Arts First is now well into its second year and has created over 40 episodes (including our four-part Christmas Carols extravaganza). What started out as an experiment with an uncertain future has developed a bit of a rhythm of production and is very much part of our, its creators’, lives. We’ve enjoyed the process of deciding what to talk about and who to talk to, and of recording and creating the episodes which generally turn out better than expected, mostly because the people we have roped into our plans have such interesting and insightful things to say.

In this episode we take a bit of time, the three of us, to review where we are at and where we want to go with the podcast. Our conversations with people from various walks of life, from long standing friends to people we have only just reached out to, have confirmed that we are lucky to be able to draw on the experience and expertise of a great range of people.

Although there are a lot of arts podcasts out there, they tend to specialise in a particular art form. We have been deliberately eclectic in our approach.

We don’t have a ‘big plan’ but we do want to talk about the issues that we feel matter. We may seem quite eclectic to listeners, but the guiding themes of our episodes are freedom of expression in the arts and the idea of art for arts sake. We don’t focus on one particular art form, and are keen to look at how these issues are played out across the arts. We believe that the instrumentalisation and politicisation of the arts over recent decades has done them no good, and possibly some harm. We also wonder if there is a tendency in the art world to ‘dehistoricise’ art — even within the discipline of art history. We are worried that art schools have ceased to really care about developing artists as artists with a commitment to free expression, instead seeking to shape ideological agendas around DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), climate catastrophism and other contemporary preoccupations. So we want to explore how/how much these trends have undermined freedom of expression, and hence creativity, and presented artists with new challenges.

Arts First is London-based but we are keen to look at issues in the arts from around the UK and across the globe. So far we have featured episodes from Glasgow, Nottingham, Salford, Warrington, Bishop Auckland and elsewhere. Friends who have offered suggestions are welcomed with open arms! (So far we haven’t reached beyond our national borders yet, but we are open to suggestions.)

We have talked to a few artists who have faced cancellation because they don’t follow what seems to be the dominant ‘line’ in the arts sector: their support for Israel or critiques of transgenderist and Islamist ideologies, have got them into trouble so we have been keen to give them a chance to talk about their experiences. And we are always keen to talk to artists, and people working in the arts, about how they develop their art and their careers in the arts.

Introducing the creators.

Wendy Earle. I grew up loving the arts. I particularly enjoy going to art galleries, the theatre, opera and concerts. I am also a keen traveller, and wherever I go, I prioritise visiting galleries, and if possible attending local musical and theatrical events. I organise an annual series of London Gallery tours which are led by the artist Dido Powell, which take a close up and informative look at visual art. All of this feeds into my thinking about the arts and the reason why I initiated, with Niall, the Arts First podcast. The freedom to enjoy the arts, and to create new work, is essential to a good society.

Niall Crowley. I discovered art history, hanging out after school, aged 11 or 12, in the FE college library where my mom worked as the cleaner. It was here for the first time I encountered Modern Art, the Renaissance, El Greco, Leonardo, Stanley Spencer, David Hockney.

After school, I took an art foundation, and then messed around in design and print for a few years. Meanwhile I developed a passion for inter-war art, architecture, music and history. Later, bored with work, I decided to return to university, study Design History and ‘retrain’ as an academic.

I left with a decent degree but a little disappointed with the direction of the course, and returned back into the world of work. Despite, or perhaps because of its limitations the course did leave me with many unanswered questions. So getting involved in Arts First has been a great opportunity to pick up where I left off, and for me, many of the nascent trends back then, such as the politicisation of the arts, have become mainstream today.

My other passion would be music - 60s and 70s soul, jazz-funk, gospel, Brazilian jazz, opera, and classical. I’ve sung in a couple of amateur choirs and opera companies.

Dr Michael Owens Mick to my friends. I’m a London-based researcher, writer and lecturer, focusing on urban change and the life of cities, reflecting my career background is in urban planning and development. I now teach undergraduate programmes for American university students studying abroad in London.

My Doctoral thesis (2018) is an ethnographic study of London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. I sing in a choir.

The artist, Miriam Elia, is probably best known for her series of very funny spoof children’s ‘learn to read’ books. I first met her about 10 years ago when I interviewed her for an article for Spiked after one of her works, exhibited under a pseudonym, Mimsy, was pulled from an exhibition, curated by the art group, Passion for Freedom*, because the police claimed the exhibit presented a provocation of terrorism against the gallery and threatened to charge an exorbitant security fee if it wasn’t removed. ISIS threatens Sylvania was a series of 3D tableaux using the Sylvanian Families miniature toy-sets to create idyllic scenes, where sinister miniature masked ISIS terrorists lurking at the edges, threatening invasion.

Miriam had already been busy stirring things up with her entertaining little book, ‘We Go to the Gallery’, which gently but sharply mocked the social pretensions of the art world. In this interview, she tells us about the development of her successful business that has emerged from her work as an artist, and about her run in with Penguin who tried to charge her with breach of copyright of the Ladybird logo. And about how she enjoys finding new ways of pricking hypocritical bubbles, not least the effects of lockdown during the COVID.

Miriam takes her inspiration from the traditions of satire in art, but like satirical artists from the past, such as Hogarth and Ralph Steadman, and her grandfather Ralph Sallon, a celebrated caricaturist, she is as committed to the aesthetic underpinnings of art and its subtly subversive potential, not in making bald political statements, but in challenging deluded groupthink and pointing out pretensions and hypocrisy — in a way that is often instantly funny but also challenging. So she explains about how she approaches developing her art, how the ideas emerge and take shape, and the centrality of the visual image.

We also talk about the contemporary threats to freedom of expression, its impacts on artists in Iran and the recent uprisings there, her concern about her Iranian friends, such as journalist Hengameh Shahidi, currently imprisoned in Iran for ‘propaganda against the system’, the impact of antisemitism on artists, and why Miriam thinks the Jewish tradition is so important to the survival of Western civilisation. Finally she tells us about her forthcoming publication which is about Moses … but not quite in the way you might expect.

Miriam’s work can be seen and bought at Dung Beetle Books.

(*You can hear more about the work of Passion for Freedom here, an earlier episode of ArtsFirst, in conversation with Manick Govinda and Passion for Freedom’s founder, Agnieszka Kolek.)

This is officially Part IV but they’re not in any chronological order, so after part one it doesn’t matter too much where you begin.

When we set out on putting this episode together, we knew wanted to interview friends and colleagues and find out what Christmas carols mean to them, now or growing up, and if they have any favourites.

We start off with a conversation between Mick and an old colleague, David Adam, who you may remember from our episode on the Paris Olympics opening earlier this year. David kindly agreed to join us to talk about his very talented musical family and the impressive-sounding family carol concert they are staging for themselves and their loved ones this Christmas.

Then we catch up with some dear friends at a very merry Christmas carols party somewhere in north London. It’s an annual and very informal gathering where we eat, drink catch up before Christmas day and sing a few carols together.

Thank you again for everyone who took the time to speak to us and share their thoughts and their memories.

The music for this section was recorded at Waterloo Station where Mick just happened to stumble upon the London Philharmonic Orchestra entertaining commuters. And he also recorded a wonderful choir performing at Vauxhall station but we didn’t get their name. And we eavesdrop on our friends singing along at our annual Christmas carols party.

In the previous episode of this series, we explored Christmas carols as folk music – songs that were shaped by communities, passed on by ear, and rooted in everyday life. In this episode, we turn to what happened next: how Christianity and the churches drew on those folk traditions, gradually bringing carols into worship, theology, and the rhythms of the liturgical year. What began outside the church walls was eventually drawn within them.

Today, we are interested in what Christmas carols mean in this religious context – how they function in worship, how they are sung, and how they shape the experience of Christmas for congregations and choirs. To explore this, we hear from three guests: Alice Pettit, the Vicar of St Andrew’s Church in Ham; Margaret Haig, who runs the Orthodox Christian choir, Mosaic; and Mervi Mattilla, Service Manager at the Finnish Church in Rotherhithe.

Together, they provide insight into the living role of carols in Christian worship today. We begin with Alice Pettit. Michael Owens spoke with Alice in the middle of Advent, so she was, understandably, quite busy at the time.

Parts III to IV all now available on our Substack, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

See Mosaic choir YouTube channel here.

In the first part of our Christmas carols special, we explored how the origins of carol singing are believed to lie in folk music. While we often associate Christmas carols primarily with church services today, it may be that historically the relationship worked the other way around: carolling began as a popular community practice that was only later incorporated into a Christian context.

To help untangle this history, we are digging deeper into these folk roots. In this episode, we speak with two guests embedded in the world of folk music. First, Mick speaks to Emma Waghorn, leader of the Kingston-upon-Thames folk choir, Pielarks.

Next, Mick chats with Jeff Dent. In 2005, Jeff co-founded Traditional Carols in London, a project where friends meet annually to sing in London pubs. Jeff shares how he was inspired by the traditional caroling villages around Sheffield. Throughout the episode, we’ll hear clips of Pielarks and various pub sessions. It is a striking reminder that caroling has a historic place in noisy, public spaces, and it’s a pleasure to hear how these singers cut through the crowd to capture the public’s attention. We begin with Emma Waghorn.

Links

Pielarks choir

Video intro to Pielarks

Traditional Carols in London

Article by Jeff Dent

This Arts First Special explores the history and traditions of the great Christmas carol. We take a look at how the carol emerged, has been shaped by different influences and communities, and how they continue to change. As it’s a Christmas Special and we have so much great material we took the bold decision of splitting it into four short parts with plenty of overlapping material.

In part one Michael and Niall speak with historian and chorister Kevin Yuill about the origins and development of Christmas carols, from their medieval roots to their movement between sacred and secular settings. Our conversation introduces key questions that run throughout: what defines a carol, how popular and religious traditions interact, and why carols have proved so adaptable and enduring.

In the second part we take a look at folk and secular traditions, and community carol singing outside the Church, while in part three we dig down into the relationship between carols and the organised Church, in its varied liturgical forms. The final part we gets us to some really fun recordings. We talk to our friends about what carols mean to them and what they are up to this Christmas. We even persuade one or two of them to give us a few lines of their favourite carols.

And as you’d expect there’s lots of music along the way. We’ve been recording in pubs, in churches, in people’s gardens. Music from part one comes from Mick’s wonderful SYRINX Choir, who are performing a song called Winter Song written by Anna Tabbush. You can find that on Spotify.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Parts two, three and four will be out before Christmas Day so please stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!

In this episode of Arts First, we turn our attention to music and the art of song: songwriting, interpretation, and performance. And who better to guide us than one of the most distinctive and acclaimed singers working today – Barb Jungr.

Jungr has been described as “one of the most accomplished British singers of her generation,” a performer known for her ability to reinterpret familiar material and uncover new layers of meaning. As David Finkle of the Village Voice put it: “There’s no one like her in the States, or in her home, England.”

Joining us is writer and academic Dr Shirley Lawes – specialist in culture and Modern Foreign Languages, and a Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Académiques, awarded by the French Ministry of Education for her contribution to French language and culture. Shirley is also a regular at Barb’s London shows.

In a wide-ranging and often funny conversation, Barb speaks about the musical world she grew up in:

“My mum and dad listened to the radio all the time. As a little girl I got taken to the opera; we went to see Carmen and my dad said it was ever so hard to get people to play the role because she has to die every night… and of course I believed him!”

She recalls cinema trips, early musical influences, and the mixture of classical, jazz and popular music that filled the house:

“We were listening to everything – Nina Simone, Nat King Cole, South Pacific. We had the album at home and I learned the whole thing from having that record.”

She talks about musical roots and influences, from northern England to the Southern States of America, which she explores in her 2010 album Stockport to Memphis, and her most recent single Last Orders at Mercy Square.

She tells us about how moved she was on a trip to Memphis, one of America’s great musical cities. She describes arriving at the Stax Museum (former home of the famous soul music record company):

“I burst into tears. All of it tore me apart. I had never understood the very direct links between the Civil Rights Movement, the Lorraine Motel and Stax itself… what a huge threat that label was in the Deep South, because it was utterly integrated. So I finally got to Memphis - I grew up with that music.”

Barb speaks about some of current writing projects, including Worthing Girls, a new musical written with Sue Teddern and inspired by the classic TV comedy Golden Girls:

“It’s about four women who share a Worthing sea front house. It’s very funny and it was a challenge for me ‘cause I said, I’m gonna write all the songs and all the music. We did two nights in Worthing – a workshop performance – I was knocked out that people laughed and got it and cheered.”

It’s a wide-ranging and engaging conversation, full of stories, humour and insight into Barb’s creative life and career. We hope you enjoy it.

Links

Barb Jungr’s website, which includes videos, recordings, gig and show news and more.

Stax Museum Memphis

More on Worthing Girls

Dr Shirley Lawes profile.

In December last year, critic Dean Kissick, in an article for Harper’s Magazine, caused controversy in the contemporary art world. He complained that the ‘fascination with identity’ was lending to a ‘nostalgic turn to history’. The ‘socially conscious turn’ of the early 2010s, he said, meant prestigious galleries were overwhelmed with works that were ‘progressive in content but conservative in form’, noting that ‘everyone in the world of contemporary art wants to revive a tradition, however recent’. What is lacking, he wrote, is much that is ‘inventive or interesting’.

Perhaps this wave of progressivism is over. Commentators have heralded Trump’s second term as a ‘vibe shift’ and a rejection of identity politics. Following the cues of New York’s postliberal ‘Dimes Square’ subculture, youth-oriented ‘post-woke’ cultural scenes have popped up in major cities.

But the same issues arise in these enclaves: few of the emerging works appear visually or ideologically new. For example, New York’s Fiume Gallery greeted Trump’s ‘spiritual insurrection’ by adopting the accelerationist ideals of the Italian Futurists and the neoclassical look of online ‘vaporwave’. Fashion designer Elena Velez shocked magazine editors by taking aesthetic cues from Gone with the Wind. And in June, ‘dark enlightenment’ figure Curtis Yarvin put in a bid to represent the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a pavilion themed around Titian’s Rape of Europa.

‘Art wants to break taboos’, Yarvin told Vanity Fair. But artists have been trying to break taboos since the age of Duchamp’s urinal. Will these latest provocations continue to resound when even the president himself relies on social-media shock tactics?

How will a post-woke age affect the output of the contemporary art world? What role should artists take in the ‘vibe shift’? Will new styles emerge to greet this new political landscape – or did the roots of our old artistic stagnancy lie in something deeper than identity politics? And after years of a political controversy-offence cycle, is there still potential for grassroots provocation?

Speakers

Dr JJ Charlesworth, Art critic; editor, ArtReview

Pierre d’Alancaisez, Co-founder, Verdurin; art critic, The Critic

Maria Lisogorskaya, Artist; co-founding member, Assemble,

Dr Ella Nixon, Art historian and writer; post-doctoral researcher, University of Cambridge

Chair

Vicky Richardson, architectural writer and curator; former head of architecture and Drue Heinz Curator, Royal Academy of Arts,

We are grateful to the Battle of Ideas 2025 team for recording and allowing us to podcast this discussion here.

In this special live edition, hosts Wendy Earle and Niall Crowley explore the crisis of freedom of expression in the arts and ask how artists survive – and even prosper – in an age when political activism or ‘artivism’ has proliferated within the arts.

The arts have long been considered a sphere of freedom, with successful artists often thriving on a reputation for pushing boundaries and challenging how we see the world. But as activism has taken hold, artists are increasingly under scrutiny – whether for their work, what they think or even who they associate with. To what extent does this new censoriousness affect artists and how do they deal with it?

Wendy and Niall are joined by writer and journalist Joan Smith, cultural historian Dr Tiffany Jenkins, dancer Rosie Kay and New Culture Forum Literary Festival director, Philip Kiszeley to reflect on this challenging new climate for artistic production. How has been the impact of activism varied across different spheres of art? How has cancellation – or the threat of cancellation – affected their work, careers and lives? How should artists remake the case for artistic freedom?

Guests panelists

Joan Smith: writer and journalist, whose latest book, Unfortunately She’s a Nymphomaniac, takes a thoroughgoing and fascinating swipe at the misogyny in the representation of women in Ancient Rome… including the failure to expose the vile treatment of women of the time. (full biog here)

Dr Philip Kiszely: academic, author and political commentator, a Senior Fellow of the New Cultural Forum who has confronted attacks on freedom of expression at many different levels as an observer of and warrior in the culture wars. (full biog here)

Rosie Kay: first and foremost a dancer and choreographer, she is a courageous defender of free expression in the arts, and co-founder of Freedom in the Arts with Denise Fahmy, which recently published a report evidencing how much this principle is now under threat. (full biog here)

Dr Tiffany Jenkins: cultural historian, whose most recent book, Strangers and Intimates, provides a fascinating account of the emergence of the modern concept and value of privacy over the past 2000 years, pointing to how much that value is now being undermined. (full biog here)

A big thank you to everyone at the Battle of Ideas Festival and staff at Church House, Westminster for the recording.

Do you enjoy going to art galleries? Have you ever done a tour of a gallery? Dido Powell’s tours are unique in the way she brings together her experience as an artist and her knowledge of art history to select and examine works in a gallery. This podcast offers a flavour of her approach to analysing an art work, as well as asking her about her practice as an artist and her interest in art history. Do listen, and if you would like to join a tour, details of the first one are below.

If you would like to look at the painting while Dido describes it, go to the Tate website.

Dido Powell’s London Art Gallery Tours 2025-2026

This series of tours focuses on the theme of Fantasy and Imagination in Art.

First tour

Venue: Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG Date: Sunday November 30Time: 3pm

Tour leader, Dido Powell will select a small number of paintings for close analysis. We will start by looking at fantasy paintings from the 18th to 19th centuries inspired by literature and classical myths. We will explore the significance of the transformation from the written story to a visual language, of colour, haze, apparition and morphing creatures and humans.

This will lead into looking at 19th century portraits of women in which the focus is on inner vision and dream, in defyance of the materialism and sexual prudery of the era.

Finally , looking at 20th century paintings we will study the impact of new technologies, film and television on fantasies of the unreal made realistic, an ambition which enabled the Surrealists to proclaim that imagination was about to slash our notions of reality and rule supreme

Forthcoming tours will develop this theme. Dido will select for explication works in each gallery that we visit which defy or side step easy art historical classification. The creators of these works will have been driven by inner visions, a sense of mystery, secrecy, dreams, fantasies and obsessions. We will investigate the ways in which observed objective reality can be used to give credence to subjective fantasies and mysterious inner worlds, whilst simultaneously reflecting, for example, Enlightenment ideas on individuality and romantic myths associated with the crazed creative genius.

These tours have now been running successfully for several years. Dido Powell is an excellent tour guide: as an artist and art history teacher, she provides unique insights into both familiar and less familiar masterpieces — including their historical context and their technical and aesthetic qualities. Her tours are always accessible, stimulating, informative and enjoyable.

Price £15 per person

If you would like to book a place and/or receive information about further tours taking place from January to June 2026, please contact us here.