more inclusive, on and off stage.Plus, has a song, a poem or a book ever changed the course of your life? South African soprano Vuvu Mpofu shares the work that set her on a different path.Presenter: Sophia Smith Galer(Photo: Joshua Hopkins. Credit: Songs for Murdered Sisters, directed by James Niebuhr)

We go to Tokyo, where artists are creating theatre that interacts with the human body. At the experimental festival, Theater Commons Tokyo ‘21, the audience is centre stage and immersed in the action, even during a pandemic.At Aya Momose’s Performing Acupuncture, needles turn the body into a stage. By combining art and therapy, she creates sensations which make us think about our body and relationships to one another. Using VR headsets, Meiro Koizumi takes us into the nightmares of Tokyo’s marginalised migrant workers. In this unsettling virtual space, we are transported into their pandemic experiences. And as the world adjusts to coronavirus, Akira Takayama and Port B use radio to transmit voices from Fukushima into the masked crowds of Tokyo streets. We are reminded of frightening contamination and radioactivity. A decade since the earthquake, and a year since the pandemic’s onset, both these stories are still unfolding.Presenter: Kyoko Iwaki Producer: Alice Armstrong(Photo: Theater Commons Tokyo '21. Credit: Shun Sato)

In 2015, a fire broke out in the Collective nightclub in Bucharest Romania, taking the lives of 64 people and injuring 180 others. Many died from seemingly non-life-threatening injuries in hospital, prompting journalists to investigate claims of corruption in the nation’s health system. The documentary Collective explores the aftermath of those events. We speak to its director, double Oscar nominee, Alexander Nanau. What are the realities of shooting a film in the West Bank? Farah Nabulsi is the British-Palestinian director of the Oscar-nominated short film, The Present. She shot her film in Bethlehem and at an Israeli checkpoint, often in secret. She shares the risks and challenges involved in this form of guerrilla filmmaking.Has a book, film or song inspired you to take a certain path in life? Oscar-nominated actor Riz Ahmed reveals the song that has influenced his musical and acting career.Plus, six years on from #oscarssowhite, the campaign’s founder April Reign gives us a progress and reality check on diversity at the Oscars.(Photo: Alexander Nanau. Credit: Alex Galmeanu courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)