News

Catford’s Broadway Theatre will not be reopening in time for most of Lewisham’s year as London Borough of Culture due to spiralling costs of urgent building works.

The borough's Grade II listed art deco building urgently needs to be rewired and a new fire alarm system, CCTV cameras and replacement lighting installed. It also needs general repairs and redecoration.

But the council is now unable to  commit to cost of the work - originally budgeted between £4m and £5m - so the renovation has been delayed. It says the works are too urgent to delay until after the Borough of Culture, but "subject to no further delays" the building will reopen by late autumn 2022.

Arts Council England has awarded £152,000 to public library services to help meet increased demand for digital materials during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Each of England’s 150 library services will receive £1000, with a further £2000 going to the membership body Libraries Connected, which will distribute the funds.

The money will go towards buying in-demand e-books and e-audio products such as children’s books, health and wellbeing, craft and cookery, and popular fiction.

The funding follows a similar ACE grant in April 2020 which awarded £151,000, and aims to support libraries' efforts to reach more users online.

ACE libraries director Sue Williamson said: “Now more than ever, with so many families home schooling, we know how important it is to have access to digital resources.  

“Many people have found reading and listening to audio books during the pandemic a huge support and we hope that this investment will benefit many households across the country.”

A new immersive audio-digital theatre experience is being launched to give audience members the chance to experience audio plays in a ‘virtual theatre’. The new venture, Sound Stage, aims to provide an ‘at home theatre experience’, from entering the theatre itself and being ushered to a seat, to meeting people in the interval and staying afterwards to listen to a post-show discussion.

An online booking system will enable audiences to book ahead for a performance and time of their choice.

The initiative has been developed by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in collaboration with audio production technologists Naked Productions, funded through Creative Scotland and with Resilience Funding from the Scottish Government.

The launch season will premiere eight new co-produced audio plays from leading British playwrights, which in the future the two theatres hope to produce on stage. The season will open at the end of March with the world premiere of Angela - Mark Ravenhill’s first autobiographical play.

Arts professionals and performers are no longer exempt from quarantining if they travel abroad for work.

As of Monday, all international travel corridors were suspended and arrivals into England must present a negative pre-departure test for the coronavirus and self-isolate for 10 days.

The exemption for performers, which lasted just six weeks, was aimed at helping the sector restart and recover.

Arts Council England advises that any approved applications for an exemption after January 18 are no longer valid.

An art exhibition which created a fake history of a disabled terror group has been reinstated by Facebook.

Reasonable Accommodation by Justin Edgar sparked controversy and was removed from the social media platform under its hate speech guidelines.

The exhibition traces the history of a fictious group that carried out arson attacks and other violence in pursuit of civil rights for disabled people. 

Facebook users took offense to the use of words like "spastic" and "cripple", which the artist says were used to draw attention to the way disabled people are treated.

"It is 25 years since the Disability Discrimination Act was launched and this exhibition is designed to promote debate on how far disabled people’s rights have actually come," Edgar said.

New Lottery funding for Northern Irish arts programme will help "challenge perceptions of what it means to be an older person".

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has announced £110,000 for 12 organisations to deliver a series of community-based arts projects tackling lonliness, promote positive mental health, and increase older people's engagement with the arts.

First established in 2010, the Arts and Older People programme is now supported by the Public Health Agency and Baring Foundation.

The 12 new projects will bring the total supported by the programme to 108.