Front Row

The role of National Poet of Wales is demanding: ‘to represent the diverse cultures and languages of Wales at home and abroad, take poetry to new audiences, encourage others to use their creative voice to inspire positive change, be an ambassador for the people of Wales, advocating for the right to be creative and spread the message that literature belongs to everyone.’ Front Row will reveal who will be taking up that challenge, announcing who will be following Ifor ap Glyn as the new National Poet for Wales and talk to them about the role, their work and ambitions.

A new exhibition at The Freud Museum in London entitled, Lucian Freud: The Painter and his Family features paintings, drawings, family photographs, books and letters. Front Row speaks to the curator, Martin Gayford about this highly personal exhibition which includes items never, or rarely seen artefacts from Lucian Freud’s life.

The future of The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro is now uncertain because of a change in how the local county council is funding culture. We hear from councillor Carol Mould and Bryony Robins, the Artistic Director of the Royal Cornwall Museum.

The composer Laura Bowler and librettist Laura Lomas discuss The Blue Woman - their new opera for the Royal Opera House which explores the psychological impact of violence against women.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

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The American writer Claudia Rankine is best known for her poetry, which has won critical acclaim and international fans. She discusses her play The White Card, which was written during Donald Trump’s Presidency and examines race and privilege in America and beyond.

Front Row is hearing from all the museums shortlisted for this year’s Museum of the Year and tonight it’s the turn of the Museum of Making in Derby. Geeta Pendse takes a walk around the museum and hears about how it’s showcasing the UK’s industrial heritage.

Last month Paramount Plus launched in the UK, a new TV screening service to rival Netflix, Apple TV and Prime Video. Streaming services are bringing more films and high quality television to our screens but with so many competitors in the game, are we suffering from streamer fatigue? Media analyst Tim Mulligan joins Nick to explain our new viewing habits.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Photo: MacArthur Foundation

Peter Brook: we look back on the life and career of the great theatre and film director, with critic Michael Billington.

Gone With the Wind was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1936 and became the most successful Hollywood film ever. In her book, The Wrath to Come, Sarah Churchwell reveals its role in American myth-making, and how it foreshadows the controversies over race, gender, white nationalism, and violence that divide American society to this day.

Joseph Coelho: the performance poet, playwright and author of the young adult verse novel The Boy Lost in the Maze was today named as the new Children’s Laureate. Joseph joins Tom to discuss his desire to make poetry accessible, showcase new talent in publishing, and undertake a Library Marathon - joining a library in every local authority in the country.

And Faith I Branko: the musical duo and married couple discuss their fusion of Serbian Roma influenced music, cross cultural influences and musical connection, and perform live in the Front Row studio.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Best-selling novelist Lawrence Norfolk and award-winning writer Joanna Walsh review a new edition of All Our Yesterdays, a novel by the acclaimed post-war Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg with a new introduction by author Sally Rooney.

Lawrence and Joanna also review Sun & Sea, a Lithuanian opera performance about climate change staged on an artificial beach which the audience view from above, which won the is part of LIFT, London’s biennial international theatre festival. Sun & Sea was Lithuania’s national entry for the 2019 Venice Biennale, where it received the festival’s top award, the Golden Lion.

From riot grrl to musical stateswoman, singer songwriter Laura Veirs talks about her new album and playing her father’s guitar. She performs live in the studio.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Curator Ekow Eshun on creating In The Black Fantastic: the UK’s first major exhibition dedicated to the work of Black artists who use fantastical elements to address racial injustice and explore alternative realities.

With works from 11 contemporary artists from the African diaspora, it delves into myth, science fiction, traditions, and the legacy of Afrofuturism to address colonialism, racial politics and identity. Encompassing painting, photography, video, sculpture and mixed-media installations, the exhibition features artists including Nick Cave, Hew Locke, Chris Ofili and Lina Iris Viktor.

Dubbed the Queen of the Qanun, Maya Youssef is a composer and virtuoso of the Syrian instrument. The qanun is typically played by men, but Maya broke the mould as a young musician growing up in Damascus. Her new album ‘Finding Home’ deals with emotions dealing with the loss of her homeland as well as being inspired by coping with lockdowns, and weaves a musical tapestry of traditional Syrian music with Western classical and jazz. Maya performs live in the studio.

The artist Colin Davidson is best known for his portraits of high profile figures including Bill Clinton, Brad Pitt and the Queen. A new exhibition of his work spans his whole career, including some works painted while he was still at school. Kathy Clugston joins Colin Davidson on a walk around the exhibition to hear about his process when capturing famous faces and why he never imagined he’d be a portrait painter.

Presenter: Elle Osili-Wood

Image: Lina Iris Viktor, Eleventh, 2018. Pure 24 karat gold, acrylic, ink, copolymer resin, print on matte canvas. © 2018. Courtesy the Artist. From In The Black Fantastic at London’s Hayward Gallery.

Arthur Hughes, known for his roles in The Archers, in which he plays Ruairi, and the BBC2 drama Then Barbara Met Alan, details the significance of his portrayal as Richard III in the new RSC production as a disabled actor.

Earlier this month the literary world was shocked by the announcement that after 50 years the Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread, would be no more. What did this announcement mean and how healthy is the outlook for book prizes in the UK? Damian Barr was a judge last year and joins Tom to make a proposal for a new national prize alongside commentator Alex Clark.

We Are Invisible We Are Visible is a day of Dada-inspired art works and performances in UK art galleries by deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists. Organiser Mike Layward explains why he wanted to bring Dada and disability together, while performance artist Aaron Williamson and curator and printmaker Mianam Yasmin Bashir Canvin discuss their respective Dadist offerings, the performance Hiding in 3D at the Ikon Gallery Birmingham and This Is Not a Pipe at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Photo: Ellie Kurttz, RSC

Playwright and BAFTA winning screenwriter Stephen Beresford has returned to writing for the stage with The Southbury Child, a co-production between The Chichester Festival Theatre and The Bridge Theatre in London. Stephen joins Samira to discuss his state of the nation play, focusing on a charismatic vicar at the centre of a controversy, in a Dartmouth parish in decline.

Hive explores the life of a beehive over the four seasons of the year. Composer Sally Beamish visits the Front Row studio to tell Samira about her concerto for harp and orchestra, with harpist Catrin Finch who will play Pavan from Sally Beamish's score for a ballet version of The Tempest.

From the past in Wolf Hall and the present in The State, writer and director Peter Kosminsky takes us to the near future in his new drama The Undeclared War. It’s a cyberwarfare thriller set in 2024, mixing espionage and politics with coding, bots and hacking. Peter joins Samira to discuss the research that goes into his projects, finding new faces, and how to set the drama of coding on the screen.

And playwright James Graham on why he thinks the arts and creative subjects are under serious threat in our schools and universities.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Image: Alex Jennings as David Highland in The Southbury Child at The Chichester Festival Theatre and The Bridge Theatre, London

Critic Ben East and academic Catherine Love review Rock, Paper, Scissors, a trilogy of plays written by Chris Bush to mark the 50th anniversary of Sheffield Theatres and A Film About Studio Electrophonique, a documentary about Ken Patten's influential home studio in Sheffield.

The three separate but interlinking plays will be performed simultaneously on the three stages of the Sheffield Theatres complex – Rock at the Crucible, Paper at the Lyceum and Scissors at Studio.

A Film About Studio Electrophonique premieres this week at Sheffield DocFest. The documentary shines a loving spotlight on Ken Patten who built a recording studio in his council home in Sheffield and through his recording and mixing skills provided the launchpad for Pulp, ABC, Human League and many other burgeoning musicians in the steel city.

The People’s History Museum has been shortlisted for this year’s Art Fund Museum of the Year prize. It was the Migration: a human story project which wove stories of contemporary and historic migration into the museum’s existing collection that caught the judges' attention. Dr John Gallagher, associate professor of Early Modern History at Leeds University, went to visit the museum for Front Row.

Saturday marks 75 years since The Diary of Anne Frank was published. Poet, writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen has written a sonnet to commemorate this and he joins Front Row to give the first public reading and discuss the enduring significance of Anne Frank's book.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Image: Chanel Waddock as Coco and Daisy May as Molly in ROCK at The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. Photographer credit: Johan Persson

Rowan Atkinson is associated with a lot of ‘B’s – Blackadder, Bean, bumbling British spies... and now bees. He plays an inept house-sitter in a luxury mansion chasing after an insect in Netflix’s new Man Vs Bee. He talks about this, his iconic characters, and why making comedy isn’t always that fun.

Artist Thomas J Price’s Warm Shores, a pair of 9 foot tall bronze figures, have just been installed outside Hackney Town Hall in London to mark Windrush Day. 74 years on from the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks, Thomas joins Tom live in the studio to discuss how his work honours the Windrush Generation while playing with ideas of power, public space and 3D body scans.

When the Oscar-winning film director Susanne Bier turned her attention to television, the result was the acclaimed series The Night Manager, followed by The Undoing. She talks about her new series, The First Lady, which explores the lives of the wives of three American Presidents – Michelle Obama, Betty Ford, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

As Glastonbury returns this week after a two year pandemic hiatus, a summer of festivals gets under way while some festivals are forced to cancel due to difficult conditions. We look at how the festival sector has struggled through the challenges of the last two years, and consider the importance of live music festivals to the UK economy and culture. Shahidha is joined live by Melvin Benn – Managing Director of Festival Republic and a director of Glastonbury Festival, Paul Reed CEO of the Association Of Independent Festivals and Lauren Down, Director of End Of The Road festival.

In Roy Williams' new play The Fellowship, sisters Dawn and Marcia are children of the Windrush generation. They were activists together in the struggles for justice in the 1980s. The sisters have little in common now, but the fellowship of family connection is powerful. Roy Williams talks to Shahidha Bari about unflinchingly putting the stories of black British people on the stage.

A tour round the Horniman Museum and Gardens in South London, shortlisted for the Art Fund's Museum of the Year, with Chief Executive Nick Merriman and Senior Curator Sarah Byrne.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Image: Glastonbury Festival