ARTS & CULTURE

A collection of some of my published articles covering the arts.

Art Fund •

Things to see and do on the Isle of Wight

Leaving Osborne and heading south, a short drive will take you to the island’s capital, Newport. Here you can explore the Museum of Island History, which can be found on the ground floor of the John Nash-designed Guildhall and offers a small but fascinating insight into island life over the years, and also stop off at the Quay Arts Centre, a lively venue that hosts a range of exhibitions, events and creative workshops...
Art Fund •

The Staffordshire Hoard | Transforming Collections

Marking 40 years of Art Fund's partnership with the Wolfson Foundation, 'Transforming Collections' profiles four key acquisitions made possible through our joint funding. The first episode uncovers the incredible Staffordshire Hoard, acquired in 2010, after our a national campaign to raise the £3.3m needed to save this awe-inspiring find of Anglo-Saxon treasure for Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent....
TechCrunch •

Beauty By Design: The Intersection Of Data And Digital Art

At the Tate Modern last summer, over 150 coders, hackers and digital artists were challenged to take any dataset and turn it into a work of art over the course of 24 hours. With participants camped out overnight for the art hack, Tate’s cavernous Turbine Hall was transformed into a vast coder’s paradise, replete with the kind of creatively charged atmosphere that only a looming deadline can provide. Backed by the likes of Sir Tim Berners Lee...
TechCrunch •

10 Art Apps To Inspire Your Inner Creative

What do you look for in an app? It might be something useful that helps to organise your life, it might be to connect with friends and family, or perhaps it’s a diverting game to while away the daily commute. But would you ever look for art on the App Store? Stepping beyond the gallery, artists have been making fruitful use of the medium for some time now to produce a range of art apps that do the kind of things art is supposed to do: entertain, inspire, confound and provoke. Here’s a guide...
Rezone •

For Whom the Bell Tolls - a review of Manchester's FutureEverything Festival

There was something wonderfully paradoxical about the thunderous tolling of the main bell at Manchester Town Hall during last week’s FutureEverything Festival. As delegates debated the rapid pace of technological change and its impact upon culture, this ancient agent of communication and social cohesion also serenaded them on the hour. The ringing felt like a serendipitous provocation, reminding us of the fact that the world is an ever-evolving matrix of old and new...
BBC Online •

Fond memories: Glastonbury and the BBC

One of the wonderful things about the Glastonbury Festival is that it means many different things to many different people. So diverse is its creative ethos, so rich its history, so deep its impact on the UK’s cultural landscape over the last (almost) half century, that it has grown from being a somewhat quirky fringe event to become a key pillar of the national calendar. Just what it means to its legions of devotees is up for debate: where some may recall the radicalism of its early years...