Lambeth council says measures will include new security, a crowd management system and a command centre
Brixton Academy can reopen once the venue has met 77 “extensive and robust” conditions “designed to promote public safety”, Lambeth council said.
The conditions include stronger doors, new crowd management systems, more detailed risk assessments, a new ticketing system, a centralised control and command centre and new security and management.
Continue reading...National Theatre and Royal Ballet among 21 groups to receive grants from new fund
Vogue World will donate £2m to London-based arts organisations through a newly established fund, Condé Nast has announced.
The star-studded event at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Thursday night was masterminded by the Vogue editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, and the Bafta- and Olivier-winning director Stephen Daldry. Its aim was to celebrate London’s heritage as a cultural powerhouse and to raise money for the UK’s cash-strapped performing arts scene.
Continue reading...Actor, 82, said her new role as an alien in the sci-fi series has made ‘an old woman very happy’
Miriam Margolyes will feature in one of the 60th-anniversary episodes of Doctor Who that will air this November, the BBC has announced.
Margolyes, 82, who has appeared in Blackadder, Babe and the Harry Potter films, will be the voice behind the Meep – or Beep the Meep – the furry and seemingly adorable alien adapted from the Star Beast comic strip in a special for the series. The creature will feature in an episode with the same name.
Continue reading...Games creators attack the fees, due for implementation in 2024, as company executive dials back on initial plan
Tech company Unity has sought to clarify its decision to charge a controversial new fee to game developers. A blogpost on its official site last night announced the company would be introducing a “runtime fee”, which would require developers to pay a fixed sum each time a game built using the Unity Engine was installed by a player.
Unity stipulated that the fee would only be chargeable after a game made $200,000 (£160,000) in 12 months and had at least 200,000 lifetime game installs, but developers nevertheless vented outrage on social media.
Continue reading...Exclusive: James Norbury says he is fulfilling pledge made after his debut book landed him a six-figure deal
The self-taught artist and writer James Norbury was living below the poverty line and volunteering with a cat charity when his self-published book was snapped up by a leading publisher in 2021.
After repeated rejection by literary agents, the six-figure deal was all the more astonishing for him being a debut author and he vowed to invest money he earned in creating a sanctuary for animals.
Continue reading...‘Indiana Jones of art world’ traces lost artwork seized from museum during Covid lockdown
It was a masterpiece with a curse: an early Van Gogh worth €3m-€6m (£2.6m-£5.2m) stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago was being passed around the criminal world like a hot potato, according to art detective Arthur Brand.
“We knew that the painting would go from one hand to another hand in the criminal world, but that nobody really wanted to touch it because it wasn’t worth anything,” said Brand, who is known for retrieving stolen artworks. “You could only get in trouble. So it was a little bit cursed.”
Continue reading...Demonstrators picket outside CBS Studios in New York to protest decision to resume production without unionized writers
Protesters slammed host Drew Barrymore for restarting her daytime talkshow without its unionized writers amid the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike.
Chanting slogans such as “shut it down”, at least a dozen demonstrators picketed in front of CBS Studios in New York on Monday to protest against Barrymore’s decision to resume production of her talkshow’s fourth season.
Continue reading...Singer Kuba Szmajkowski and actor Pola Gonciarz heavily darkened their skin on Your Face Sounds Familiar, with Szmajkowski also wearing cornrows and using the N-word
A leading Polish TV talent show has been widely criticised for featuring celebrity contestants in blackface, impersonating Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé.
Singer Kuba Szmajkowski, a star in Poland who has 163,000 Instagram followers, won the second episode of the 19th series of Twoja Twarz Brzmi Znajomo – the Polish iteration of long-running franchise Your Face Sounds Familiar – on Saturday after performing Lamar’s track Humble in blackface, fake cornrows and a fake beard. He also used the N-word, which went uncensored on the broadcast.
Continue reading...Museum agrees to care for stelae dating from second half of first millennium BC until it is safe to return them
The V&A is to look after four ancient carved funerary stones that were found by police in a shop in east London in a historic agreement with Yemen.
The stelae, which date from the second half of the first millennium BC, come from necropoli that have been looted in recent years.
Continue reading...Shop owners and residents are not taking kindly to ‘flash crowds’ who come to pose and eat fast food in the city’s quaint tangle of streets such as De 9 Straatjes
It is 3.30pm on a Friday and 28-year-old German Lisa Wulff is in a half-hour queue for bubble tea and “toasts” at Amsterdam’s Chun cafe.
“I’ve seen it on social media, and it looks good,” she says. “My generation is more on Instagram, but I have a younger sister, so I saw it on TikTok.”
Continue reading...Band say unexpected win is ‘testimony to good, special people putting time and effort’ into helping young people to play music
The 2023 Mercury prize has been awarded to Ezra Collective, the London band whose propulsive blend of jazz, funk and Afrobeat has electrified audiences and cemented the capital’s jazz scene as one of the world’s most exciting.
“We met in a youth club,” said drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso on accepting the award for the year’s best British or Irish album for Where I’m Meant to Be, the band’s second release. “This moment we’re celebrating right here is testimony to good, special people putting time and effort into [helping] young people to play music … let’s continue to support that,” he added, citing grassroots collectives in London such as Tomorrow’s Warriors and Kinetika Bloco.
Continue reading...Proposed extension would threaten city’s cultural life, say protesters, as 20 nightclubs would be demolished
Berlin clubbers have united with environmental campaigners to fight plans to extend a city autobahn that threatens the future of about 20 nightclubs in the east of the city.
Thousands of techno fans and a broader clutch of protesters standing up for the city’s cultural life took to Berlin’s streets at the weekend in the latest in a string of demonstrations which have caused parts of the German capital to grind to a halt.
Continue reading...Frequent collaborator of George Harrison and synthesiser pioneer was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia
Gary Wright, the singer of pop hits Dream Weaver and Love is Alive, has died aged 80.
His son Dorian confirmed the news to the Guardian. His other son Justin told TMZ his father died on Monday at home in California, and had been diagnosed with both Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia.
Continue reading...The nomination for Adi, the first British person of African heritage to become a professor of history in the UK, is a vindication for the academic who was made redundant a week ago
Hakim Adi, the first British person of African heritage to become a professor of history in the UK, has been shortlisted for a prestigious history writing prize. This comes after Adi was made redundant by the University of Chichester when it cut a course he founded.
Adi has made the shortlist for the Wolfson history prize for his 2022 book, African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History. The winner of the prize, announced in November, will receive £50,000.
Continue reading...Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood to be interviewed about upcoming LP Hackney Diamonds on Wednesday
The Rolling Stones are set to release details of their first studio album of original material since 2005, an LP called Hackney Diamonds.
The surviving members of the band, now in their 70s and 80s, teased the new music online and in the form of a cryptic advert in the local newspaper the Hackney Gazette.
Continue reading...Items include an archive from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 peace protest and a curious birthday card sent by George Harrison
An archive of material from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 peace protest is among the items to be sold this month at one of the most expensive Beatles auctions ever held.
Memorabilia will go under an online hammer with an upper estimated value of $8m (£6.3m). It includes a section of TV set wall that formed the backdrop to the Beatles’ breakthrough Ed Sullivan show appearance, clothes, speakers, signed contracts and a curious birthday card from George Harrison to his caretaker signed “Adolf Schinkengruber”.
Continue reading...Director attacks ‘extremes’ of movement while promoting Coup de Chance, his 50th film, at Venice film festival, as well as addressing persistent interest in historic allegations against him
Woody Allen has voiced his support for the #MeToo movement while promoting his new film, adding that he sometimes finds cancel culture “silly”.
The director’s career has lately been mired by a recent refocusing in social media on an allegation made against him in 1993, when his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, said he had sexually assaulted her in an attic at the time of the custody battle between Allen and Dylan’s adoptive mother, Mia Farrow.
Continue reading...Actor famous for Amélie, The Bureau and La Haine, which he also wrote and directed, reportedly in a ‘worrying’ condition
The French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz is in a “worrying” condition after a motorbike accident in greater Paris on Sunday, authorities say.
The 56-year-old, who is best known for his 1995 film La Haine and his role in the 2001 film Amélie, was on a motorcycle training course at the time, a police source told Agence France-Presse.
Continue reading...Sheriff’s office offers few details but says death occurred during festival in Nevada desert, where storms turned ground to mud
Over 70,000 attendees of the annual Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada are stranded as the festival comes to a close on Monday due to heavy rains that have cut off access to the site.
Attendees have been ordered to shelter in place and to conserve food, water, and fuel, although no shortages have been reported. A death that occurred at the festival is currently under investigation, but no details have been released, including the identity of the deceased or the suspected cause of death.
Continue reading...Local archaeologists dedicate their lives to protect priceless artefacts from smugglers, Hamas and Israeli attacks in a land at history’s crossroads
There is considerable debate over the origin of the name Gaza. Some etymologists trace it back to azaz, which means “strong” in Semitic languages; other accounts believe it derives from the Persian word ganj, which means “treasure”.
It’s true that you almost can’t move for ancient treasures in the tiny blockaded strip. Fishers, farmers and construction workers regularly uncover elements of Gaza’s 5,000-year-old past in the course of a day’s work.
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