Arts & Ideas

Music making, fashion and behaviour at court in the Georgian period are the focus of new research by Sophie Coulombeau, Mary-Jannet Leith and Lizzy Buckle. As Bridgerton launches a spin off series about Queen Charlotte and an exhibition opens at the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace called Style and Society, Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion about soirées, soprano stardom and sexual scandals.Producer: Julian SiddleA Georgian inspired episode of Radio 3's weekly curation of Words and Music is available on BBC Sounds until May 25th 2023 You can find other conversations about Georgian history on BBC Sounds and Free Thinking and available as the Arts and Ideas podcast Bridgerton and Georgian Entertainment heard from Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Sophie Coulombeau, Ian Kelly and Hannah Greig https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015v3c Harlots and 18th-century working women https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rdfz Samuel Johnson's Circle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vq3w The Value of Gossip https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fwfb 18th century crime and punishment https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040hyspStyle & Society: Dressing the Georgians runs at the Queen's Gallery until October 8th Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story launches on May 4th on Netflix

From unboxing and influencers to circular fashion and a new artwork unveiled for Earth Day: New Generation Thinker Xine Yao from University College London hosts a conversation about sustainable fashion ideas. How does the London College of Fashion experiment with materials and teach design practices and fashion media which focus on sustainability? Monica Buchan-Ng is the Acting Head of Knowledge Exchange at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and she tells us about online courses and innovations including material made from algae https://www.futurelearn.com/partners/lcf Lucy Orta has been a Professor since 2002 and is currently the Chair of Art and the Environment at the University of the Arts London, where she founded the Art for the Environment Artist in Residency Program. She also runs her own studio in partnership with George Orta https://www.studio-orta.com/ Her artwork Fabulae Naturae, comprises three 60-foot draperies adorning the Granary Building behind Kings Cross station. A programme of events is taking place across Earth Day on April 22nd https://www.kingscross.co.uk/event/earth-day-at-kings-cross Producer: Belinda NaylorThis New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/ukri-circular-fashion-and-textile-programme-networkplus/ UCL is home to a People and Nature Lab https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/gee/people-and-nature-lab East Bank is the new cultural quarter which is home to UCL, London College of Fashion, BBC Music Studios and other cultural partners https://www.queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/east-bank You can hear on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds a special Earth Day concert featuring the music of Max Richter and find a whole collection of conversations about Green Thinking on the Radio 3 Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 and if you want more discussions about fashion check out these New Thinking podcasts Arts & Ideas: Fashion Stories in Museums https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p096hw0q Arts & Ideas: Fashion AI and sustainability https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07nhbrd

As a new Tate exhibition of paintings puts the work of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint alongside modernist giant, Piet Mondrian. Both were painters fascinated by esoteric and occult ideas that became more marginal with the ascendancy of modernism. Matthew Sweet and guests discuss these abstract art works, theosophy and a search for the spirit world.Nabila Abdel Nabi is co-curator of Hilma Af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life runs at Tate Modern in LondonJennifer Higgie is the author of The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit WorldDaniel Birnbaum is a Swedish art curator and an art critic. Since 2019, he has been director and curator of Acute Art in LondonSarah Kent is an art criticProducer: Ruth WattsHilma Af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life runs at Tate Modern in London from April 20 - September 3 2023 You can find a series of Radio 3's The Essay: Artists and the Spirit World written and read by Jennifer Higgie available on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001323q

Stevenson's swashbuckling Jacobite set novel has been translated into a play which is touring Scotland. Tartan and its history are on show at V&A Dundee, including a piece of tartan found in a peat bog in Glen Affric around forty years ago newly dated to circa 1500-1600 AD, making it the oldest known surviving specimen of true tartan in Scotland. The Highland Book prize has announced its shortlist. Anne McElvoy is joined by New Generation Thinker and poet Peter Mackay, fashion historian Jonathan Faiers and theatre director Isobel McArthur.Kidnapped: a swash-buckling rom-com adventure is directed by Isobel McArthur and Gareth Nicholls for the National Theatre of Scotland and the tour visits venues in Greenock, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Perth, Newcastle and Brighton Presented by the Highland Society of London, and facilitated by Moniack Mhor Writers’ Centre, the Highland Book prize shortlist is: Companion Piece by Ali Smith, Confessions of a Highland Art Dealer by Tony Davidson, Crann-Fìge/ Fig Tree: Short Stories by Duncan Gillies, WAH! Things I Never Told My Mother by Cynthia Rogerson. The winner will be announced on the 6th of June https://www.highlandbookprize.org.uk/ Tartan at V&A Dundee opened on April 1st and includes over 300 objects. The book Tartan: Revised and Updated by Jonathan Faiers is out now, published by Bloomsbury.Producer: Harry Parker

John Lyly's play Galatea, first recorded in 1588, inspired Shakespeare to write As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Brighton, Emma Frankland is directing a rare professional revival of it, so she and the academic advisor on the project Andy Kesson join Globe Theatre head of research Will Tosh and New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday for a conversation about cross-dressing in Elizabethan dramas and about the plays gathered together in Shakespeare's First Folio. Shahidha Bari hosts.Emma Frankland's Galatea is commissioned by and is on as part of Brighton Festival, from the 5-21 May, 2023 Dr Andy Kesson teaches at Roehampton University and runs a Before Shakespeare project Dr Emma Whipday is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She teaches at the University of Newcastle Dr Will Tosh is Head of Research at Shakespeare's Globe, London. He is currently working on a book called Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare The Globe Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream runs 27th April to 12th August On the Free Thinking programme website you can find a collection of discussions about Shakespeare and the Shakespeare Sessions on BBC Sounds includes a whole series of plays available to listen to. The most recent addition is Henry IV part II which you can also hear as a Drama on 3 on Sunday night on Radio 3.Producer: Harry Parker

The singers Enrico Caruso and Elsie Houston, a new opera at ENO and links between musical and artistic traditions in Latin America, Europe and New York are explored by the academics Ditlev Rindom and New Generation Thinker Adjoa Osei. Plus the baritone Peter Brathwaite has an exhibition of lockdown photographs in which he recreates the poses of black people portrayed in paintings from the last 800 years opening in Bristol (the photographs have also been published in a book) and has a musical work in progress, shown at the ROH, which explores his family's Barbadian history. Shahidha Bari hostsBlue runs at English National Opera from April 20th - May 4th Adjoa Osei is organising a conference at Trinity College, the University of Cambridge on April 28th called Performing Black Womanhood Dr Ditlev Rindom is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at King's College, London currently finishing his first book, Singing in the City: Opera, Italianità, and Transatlantic Exchange, 1887-1914 Peter Brathwaite's Insurrection: A Work in Progress was performed at the Royal Opera House and you can hear more about his research in this Sunday feature for BBC Radio 3 Rebel Sounds: Musical Resistance in Barbados https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hg3t An exhibition of his photographs Rediscovering Black Portraiture is at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery from April 14th to July 16th. A book accompanies the show. You can find his Essay series about the portraits on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nbrlProducer: Torquil MacLeod

From nature as "a living whole" in the ideas of Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt to the "Blood and Soil" ideas of Nazi Germany: New Generation Thinker Jim Scown, from Cardiff University, traces the links between ideas about the order of nature to more troubling views about links with the land that led organic pioneer Jorian Jenks to refer to "alien hands" tilling "British soil".Producer: Torquil MacLeod

‘Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels’ said cartoonist Bob Thaves. Matthew Sweet is joined by Lucy Bolton, Pamela Hutchinson, David Benedict and Miles Eady to look at her life (1911-1995) and a film career that stretched far beyond the 10 movies she made with Astaire, including an Oscar winning performance in Kitty Foyle.Producer: Torquil MacLeodThe BFI season runs to the end of April Many of Ginger Rogers' RKO films are available to watch on iPlayer, including Primrose Path, Kitty Foyle, Vivacious Lady, Carefree and The Gay Divorcee. You can find a whole series of episodes of Free Thinking devoted to film stars including Asta Nielsen, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the nineteenth century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens.Producer: Ruth Watts

From the Pirates of Penzance and Captain Hook, to Ottoman corsairs, Henry Avery, Mary Read and Lady Killigrew: Anne McElvoy is joined by New Generation Thinkers Michael Talbot and Joan Passey, and by Robert Blyth, Senior Curator of World and Maritime History, Royal Museums Greenwich, who is also one of the co-curators of Pirates at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.Producer: Harry ParkerPirates runs at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall from April to December and then moves in 2025 to Royal Museums GreenwichOther conversations in the Free Thinking archives available on the website include Ships and History with Hew Locke, Sara Caputo, Jake Subryan Richards and Tom Nancollas https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001626t Seagoings with artists Katie Patterson, Charlotte Runcie and Julia Blackburn and Cutty Sark curator Hannah Stockton https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002868 Oceans and the Sea with Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah, climate scientist Professor Emily Shuckburgh and literature scholar and New Generation Thinker Joan Passey at Hay Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017m2y