Free Thinking

Nana Oforiatta Ayim is creating an encyclopedia of online images of Africa to challenge the way it is seen, has curated Ghana's first art pavilion at the Venice Biennale, toured a mobile museum round the country to gather a grass roots history and published her first novel.

The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim is out now. Cultural Encyclopaedia is an online resource that includes an A-to-Z index and vertices of clickable images for entries about Africa https://www.culturalencyclopaedia.org/ She has been named as one of the Apollo magazine "40 under 40" and Africa Report's 50 Trailblazers.

Poet and playwright Inua Ellams has re-interpreted Chekhov's Three Sisters. The play is set in Biafra in the 1960s at the time of the civil war in Nigeria and raises questions of class, race, religion and education in the context of independence and the colonial legacy. Three Sisters is running at the National Theatre until 19 February 2020

The Mauritanian/French film director and actor Med Hondo died earlier in 2019. Considered by many to be the first pan-African réalisateur his films like Soleil Ô, Sarraounia an African Queen and West Indies explore the nature of being African, both within the continent and abroad. Kunle Olulode of the organisation Voice4Change talks about Med Hondo and his legacy. Med Hondo: Africa from the Seine is part of the BFI African Odysseys programme and continues until 15 December.

Marika Sherwood has written extensively on Africa including The Origins of Pan-Africanism, and Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War. Louisa Egbunike is a writer and lecturer on African literature. With the other guests they discuss whether pan-Africanism implies homogeneity to the detriment of the diversity of African culture.

You can find Free Thinking discussions Celebrating Buchi Emecheta https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09r89gt

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Historian William Dalrymple, Wasafiri editor Susheila Nasta and novelist Romesh Gunesekera join Rana Mitter for a conversation looking at the East India company, the socialist economic policies and language battles in Ceylon in the 1960s before it became Sri Lanka and the way writing from around the world has reflected changes of attitude to post colonial history.

Sri Lankan-born British author Romesh Gunesekera has just published his ninth novel, Suncatcher, depicting two boys, Jay and Kairo, growing up in 1964, who overcome their different backgrounds to become friends at a time when Ceylon is on the brink of change.

Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing, has just published its 100th edition, which includes an interview with Romesh Gunesekera. The publication derives its name from a KiSwahili word meaning "travellers" that is etymologically linked with the Arabic word "safari". Susheila Nasta, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at QMUL, was the founding editor, the recipient of the 2019 Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature and is now handing over the reins to Malachi McIntosh. She has just edited a collection of essays called Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now and has completed compiling, with Mark Stein, The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, due out in 2020.

William Dalrymple has published The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company which you can find as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4pz

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Author Priya Basil and curator Victoria Avery look at food, fasting and feeding guests. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is their host as the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge opens an exhibition and Priya Basil publishes reflections on hospitality which link the free meals offered to all which is part of Sikhism to food clubs in Germany which have welcomed refugees. Maia Elliott of the UK's Global Food Security programme, describes her work to try to make future food supply more reliable for all. She describes her own food habits and the possible ways all of our diets might have to change in the future.

Feast & Fast: The art of food in Europe, 1500 –1800 runs at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until April 26th 2020 and features food creations and sugarwork from food historian Ivan Day.

Global Food Security publish their research here: https://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/

You can hear more discussions about food by searching for

Producer: Alex Mansfield

Nam June Paik made art with TV sets and imagined an information superhighway before the internet was invented. John Giorno organised multi-media and dial-a-poem events. Poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson joins Matthew Sweet to look at the visions of the future conjured up by these artists who were both interested in the influence of mass media and Buddhism. She's joined by artist Haroon Mirza and Tate curator Achim Borchardt-Hume. We dial a poet Vahni Capildeo and hear from Vytautus Landbergis, former Lithuanian Head of State and former comrade of Nam June Paik as a Fluxus artist.

John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019)

Haroon Mirza's work is on show in an exhibition called Waves and Forms at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until January 11th 2020.

Or you might be interested in Matthew Sweet's Free Thinking discussion about future visions and technology in the TV series Quatermass

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

Should we take more breaks at during the working day? Claudia Hammond, Matthew Smith, Sarah Cook and Ayesha Nathoo discuss the art of rest and concentration with Anne McElvoy.

Economist Larry Summers, former President of Harvard lays out his view of a university and Philip Dodd debates with the OU's Josie Fraser, classicist Justin Stover and NESTA's Geoff Mulgan. Has new technology and globalisation signed the death knell for traditional courses in humanities subjects like English literature and philosophy ?

You can find Philip talking to academic Camille Paglia here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006t8t

Producer: Eliane Glaser.

Rana Mitter talks to historians of China - Jung Chang and Julia Lovell. Jung Chang's latest book Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister looks at the lives of the first Chinese girls to attend university in the USA. On their return to Shanghai one worked in business, one married a politician and one was involved in high society. Julia Lovell has been awarded one of the most significant history writing prizes - the Cundill - for her latest book Maoism: A Global History. Cindy Yu is a China reporter and broadcast editor at the Spectator.

Playwright Tom Morton-Smith discusses putting cold war tensions on stage in his new play Ravens: Spasky v Fischer which is inspired by the chess match that took place in Reykjavik, 1972. The play runs at the Hampstead Theatre in London until January 18th.

The winner of the biennial David Cohen prize for Literature is announced. You can find our playlist of In Depth Interviews here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8

Film critic Agnes Poirer compares two crime caper films from 50 years ago The Italian Job featuring Michael Caine and Noel Coward and The Brain, which starred David Niven alongside Jean Paul Belmondo and comedian Bourvil.

If you want more programmes exploring China include this discussion of Patriotism Beyond the West: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08583zz

Producer: Harry Parker.

Shahidha Bari discusses the state of scholarship on George Eliot at her bicentenary with Ruth Livesey and Helen O'Neill, both at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Gail Marshall at the University of Reading.

This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation.

Writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw + academics Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis & Peggy Reynolds read George Eliot's 1860 novel portraying sibling relationships. Shahidha Bari hosts.

George Eliot was born on 22 November 1819.

Listen out for Radio 3's weekly curation of Words and Music which broadcasts each Sunday at 5.30pm and is available to listen here https://bbc.in/2E72xV0

Producer: Fiona McLean

Investigating regeneration and gentrification, the Turner Contemporary, the 2019 Turner Prize exhibition, writer Maggie Gee on her novel Blood, & the town in literature.

The seaside town of Margate has both struggled and thrived over the past two centuries – it thronged with holidaymakers from the Victorian era onwards but limped through the latter half of the 20th century and was one of the most deprived parts of the UK before the £17.5m Turner Contemporary opened in 2011. Many hoped that the new art gallery would spearhead change and eight years on there has clearly been growth – the town sometimes jokingly referred to as Shoreditch-on-Sea has been through a wave of gentrification, complete with the common trappings of independent cafés, vintage shops and yoga studios, frequented by an ever-growing artistic community bolstered by regular arrivals of Londoners fleeing the capital. Tourist numbers are up, with the Dreamland amusement park reopening and over 3.2m visitors to the Turner Contemporary reported since its launch. This narrative of a successful arts-led regeneration however ignores that fact that Margate remains in the top 1% of deprived communities in the country and in some wards around half of all children live in poverty. The painter JMW Turner once remarked of Margate that it had the ‘loveliest’ skies in Europe, but can they brighten prospects for the local community, as well as for the artists that flock there?

As this year’s Turner Prize comes to Margate for the first time, Philip Dodd looks at whether the arts are a successful driver of regeneration, with Turner Contemporary Director Victoria Pomery and the social artist Dan Thompson, who has looked at people, place and change throughout his career.

We reflect on the Turner Prize exhibition itself, and the work of shortlisted artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani. The exhibition runs at Turner Contemporary until January 12th and the winner is announced on December 3rd.

The author Maggie Gee’s new novel Blood is set in Margate and the surrounding area of Thanet. A darkly comic crime thriller set in Brexit Britain East Kent where the political atmosphere bleeds into the action. Her imposing protagonist Monica is accused of murdering the tyrannical patriarch of her family – a situation complicated by the fact she’s armed with an axe ready to do just that, when she finds her father’s body. Maggie tells us about Blood and how the local area is a perfect canvas for the story.

Margate is hosting several events as part of Being Human, the UK’s national festival of the humanities which runs from November 14th to the 23rd – you can find more information on their website https://beinghumanfestival.org/

Literary historian Professor Carolyn Oulton is hosting a Murder Mystery trail in Margate for Being Human, amongst other things, and has been studying seaside towns in literature during the railway age. She gives us a view of Margate from the Victorian era – a bustling, promiscuous, populist place full of tourists – and the kind of stories set there. Crime and romance reads for the beach did particularly well for the holiday market, with works like Love in a Mist and Death in a Deckchair key tomes in the Margate canon.

Producer: Karl Bos