I was recently at a training course, which looked at how to work with young people at risk of getting trapped in the benefits syst…

For years you could hear the cry of education funding bodies, the sound echoing through the corridors of drama schools; “wid…

While I am worried that the pressure on arts organisations to recruit and use volunteers is becoming an imperative (‘Volunte…

Phil Redmond appears to have caused a bit of a stir (or, at least, he thinks so) by recommending the establishment of ‘Local…

One of the contradictions of the Big Society is that volunteering is to be encouraged, yet funding is being cut from many organisa…

I suppose it is inevitable that every generation will acquire a rose tinted retrospective. I can’t claim to be excluded from…

“The organisation will conduct an equal opportunities interview – asking all interviewees the same questions and scori…

The front page of the VAGA website is emitting a sadly repetitive mantra: A Foundation closed; Ikon Eastside to close; Animate Pro…

‘Collaboration’ is a word met by many raised eyebrows. It suggests too many cooks, lots of crossed wires and extra adm…

I was in two arts venues in one of our fine cities last week. On both occasions I had to walk past an information desk, a ticket b…

They say there is a rat within 15 metres of every human being; I wonder if the same applies to writers. One of my favourite activi…

At a first glance, the question above might appear a strange one. It’s fairly apparent to anyone working in dance what the role of…

Contemporary dance has always been just a little bit cool. It may not be rake-in-the-money cool, or even city-street-corner cool,…

About nine months I sat, along with some other staff at B arts, in a room with friends from Stoke-based digital and music collecti…

I’ve been preparing for an audition recently. I’m learning a particularly tricky bass line played by one of the stalwarts of the l…

Last week was a very interesting week indeed for the arts in general. For me, not so. The BBC reported the Forbes Top 100 Billiona…

I recently visited rural West Dorset twice in a week. An early evening visit to the beach enclave of Burton Bradstock prior to a T…

Like pretty much every Internet user, I have pop-up blockers on my web browser, spam filters on my email and always ignore the adv…

 This week (7-11 Feb) is Social Media Week, the third annual celebration of the growing popularity of Social Media. This grow…

 This lunchtime, I took a trip around the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. I strolled through (selected) corridors as if I was t…

A penchant for illusion has been around for years. Illusionists and tricksters are everywhere from the Victorian theatres of the p…

I tend to get quite hung up on what exactly ‘art’ is, and I have pondered seemingly endlessly on this matter. Recently I’ve been d…

Yesterday the movers and shakers and grey old men of the arts industry met at State of the Arts, a conference ‘to debate iss…

Being advertised at is easy to ignore. I barely glance at the right-hand side of Facebook now, and if you have tweeted about how a…