In the Studio

If there is a winning formula for moving from songwriter to performer, Camilo has found it. At the time of writing, the 27-year-old Colombian star and Latin Grammy-winner has amassed 5.2 billion streams of his song Por Primera and his album, Mis Manos – released just two months ago - has had over 2 billion streams worldwide.

Through his open, warm, and personal approach on social media he has gained 21 million Instagram followers and nearly 23 million TikTok followers - making him the most followed Latin artist on the platform. In 2021 he has already been nominated for a Grammy Award and made his late-night US television debut on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. As Mis Manos is released, Colombian reporter Natalia Guerrero talks to Camilo - and those working closest to him - as he prepares to break into the Brazilian market by recording his hit song, BEBÉ in Portuguese and dreams of his first ever show in front of a live audience. Will his dream come true?

The award-winning Danish–Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is renowned for his work with sculptures, photography and installation art which explores issues around perception, climate and public response. For the past months he’s been working on his next project called “Life”, at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland this April and has granted In The Studio special access to follow his creative process.

Olafur is on a mission to ensure that he doesn’t pre-empt his audience’s response to the final work- and that includes not releasing much detail about the project beforehand. But, as reporter Neil McCarthy finds out, it involves a major reconfiguration of the gallery – including removing the famous full-length gallery windows and flooding it with water from the outside lily pond. Reporter Neil McCarthy talks to Olafur at different stages in the execution of the work and also hears from the gallery’s Director Sam Keller about the technical challenges which will need to be overcome to create a work which poses many questions about the nature of space and environment – and which stays watertight!

In The Studio follows internationally acclaimed artist and writer Edmund de Waal as he creates new site-specific work for the Musée Nissim de Camondo, a hidden gem in a quiet corner of Paris. Once a flourishing household at the centre of Belle Époque Parisian society, the magnificent building and its spectacular collection of French eighteenth-century art became a quiet memorial for the son who was to have inherited it, but who tragically, died in the First World War.

Edmund de Waal guides us through his creative response to the haunting history of the Camondo family, the last of whom were killed at Auschwitz. We follow him in his studio as he works on a multi-faceted installation for a unique setting, navigates the challenges of creating during lockdown and grapples with the notions of what it means to create a fitting memorial.

British landscape designer Manoj Malde has just designed and constructed his first garden for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show in London. But he is not your typical landscape artist. Having been an acclaimed fashion designer, his design is a homage to Mexican architect Luis Barragan.

Manoj’s garden Beneath the Mexican Sky, celebrates standing out from the crowd with dramatic colours, vibrancy, and the use of raw, natural materials.

Fellow landscape designer Jack Dunckley is following Manoj from the first sketches to the last pebble in place. Whilst they share the same artistic passion, Jack is very much the opposite in style. Breaking with the rules of nature, Jack’s work is steeped in technology and conceptual design. Jack explores how creative worlds can merge – and what a fashion designer can bring to the world of landscaping, as Manoj sees art through an entirely different lens.

The internationally renowned jewellery company Fabergé is best known for its iconic jewelled eggs, which are synonymous with extreme wealth and luxury.

In the Studio has been allowed rare entry inside its doors, where the inner workings of the commissioning process, resulting in the acquisition of a bespoke Fabergé objet d’art, is revealed.

Felicity Finch follows the company’s unusual partnership with The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. who have commissioned the first Celtic jewelled egg, as part of a seven-piece set featuring the oldest triple distilled Irish whiskey in the world. Felicity speaks with Fabergé’s Global Sales and Business Development Director Josina von dem Bussche-Kessell and Marcus Mohr, the Workmaster who oversees the craftspeople keeping alive the rare, traditional enamelling techniques in their German workshop. She also meets the whiskey company founder and CEO Jay Bradley, who is hoping his deadline will be met despite the difficulties thrown up by the pandemic. Will the dream of holding his very own Fabergé egg in his hands be fulfilled?

With a star studded cast including David Tennant and Noma Dumezweni, and a backstage team featuring Artistic Director Greg Doran and Deputy Artistic Director Erica Whyman - In The Studio presents the tale of the Royal Shakespeare Company...

In March 2020, Covid-19 brought the curtain down on productions from this major British theatre organisation. The annual million plus ticket sales of the RSC’s shows in Stratford-upon-Avon, London’s West End and touring productions all over the world dried up overnight - threatening the organisation’s future.

The BBC’s Karl Bos has been following the RSC over several months to find out how they are adapting to the ‘new normal’ - moving their huge international education programmes online and finding innovative ways to keep performing in a digital space. All the while, waiting for news on a crucial government loan that will affect the shape of the organisation. Shakespeare himself was no stranger to pandemics - the theatres were closed for long stretches in his lifetime due to the plague. We'll hear how the Great Bard's words have helped these theatre makers make it through a difficult year and how they've been plotting ways to get back onstage amidst constantly changing restrictions.

Image The Royal Shakespeare Theatre auditorium - Peter Cook (c) RSC Noma Dumezweni as Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, 2009 - Photo by Ellie Kurttz (c) RSC David Tennant as Hamlet in Hamlet, 2008 - Photo by Ellie Kurttz (c) RSC

The singer/songwriter Arash Labaf is a global superstar, having racked up billions of views for hits like “Boro Boro” and “She Makes Me Go”. He’s in demand as a collaborator with artists like Marshmello, Shaggy and Snoop Dogg, he’s a TV personality as well and he’s won numerous awards.

Arash’s roots are Persian- he was born in Iran although his family left for Sweden when Arash was a boy and he stayed living there until recently. A few years ago he moved to Dubai, but he’s continually looking for ways to incorporate his heritage into his music. One way he does so is by singing in Farsi, his mother tongue, on most of his songs.

Georgia Tolley follows Arash in Dubai as he works on his music. She meets Arash’s longtime collaborators, producer Robert Uhlmann and his brother Henrik who’s Arash’s manager, and hears how Arash creates songs and draws on his rich cultural background.

Japanese sculptor Kazuhiro Tsuji is an artist fascinated by faces. A special effects make-up expert, he has spent over 20 years transforming Hollywood actors in films such as Men In Black and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, winning an Oscar in 2018 for his work on Darkest Hour - where his prosthetics turned actor Gary Oldman into former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Kazuhiro’s love of sculpting has become his main creative outlet in recent years and he has used his unique ability for crafting faces to create hyper-realistic head sculptures of the famous figures who inspire him, from Frida Kahlo to Salvador Dali and Abraham Lincoln. These heads are twice life-size and displayed on bespoke pedestals which make them stand over 2 metres tall, in a celebration of the people they represent.

Laura Hubber meets Kazuhiro in his Los Angeles studio as he embarks on his latest subject – rock legend Jimi Hendrix. There she follows his creative process through clay sculptures and digital enlargement with 3D printers, to the arduous process of attaching Jimi’s hair, strand by strand, as the exhibition deadline fast approaches.

Chick Corea, one of the legendary figures of jazz, died in February this year. He was a pianist, a 23-times Grammy award winner and he played with all the jazz greats. He was also recognised the world over as a composer, with hits like “Spain” and work ranging from bebop to fusion and symphonic works for classical players.

As a tribute, In The Studio is repeating a programme made about Chick which was first broadcast in November 2020. The programme begins in January 2020 when reporter Renata Sago started recording with Chick as he composed a new Trio Concerto for bass, drums and himself to premiere at the MUPA concert hall in Hungary’s capital Budapest in March. The pandemic meant that the premiere was later cancelled – but Covid-19 hadn’t slowed Chick down. He'd been taking on new projects and was looking forward to playing in front of a live audience again for the first time for months.

Renata caught up with him again to find out what new things he'd been writing, how he’d found a new audience in lockdown and how all kinds of musical styles helped him accomplish the goal of art.

Artists and architects have for centuries been drawn to the stone in the hills of southern Tuscany. It's the home of Carrara marble and the quarry where Michelangelo found the stone for his work. Now it's home to Emily Young – acclaimed as Britain's greatest living stone carver. Her sculptures are collected and displayed around the world, but as a passionate conservationist she also takes her work on to the front line of environmental activism; using sculptures to protect green spaces and take on gangs fishing illegally off the coast of Italy.

Over the course of 4 months In the Studio follows Emily Young as she turns a 3 and a half tonne block of stone into her latest work of art. It becomes a race against time as the days shorten, the light closes in and the deadline looms for Britain to leave the European Union. This is an intimate portrait of an artist for whom the creative process is meditative and usually very private.