Front Row Folgen

Visible Skin: Rediscovering the Renaissance through Black Portraiture is a new outdoor exhibition across King’s College London’s Strand Campus, showcasing artworks by opera singer Peter Brathwaite. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about creating the portraits and images, as well as his role in the new opera The Time of Our Singing. Indecent, a play which has just opened at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, explores the origins of the highly controversial 1906 play The God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, and follows the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it. John Nathan reviews.One of the more unusual sights in Coventry City of Culture is a narrowboat that’s a brightly painted floating library of short stories. It’s also an artwork, Small Bells Ring, created by artists Heather Peak and Ivan Morison of Studio Morison. The boat, RV Furor Scribendi welcomes on board the people of Coventry, works with local libraries and hopes to attract those who might not ordinarily engage with books. Reporter Ushma Mistry of BBC CWR steps aboard.Last year the playwright and author Lucy Caldwell was a judge for the BBC National Short Story Award but this year she’s been shortlisted for the third time for her story All the People Were Mean and Bad. She talks to Front Row about the appeal of writing about a moment of intimacy on a journey, the power of storytelling for children – and whether people really are mean and bad.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah Johnson

If you go down to the Oastler Centre carpark in Bradford over the next few days, you’re sure of a big surprise because this derelict multi-storey is the venue for a new theatrical production - Peaceophobia - exploring the passions and the lives of three young Pakistani-heritage Muslim men from Bradford as they attend a car meet. Evie Manning is co-director of the show and joins Front Row to explain how Peaceophobia came about.Sam Delaney reviews Jack Thorne's new Channel 4 drama, Help, which is set in Liverpool care home during the pandemic. Georgina Harding is known as an acclaimed novelist for works including Painter of Silence which was shortlisted for what was then the Orange Prize (now Women’s Prize) for Fiction in 2012. She has just been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award for Night Train. It’s the account of a woman’s train journey across Ukraine, striking up conversation with a fellow passenger. It will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday at 15:30. She talks to Front Row about the story.In a career spanning thirty years Kurt Ellling has been nominated no less than ten times for a Grammy and won the Jazz Vocal Album award twice. His latest album Superblue was recorded under lockdown conditions with all the musicians playing in separate studios. Kurt explains how they managed to maintain the spontaneity under such conditions and how that will translate to playing live on his British dates.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Harry Parker

Award-winning author Anuradha Roy crafts pots as well as prose. She joins us live from India to discuss the fusion of ceramics and storytelling, pottery and politics in her new novel, The Earthspinner, a coming of age story set between two continents.At a recent auction some 19th century pottery jugs, expected to fetch £100 or so, sold for £3,000 - £4,000. They were bought by major museums vying to add them to their collections. The jugs' selling point was that they were decorated with anti-slavery images or celebrations of abolition. Clare Durham, ceramics specialist at auctioneers Woolley & Wallis, who sold them, talks to Kirsty Lang about pottery propaganda and the increased interest in such pieces.The British Ceramics Biennial is the largest ceramics event in the UK. Its new artistic director, Clare Wood, joins Front Row to discuss the shortlist for the festival’s contemporary ceramics prize and to reflect on a new artwork that puts slavery on a plate.Nadine Dorries replaces Oliver Dowden as the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. BBC Arts Correspondent Vincent Dowd discusses the implications.Main image: A plate from Jacqueline Bishop's History at the Dinner Table exhibition. Image credit: Jenny Harper