Break Out Culture With Ed Vaizey by Country and Town House

This is our last podcast of the year so we’re going out on a high by talking to Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director at The Young Vic, about staging the world premiere of ‘Mandela the Musical’, set to become the most talked about show of the next few weeks.  Mandela is played by Michael Luwoye, who played both the title role and Aaron Burr in Hamilton.  Winnie Mandela is played by Scottish actor Danielle Fiamanya who played Elsa in ‘Frozen’.

The musical has been staged with the full cooperation of Mandela’s family so listen to Kwame tell the story of how it came about and why he took the plunge to shape this well-known resistance story as a musical.  It covers the 30 years from the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 to Mandela’s release from prison in 1990.

We’ll be back on air again on Sunday 15th January but meanwhile, thank you to all our listeners for staying with us over the last three years and we wish you all a very happy Christmas.

This week we’re celebrating the festive season by talking to Christina Makris about fabulous places to eat out.  Christina, an art and wine writer, a doctor of philosophy, an art collector, and a philanthropist, has scoured the world to find the best combination of art and food.  She’s traveled to 100 cities over six continents and come up with a list of 24 – all collated in a beautiful new illustrated book called ‘Aesthetic Dining, The Art Restaurant Around the World’.  She’s dedicated a section of the book to talking to artists, alongside Tim Marlow of The Design Museum, where you can read what artists like Ai Weiwei Anthony Gormley, Conrad Shawcross, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, David Hockney, Maggi Hambling, Julian Schnabel, Michael Craig-Martin, Peter Blake and Tracey Emin think about food.

We talk to Christina as she’s about to have lunch at The Gunton Arms in Norfolk, owned by the art collector turned restaurateur Ivor Braka.  She describes the art there and the glorious, enticing atmosphere, which guaranteed The Gunton Arms made it into the book.

The London restaurants are Langans, The Ivy, Mr. Chow, Scott’s, Hix, Sketch and the members’ club Groucho, now owned by Hauser & Wirth.  This is a riveting listen about the best combinations of art and food across the globe from Sydney and Cairo to Zurich and Tuscany and we discuss everything from Peter Langan’s legacy in London to her favourite spots to eat from La Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul de Vence in Provence to Kronenhalle in Zurich.

This week we’re talking to Britain’s most revered architect, Lord Foster, and to the design guru and co-founder of the Design Museum, Stephen Bayley, about their quest to put beauty back at the heart of contemporary building.    The registered charity, the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, which Stephen chairs, staged its first ever Building Beauty Awards on Monday 21st November at the Stirling Prize winning Bloomberg building in the City – which Norman Foster designed. We discuss the winners across four categories:  building, engineering, public spaces and little gems, the last designed to cheer residents and bring pride to a built neighbourhood.

This is a rare chance to hear two such prominent figures from the world of architecture and design discuss what constitutes beauty in new building today.  Building beauty reaps rich award – the winners received £10,000, the joint biggest prize in architecture and a Portland stone rhodium-plated trophy created by the jeweller Theo Fennell – who was also one of the judges.

Tune in to find out who the winners of the prize were and to hear about the first Royal Fine Art Commission Trust International Building Beauty Prize at World Architecture Festival in Lisbon next week.

This week we’re talking to Clare Arouche, Head of Hospitality and Events at The National Gallery, about an exciting festive initiative to stage a play inside the gallery called ‘Picture Perfect Christmas’. The play is inspired by one of the Gallery’s paintings, a  17th Century Dutch Old Master ‘A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle’ by Hendrick Avercamp. It’s directed by Francesca Reid of Boo Productions, who tells us how she’s re-imagined the skating scene as a delightful, immersive, upbeat show for the family.

We also talk to Writer in Residence at The Globe, Hannah Khalil, about adapting Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Fir Tree’ in the open air, complete with puppets, carol singing and tree decorating, directed by the Globe’s Artistic Director Michelle Terry.  Hannah goes on to tell us about her other play there, ‘Hakawatis:  Women of the Arabian Nights’, her take on the story of Scheherazade.

We also fill you in on this year’s offerings of ‘A Christmas Carol’ at The Old Vic with Owen Teale and the RSC with Ade Edmonson, and there’s also a fun new play at its heart by Piers Torday, Wind in the Willows Wilton’s, at Wilton’s Music Hall.

This episode we’re looking at how photography has the power to change attitudes and is increasingly blurring the lines between fashion and art.  We talk to two young photographers. Mahaneela and Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-nti, exhibiting at The New Black Vanguard, which runs at the Saatchi Gallery till late January.  The exhibition is curated by writer, critic and editor, Antwaun Sargent, is sponsored by Burberry and focuses on fashion portraiture that celebrates black culture.

We chat to Maryam Eisler, the Iranian-born photographer whose exhibition ‘If Only These Walls Could Talk’ is at the Alon Zakaim Fine Art Gallery on Cork Street.  Her photographs are set in the gorgeous, world-famous hotel Nord-Pinus in Arles in the South of France, which she’s used as a beautiful and glamorous setting to celebrate the beauty and sensuality of the female form.

We discuss both exhibitions and have a fascinating conversation about the responsibility that photographers feel to document political shifts and current affairs and celebrate the power photography has, particularly via social media, to shift perceptions and ultimately change the world.

Today we’re talking about Sarah Biffin, the Victorian artist who became a successful miniaturist and portraitist, after overcoming being born without arms.  We talk to gallerist Philip Mould and curator/researcher  Ellie Smith about the exhibition of her work at Philip Mould’s gallery on Pall Mall.  It’s called ‘Without Hands’ and runs till mid-December.

Also on the podcast is the artist Alison Lapper, who was born 180 years later than Sarah Biffin, with exactly the same condition.  She too paints by mouth and was an advisor on  ‘Without Hands’. Alison famously became the focus of an enormous amount of public attention in 2005 when her friend Marc Quinn sculpted her pregnant for Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth.

Alison tells of her own challenges of becoming a successful artist and sheds light on just how courageous and determined Sarah Biffin must have been to go from being a fairground attraction, as documented by Charles Dickens, to being a well-respected society portrait artist and miniaturist. Alison also describes just what an extraordinary feat it was for Sarah to paint feathers, for which she was known, of such exquisite delicacy, using only her mouth and shoulder. Listen in to find out more about this fascinating and inspiring breakthrough exhibition.

This week we talk to the poet Pelé Cox and best-selling author Rachel Kelly about the power of poetry to comfort and support us.  Rachel’s new book, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems for Life’s Ups and Downs’ is far more than an anthology – it’s a practical guide to how to use poetry as a tool to help us cope with our daily lives.

Rachel Kelly is a tireless mental health campaigner, following the success of her memoir ‘Black Rainbow’.  Black Rainbow was about depression and how reading poetry helped her to recover. She’s remained a passionate advocate for the therapeutic power of poetry ever since. Pelé Cox is a poet, poet, dramaturgist and literature tutor and was one of the first poets to be accepted into Andrew Motion’s Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia.  She’s been Poet in Residence at the Tate and Royal Academy of Arts, among other institutions.  She’s also made a widely acclaimed film about Keats starring Damian Lewis and Nicholas Rowe.

Listen in to a fascinating conversation about what poetry can bring to all our lives and hear how Rachel constructed her book to cover every season so there are poems to help in the depths of winter gloom and others to celebrate the joys of summer.

This week we’re talking about two of London’s most magnificent Victorian houses, Leighton House and Sambourne House in Holland Park.  Leighton House, studio-home of the eminent Victorian artist Frederic Lord Leighton, has just reopened after an £8 million redevelopment along with nearby Sambourne House, the family home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne.

We talk to Daniel Robbins, Senior Curator of both houses and to the Iranian artist Shahrzad Gaffari, who’s hand-painted an 11-foot high textured mural around the curved wall of Leighton House’s brand new helical staircase.  Shahrzad tells us that her mural is inspired by the 13th Century poet Rumi and, with its bright turquoise motifs which echo the tiles in the Arab Hall, the work represents the present and future of the house, continuing to deepen our knowledge of and understanding of eastern culture.

A new exhibition  space in Leighton House is now showcasing the work of the Holland Park Circle of artists, to which Lord Leighton belonged,  while the new basement has a display of Leighton’s exquisite drawings – there are 700 belonging to the house. You can see Leighton’s studio exactly as it would have been, as well as the Arab Hall and the other public areas, full of mosaics, tiles, pottery and artefacts which he brought back from his travels in Egypt, Turkey and Syria.

Walking into Sambourne House is to be fully immersed in a Victorian family home while Leighton House is now a lively destination and gathering point with a new café overlooking the garden. Both are well worth a visit so listen in to hear about what’s in store at both of these great historic homes.

This week Ed and I are celebrating our hundredth episode together since starting as Lock Down Culture in April 2020. We’re also celebrating Cezanne, one of the world’s most popular but enigmatic artists. A new show The EY Exhibition: Cezanne at Tate Modern has opened with 22 works never seen in the UK before, including some dazzling still lives that he’s loved for the world over.  We talk to Natalia Sidlina, who’s worked at Tate Modern as Curator of International Art since 2016, and Assistant Curator Michael Raymond.

Natalia and Michael throw light on Cezanne’s early life in Paris, why he hid Paul, his beloved son and his mother, Marie-Hortense, from his father and why he gained such a reputation for being a taciturn loner. Unpicking the myths that have grown up around him, they explain why his work is of such enduring importance and revered and sought after by major artists from Gauguin and Monet to Matisse and Picasso. It’s a wonderful exhibition and Natalia and Michael persuade us why this is an unmissable chance to see so many of his best-loved paintings together, from his landscapes of Mont-San-Victoire and iconic apples to his bathers, that proved to have such an influence of generations of artists to come.

This week we’re talking about the exciting opera and dance coming up in time for Christmas.  Annilese Miskimmon, Artistic Director at ENO (English National Opera), tells us about re-imagining Frank Capra’s enduring and much-loved 1946 Christmas movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as an opera, which opens on 25th November at the Coliseum. Adapted by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, George Bailey, the down-on-his-luck banker so memorably played by James Stewart in the film, is played by Frederick Ballentine but Clarence the Guardian Angel now becomes Clara, played by soprano Danielle de Niese. Other than the gender swap, the opera is otherwise remarkably faithful to the beloved film and is certain to be a festive treat.

In the world of dance, Rambert is already wowing audiences with its adaptation of Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, which opened at the Birmingham Hippodrome and is now on tour and in London at Troubador Wembley Park till 6th November.  We’re thrilled to be talking to the creator, writer and Executive Producer of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight, alongside Helen Shute of Rambert.  We find out that Steven’s always loved ballet and so it was a natural progression to ask him to adapt his multi-award-winning series into a dance theatre show.

Tune in to hear how the opera and dance worlds are bursting with innovation and new ideas, including the first-ever football opera Gods of the Game at the Theatre in the Woods at Grange Park Opera, complete with a chorus made up entirely of footy fans who’ve been trained to sing.