Inequality in the arts is not new | Letters

Regrettably, the Sutton Trust’s confirmation of baseline class inequity in the arts isn’t new news (Young working-class people being ‘blocked’ from creative industries, study finds, 13 November). What is sad is that those charged with making and delivering arts policy have consistently failed to alleviate it.This is surely not due to a lack of data, when as long ago as 1985, the Brighton, Parry and Pearson study revealed that more than half of all artists came from the top two social classes. Even then, the inadequacy of arts employment prospects was the core reason.Forty years later, post Tory austerity cuts, post the pandemic’s put-artists-last arts policies, it’s deja vu

On my radar: Peter Biskind’s cultural highlights

Born in 1940, Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian whose books include Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, The Godfather Companion and Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. Between 1981 and 1986 Biskind was editor-in-chief of American Film magazine, and was executive editor of Premiere magazine from 1986 to 1996. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone and Sight and Sound. His latest book, Pandora’s Box: The Greed, Lust, and Lies That Broke Television, explores the behind-the-screens story of the golden age of TV, from The Sopranos to streaming.Anora (dir Sean Baker, 2024)Anora has got a lot of attention this year, and it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which Sean Baker dedicated to sex workers

Trailblazing dancer and choreographer Eileen Kramer dies aged 110

Eileen Kramer, the trailblazing creative who was part of the company which “altered the face of modern dance” in Australia, has died at the age of 110. Her peers say her eleventh decade was the most creative of her life.The dancer, choreographer, artist and writer died peacefully at her home in Lulworth House in Sydney at 4.45pm on Friday, exactly a week after her 110th birthday.Kramer was born in Paddington, Sydney on the evening of 8 November 1914

The Guide #165: How Paddington affected a quiet takeover of the cultural landscape

Like an awful lot of people, I went to see Paddington in Peru this weekend and – anaemic reviews be damned! – I had a pretty good time. Paddington’s third outing is definitely a drop off from the first two (though those, especially the second, set an almost impossibly high bar). It missed the lightness of touch of director Paul King, who just has a writing credit this time around. The jokes weren’t quite as precise, the baddies not quite as memorable, and the plot – involving ancient Peruvian relics, magic bracelets and steamboat captains haunted by the failures of their ancestors – felt a little convoluted.Still, it was preferable to the E-number waterboarding that watching most children’s films feels like

‘Take anything, but please not my voice!’: the Royal Opera’s Sound Voice Project

A child speaks into total darkness: “This is my voice.” Clear articulation, delivery just slightly hurried. As we descend in a huddle through the auditorium of the Linbury theatre, other voices – older, more obviously gendered – speak the same refrain. Some sound confident (“this is my voice”, trumpets one), others less so. Some overlap, speaking almost in chorus

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s cabinet: ‘A battalion of bozos’

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s many shock cabinet picks, from Robert F Kennedy Jr as director of health and human services to Matt Gaetz as attorney general.It’s been merely a week since Donald Trump won a second term in office, and already “he is running this country like it is a reality show,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday evening. “But instead of Meatf Loaf and Dennis Rodman, he’s got Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard.”“You know, if we wanted the host of a reality show to run the country, there were much better choices,” said Kimmel. Instead, with Trump and his cabinet picks, “it’s like the worst People’s Choice awards every day now