Free Thinking

How has the pandemic changed our experience of urban space and what is the future for cities like London? Caleb Femi was young people's poetry laureate for London. Katie Beswick and Julia King research the way we use our streets. Irit Katz studies how the urban environment is shaped by crisis.

Caleb Femi's Poor - a collection of poetry and photographs of the lives of young black men in Peckham - is published in November 2020.

This episode is part of the programming for BBC Radio 3's Residency at London's Southbank Centre which is broadcasting live concerts and tying into their talks and literature series of online events Inside Out.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

His stinging critique of European colonial racism and hypocrisy Discours sur le Colonialisme was first published in 1950. How does it resonate today? A founder of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) also wrote poetry and a biography of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. To discuss the influence of Césaire's writing, Rana Mitter is joined by Sudhir Hazareesingh, who has just published his own biography of Toussaint; New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza, from the University of Oxford; and Jason Allen-Paisant who lectures in Caribbean Poetry and Decolonial Thought at the University of Leeds.

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life Of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh is out now and will be read as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from 16 November. Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh, who teaches the University of Oxford, has also written How the French Think. You can hear him in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryk

Alexandra Reza teaches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford and is a New Generation Thinker - a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council that selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Writing by Jason Allen-Paisant has been published in Granta, PN Review, Callaloo, and Carcanet’s New Poetries Series VIII, among other places

This episode is linked to BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts

You can find other episodes devoted to influential books, plays, films, and art in a Free Thinking playlist called Landmarks of Culture, which includes the writing of Wole Soyinka, Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag, and Rachael Carson. You can find it on the Free Thinking programme website and all are available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

Producer: Emma Wallace

Sunil Gupta says his photographs ask what does it mean to be a gay Indian man? Shahidha Bari looks at his work and talks to the winners of the 2020 Polari Prize, which usually takes place at London's Southbank Centre, and to Paul Burston, founder of the salon. https://www.polarisalon.com/

Amrou Al-Kadhi's memoir Life as a Unicorn deals with their life growing up as a queer Arab Muslim drag queen through stories of tropical aquariums, quantum physics and Egyptian divas. They are the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2020.

Kate Davies's In at the Deep End is a novel that charts a twenty-something civil servant's introduction to lesbian sex, the queer community and complicated, toxic relationships. She is the winner of the Polari Overall Book Prize 2020.

From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta a Retrospective runs at the Photographers' Gallery until 24th Jan 2021, including images from his street photography, the 1970s New York Gay Liberation scene, his series The New Pre-Raphaelites and newer digital works.

This episode is part of BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts

You might also be interested in the Free Thinking playlist of discussions called Culture Wars and Identity Discussions which includes a debate about new masculinities hearing from Sunil Gupta and others https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngzt

Main image: Sunil Gupta, Untitled #13, 2008, From the series The New Pre-Raphaelites, Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery © Sunil Gupta. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2020

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

How a Croydon housewife baffled a 1930s ghost hunter - the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale, talks to Matthew Sweet about her discovery of a dossier of interviews about a poltergeist "terrorising" Alma Fielding which made headlines in the 1938 Sunday Pictorial newspaper.

30 artists interested in seances and spirituality are on show in an exhibition co-curated by Simon Grant and the Drawing Room Gallery in partnership with Hayward Touring.

Plus we return to a radio experiment in telepathy and a 1920s on air seance with psychologist Richard Wiseman, author of Paranormality amongst many other books. Can you sense what card he is holding?

Kate Summerscale's latest book The Haunting of Alma Fielding is out now and is being read as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from October 24th.

The Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist as Medium developed in partnership with Drawing Room, London runs there until Nov 1st, then it is at Millennium Gallery, Museums Sheffield 19th Nov - 7 March 2021, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea 20 March - June 13 2021, Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool.

The 1927 BBC telepathy experiment with Sir Oliver Lodge described by Richard Wiseman was listed in the Radio Times and you can read about it here: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a8b7f91de874debaa392671d7542ea3#

This episode is part of BBC Radio 3's residency at the Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts

In the Free Thinking archives and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts are episodes in which Matthew Sweet goes ghost hunting in Portsmouth https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09dynj0

Producer: Alex Mansfield

Jacques Derrida was the superstar philosopher of the 1980s and 90s. Often associated with the philosophical movement known as 'poststructualism', he made the enigmatic statement that 'There is nothing outside the text'. Today, one conspiracy theorist has commented that he studied poststructualism in college and learned from it that everything is narrative.

You can find other discussions of philosophy on the Free Thinking playlist which includes discussions about Boethius, Aristotle, panpsychism, marxism, Mary Midgley https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid discuss capturing different forms of speech, a sense of place, and politics - in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature and Durham Book Festival, and hosted by presenter Shahidha Bari.

Plus, how the medieval fable of Reynard the Fox has lessons for us all today. As a new translation and retelling by Anne Louise Avery is published, she joins Shahidha to discuss the book with Noreen Masud - a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker from Durham University. Based on William Caxton's translation of the medieval Flemish folk tale, this is the story of a wily fox - a subversive, dashing, and anarchic character - summoned to the court of King Noble the Lion. But is he the character you want to emulate, or does Bruin the Bear offer us a better template?

Reynard the Fox, a new version with illustrations, is published by the Bodleian Library, and is translated and retold by Anne Louise Avery.

Daljit Nagra is the author of British Museum; Ramayana - A Retelling; Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!; and, Look We Have Coming to Dover.

Val McDermid is the author of several crime fiction series: Lindsay Gordon; Kate Brannigan; DCI Karen Pirie; and, beginning in 1995, the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, which was televised as Wire in the Blood. Her latest book - a Karen Pirie thriller - was published in August 2020 and is called Still Life.

Details of events for Durham Book Festival https://durhambookfestival.com/

Crime writer Ian Rankin compared notes on writing about place with Bangladeshi born British author Tahmima Anam in an RSL conversation linked to the Bradford Literature Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk6

You can find more book talk on the website of the Royal Society of Literature https://rsliterature.org/

There are more book interviews on the Free Thinking playlist Prose and Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

Producer: Emma Wallace

From a VR version of Viking life and what you can learn from gaming, to describing collections in military museums, to the range of independent museums and the passions of their founders for everything from old engines to bakelite, witchcraft to shells. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough looks at new research into a range of collections, why more are opening and what is missing.

Fiona Candlin is Professor of Museology at Birkbeck, University of London. She leads the MAPPING MUSEUMS research project and has so far documented over 4,200 of the UKs independent museums, all opened in the last 60 years. She gives us a glimpse into the rich variety of topics covered by small museums around the UK, and discusses how they chart social change.

Henrietta Lidchi is Chief Curator at the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands and principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project Baggage and Belonging: Military Collections and the British Empire, 1750 – 1900 with National Museums Scotland. She tells us what makes the collections of Military museums unique.

And Sarah Maltby is Director of Attractions at the York Archaeological Trust. She’s leading research aimed at taking the JORVIK VIKING CENTRE online. How does a museum famed for recreating the physical realities of the Viking world using smells and re-enactment re-imagine itself virtually?

Edward Harcourt talks about the project to create a virtual museum of objects and ideas suggested by the public. The Museum of Boundless Creativity will launch fully later this Autumn. https://ahrc.ukri.org/innovation/boundless-creativity/museum-of-boundless-creativity/

This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Helen Fitzhenry.

Directors of the Hermitage, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the National Gallery, Singapore explain how they are dealing both with the challenge of Covid-19 and the greater accountability demanded by worldwide social justice movements. Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion organised in collaboration with Frieze Masters and Frieze London, talking to:

Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

You can find previous discussions recorded with Frieze on the Free Thinking website and available to download as BBC Arts & Ideas podcasts. And this episode is part of the #MuseumPassion series of programmes being broadcast by the BBC in early October 2020

Biographers of Tom Stoppard, Sylvia Pankhurst and a little known SS soldier compare notes. How does the process differ if your subject is alive, if their story has already been enshrined in history, if they were active in the Nazi regime? Anne McElvoy talks to three authors about researching and writing a life history and the journeys it has taken them on from a Nazi letter discovered in an armchair, to the play scripts by a living dramatist who fled Nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia and has become part of the British arts establishment to the campaigning travels of a suffragette to Soviet Russia, Scandinavia, Europe & East Africa.

Professor Dame Hermione Lee's latest biography is called Tom Stoppard: A Life. It's Book of the Week from October 5th on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Delve into our website and you can find episodes exploring Suffrage history with Fern Riddell and Helen Pankhurst amongst the guests https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09th2dt

Producer: Ruth Watts

From Roman emperor Septimius Severus to Senegal's Signares to the ten days in Harlem that Fidel Castro used to link up with African leaders at the UN, through to the missed opportunity to enshrine racial equality in post war negotiations following World War I; Olivette Otele, Simon Hall and Jake Hodder share their research findings with New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar.

Olivette Otele is Professor of the History of Slavery at the University of Bristol and Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. Her book African Europeans: An Untold History is published on 29 October 2020.

You can find Catherine Fletcher talking about Alessandro de Medici in this Essay for Radio 3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06nrv7k

This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Karl Bos