News

Smartphone application Endel, which produces sounds based on various factors including the time of day and the weather, has been signed on a one-year, 20-album deal by Warner Music.

Kirklees Council has bid for £25m from the Government to invest in a new “vibrant cultural quarter”. The funds would come on top of a pledged investment of £45m into arts and leisure across the borough – including a £13m leisure centre and £200k for ‘town and village champions’. 

Junya Ishigami + Associates, which has been chosen by London’s Serpentine Gallery for its annual pavilion programme this year, has been accused of using unpaid interns in its studio in Japan. The Architects’ Journal (AJ) reports seeing an email from the practice to a student interested in an internship stating the position would be unpaid, with hours of 11am to midnight, six days a week. The student told the AJ that the proposed terms were "ridiculous".

The Tate group of galleries – including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool – has said that although the Sackler family has “given generously” to Tate in the past, it does not “think it right” to seek or accept further donations from the Sacklers “in the present circumstances”. The Sackler family owns the US maker of OxyContin, a prescription painkiller linked heavily to the opioid crisis sweeping the US. 

The announcement follows a decision earlier this week by the National Portrait Gallery and the Sackler Trust to not proceed with a £1m donation. 
 

Ambitions to convert three derelict former industrial buildings on the pier – The Warehouse, The Orwell public house and the Education Centre – into a multi-leisure destination are closer to being realised with the announcement that the Old Courts arts centre will be the main tenant of the regenerated site. A planning application outlining timescales for the project will be submitted to the town hall in the coming weeks.

Ellesmere Port’s Whitby Hall, a 15-roomed Victorian house in which Action Transport Theatre is based, will begin a £4.8m renovation after proposals were approved by Cheshire West and Chester Council. The project – to be delivered in partnership with the design and construction team that delivered the Storyhouse project – will upgrade the foyer and café areas, and add a new studio and workshop space.