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Front Row: Arts in the Midlands, Love Letters to Scotland, Soweto Kinch

06/08/2020

Arts in the Midlands, Love Letters to Scotland, Soweto Kinch

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Arts in the Midlands, Love Letters to Scotland, Soweto Kinch

Arts in the Midlands, Love Letters to Scotland, and Soweto Kinch's Lockdown Discovery.

The threat to Arts in the Midlands, playwrights penning their love letters to Scotland, Soweto Kinch's Lockdown Discovery.

Arts organisations in the West Midlands say the region is one of the worst hit by the Coronavirus pandemic. In Birmingham, despite emergency relief funding from the Arts Council, the Town Hall and Symphony Hall face cutting half of their workforce, while both the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Hippodrome have announced substantial job losses. What impact does it have on a city when its cultural centres are forced to close their doors?  

Over 20 British playwrights and poets have been commissioned by Pitlochry Festival Theatre to write A Love Letter to Scotland, inspired by the River Tay. The works written as part of its three-year Shades of Tay project, will be shown online as audio dramas, podcasts and short films.  Douglas Maxwell and Chinonyerem Odimba are two of the playwrights taking part in the project.

All this week on Front Row, individuals from the arts are choosing one Lockdown Discovery, a cultural find that has given them pleasure during the dark months of being stuck at home due to Covid-19.  Today alto-saxophonist and MC Soweto Kinch explains how running and cycling along the canals of Birmingham has sparked a creative love affair with the canals and decaying backwaters of his home city.

The emergence of quarantine or quara-horror, with a frankly terrifying new film set on a Zoom call. Host was filmed over twelve weeks in quarantine entirely on Zoom.

Presenter: Katie Popperwell
Producer: Cecile Wright

Main image: The River Tay

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