PODCAST · society
The Cultural Frontline
by BBC World Service
The Cultural Frontline: where arts and news collide.
Episodes
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My art, my community
This week, we hear from artists who’ve been making a difference in their local communities. Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka first spoke to The Cultural Frontline in 2019 when he was filming the protests taking place after Sudanese President Al Bashir had been deposed following 30 years of...
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Reclaim and resist: Canada's indigenous musicians
The myriad of indigenous communities in Canada share a painful history. But today, Canada’s indigenous artists are using music, from rock to round dance, to interrogate still-felt horrors, to heal, and to share stories, culture and languages that were violently suppressed for decades. In Toronto,...
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Who should fund the arts?
What resources do artists around the world need to express themselves fully? Where should the money come from? And what, if any role should governments play? This week we’re exploring the question of who should pay for the arts and how. It’s one with broad implications for the type of culture…
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What the AI revolution means for arts
On this week’s programme we’re looking at the explosion of interest in the role of artificial intelligence, particularly since the arrival of a new generation of AI powered chatbots like Google Bard, DALL-E 2 and Open Al’s ChatGPT, which is reportedly the fastest growing consumer app of all time....
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Ukraine one year on: The artists’ response
To mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Tina Daheley talks to documentary film directors Alisa Kovalenko and Yelizaveta Smith about their experiences over the past year and how that has shaped their work. Alisa’s feature We Will Not Fade Away tells the story of teenagers...
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Modi's hip-hop nation
Rap is huge in India and Desi hip-hop, the music and culture which combines the influences of hip-hop and the Indian subcontinent, is about to go global. Fan and champion Bobby Friction meets the leading artists on the scene as US rap legend Nas, begins a new hip-hop label in Mumbai. Nas has no...
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Fiction and our climate emergency
Authors from around the world tell us why and how they reflect on our global climate crisis in their stories. Tina Daheley talks to three authors about the challenges and opportunities in putting climate change in their books - how to be realistic but encourage the reader to take action rather…
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Inside the rise of LGBTQ+ fiction
Erica Gillingham is joined by a panel of leading international LGBTQ+ writers to discuss the growing popularity of queer fiction and the challenges posed by book bans. At a time when sales are increasing and LGBTQ+ authors are winning awards, in countries including the United States, Russia and...
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Why Indigenous and First Nation stories matter
Tina Daheley talks to two film-makers who are highlighting Indigenous communities across North America. Blackfoot and Sámi actor and producer Elle Maija Tailfeathers is the director of the documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini - The Meaning of Empathy, which explores the opioid crisis in her community....
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Cate Blanchett: My ‘dangerous’ role
On this week’s The Cultural Frontline we explore the power of music and how artists have been using it to highlight issues including politics and the #MeToo movement. Prakash Neupane is a Nepali rapper and writer who mixes hip hop and R&B with social and political messages. His songs address the...
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Why are guitar bands speaking instead of singing?
In the UK and Ireland a new music phenomenon is growing - bands that are speaking over their songs instead of singing. Is a new guitar music movement being born? Fontaines D.C., Dry Cleaning and Yard Act, as well as solo artists including Billy Nomates and Sinead O’Brien are just some of the acts...
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Brazil’s small utopias
As Brazil enters a challenging and uncertain era under the new president, British-Brazilian writer Yara Rodrigues Fowler talks to its artists about the small utopias they are creating. Writer Natalia Borges Polesso centres the non-romantic relationships of queer characters to forge precious...
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Her story: Women artists making waves
This week we hear from some of the women who’ve been making their mark in 2022. Danupha Khanatheerakul, known by her stage name Milli, is a 20-year-old Thai rapper. Last year she criticised the Thai government’s response to COVID 19 and was charged with defamation, which led to the hashtag...
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Generations in conversation
This week, as people around the world gather with family, Chibundu Onuzo presents a series of conversations between artists across the generations exploring what unites and divides them. In the USA it’s estimated that nearly a quarter of the population will be 65 or older by the year 2060 with…
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Telling stories in times of conflict
Soudade Kaadan’s speks to Sana Safi about her new film Nezouh, which tells the story of a young girl and her family caught in the centre of the Syrian conflict as they remain in their besieged hometown of Damascus. It is a story that has personal resonance for Soudade as Damascus was a place that...
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How can art help reconnect us to the missing?
This week we discuss how art can help reconnect us to those who are missing or have been disappeared. It’s estimated that around 20,000 people go missing in Poland every year. Artist Zuzanna Pieczynska explores the impact of this in her work, with her paintings often focusing on the lives of the...
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Joyland: Why the Pakistani film caused controversy
The film Joyland is set in Lahore and tells the story of Haider, a married man who falls in love with the transgender dancer Biba. It’s the first Pakistani film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and it won the Jury Prize as well as the Queer Palm prize. It has also been selected as the...
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Cultural restitution - who decides?
Cultural restitution is an issue that creates fierce debate in response to the work of campaigners, curators and nation states, who argue that collections in some of the world’s great cultural institutions contain objects that may have been acquired illegitimately, often during the colonial…
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Behind the lens of the photojournalist
Across Ukraine photographers who used to shoot landscapes, fashion shows and weddings are focusing instead on bomb damaged buildings, soldiers in trenches and civilians caught up in the war. Pictures that they hope in future, may provide crucial evidence in war crimes trials. Reporter Lucy Ash...
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How can art help tackle climate change?
Some of the world’s most famous paintings have become the central focus of the global debate on climate action. Climate activists have thrown tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and mashed potatoes at Monet’s famous “Haystacks”. Tina Daheley speaks to Nigerian climate activist Gloria...
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The Beautiful Game: Art, football and the World Cup
The Fifa World Cup is being held in Qatar. The country’s been gearing up for this huge event commissioning a broad array of art projects. However human rights groups have repeatedly complained about the bad treatment of foreign labourers building the stadia, and there are also concerns for LGBTQ+...
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Who owns history?
This week we hear how writers and filmmakers navigate the challenges of telling stories from the past, a past that in many places around the world people are finding it harder and harder to agree upon. Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk tells Anu Anand about his new novel Nights of Plague…
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How artists are changing Sri Lanka
For 25 years Sri Lanka went through a bitter civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority. Earlier this year the country was declared bankrupt and has been facing a major economic crisis, with shortages of medicines, fuel, cooking gas and food. Tens of thousands of people, the...
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Protest songs in Iran
On this week’s The Cultural Frontline, we look at the the place of women artists in Iran today and the important role music has played in the recent protests. Tina Daheley talks to two Iranian performers in exile, both arrested for the crime of singing alone - an act which has been illegal for...
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How climate change changed my life
This week Anu Anand hears from artists highlighting climate change in their work. Pakistan has seen its worst flooding in years. One artist who’s addressing the climate issues facing the country in an unusual format is Taqi Shaheen. Along with fellow artist Sara Khan Pathan, he’s designed an...
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The Art of Advertising
2022 sees the 100th anniversary of the world’s first ever broadcast advert, and this week we’re exploring the art and craft of advertising, looking at how commercials differ around the world and talking to the creative teams that put them together. We hear from Jonathan Wolberg and Thabang…
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Colombia: Culture out of conflict
Since the 1960s, Colombia has seen decades of warfare between leftist guerrillas, right wing paramilitaries and the army, claiming an estimated two hundred and twenty thousand lives. Since a polarizing peace agreement in 2016, protests and violence have increased. After a closely fought...
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Melanie C: Creativity and mental health
In March this year, the World Health Organization announced research findings that the Covid-19 pandemic had triggered a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. We ask how does the act of making art help creatives around the world address personal psychological...
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How is TikTok changing culture?
With over one billion monthly users, TikTok is now the platform of choice for comedians, musicians, artists, filmmakers, writers and dancers around the world. Their aim is to go viral and even possibly become the next global superstar. So just how do you get your video onto phone screens around…
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On Standing Rock
In 2016, one of the largest tribal gatherings in North American history took place on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota. Thousands of indigenous people, from across the continent, came together "in defence of water" and to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The...
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Global artists at the Edinburgh Festivals
This week we hear from some of the international artists who’ve been taking part at this year’s Edinburgh Festivals. It’s the world’s biggest arts festival, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Aboriginal Australian William Barton is an award winning composer, vocalist…
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Salman Rushdie: Is free speech under attack?
This week, as the world has been reacting to the shocking news of the attack on the author Sir Salman Rushdie at a book event in New York State, The Cultural Frontline asks what this attack means for the world of writers and publishing and what it says about freedom of expression in literature...
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Storytelling is my activism
On this week’s programme Anu Anand speaks to the theatre makers giving unheard and censored stories top billing. Ron Simons is a multi-award winning theatre producer, as well as an actor and film producer. He’s won four Tony awards, the most of any Black Broadway producer. He explains why his...
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Jamaica: Telling our own story
This week, to mark 60 years of Jamaican independence, Josie d’Arby meets the artists shaping the culture of the country today. Sharma Taylor is an award-winning writer from the island, who has been short-listed no fewer than four times for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Last month, she...
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Classical musicians in war and exile
How is the art musicians create affected by war or displacement from their homelands for other reasons? We hear from classical musicians performing while their home is under fire, or whose whole approach to their art is changing because of their exile - including the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra,...
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Art of the Queer Diaspora
We meet artists of the queer diaspora: LGBTQ+ creatives living abroad, away from the cultures that raised them, to discuss ideas of personal and artistic freedom, exile and home and the meaning of the word ‘queer’ in 2022. Arab film makers Sarah Kaskas, co-founder of Karaaj Films, and Mohammad...
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Musicians championing indigenous languages
According to the United Nations, optimistic estimates suggest that at least half of today’s over 7,000 spoken languages will be extinct or seriously endangered by the end of this century. 2022 sees the start of the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages, drawing global...
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Inside Norway’s future library
In Nordmarka forest just outside of Oslo, one thousand trees have been planted to supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years' time. Every year over the next century, a leading writer is selected to contribute a text, with the writings held in trust,...
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Hong Kong: 25 years on
Twenty-five years since the handover of Hong Kong from the British back to China, journalist and former BBC Hong Kong correspondent Juliana Liu explores the cultural impact in Hong Kong itself and in the diaspora. Billy Tang is the new Executive Director and curator of Para Site, one of the…
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Simu Liu: Making heroes for us
With scores of superhero films due for release, from Spiderman, to Batgirl, Thor and Black Panther, and a global comic book market predicted to grow to $12 billion a year by 2028, we go behind the mask of these larger than life characters, to look at the role Superheroes play in different…
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What next for Afrofuturism?
This week we’re exploring Afrofuturism, the movement that blends fantasy, folklore and technology, to imagine a new future for African nations and people of African heritage. Four years after the smash hit movie Black Panther turned Afrofuturism into an unstoppable artistic force globally we’re...
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Disabled musicians turning up the volume
Making it as a musician can be a tough gig, but if you have a disability, things can get even more complicated. Inaccessible venues, negative attitudes and lack of representation in the industry are common challenges people have to contend with. Despite this, disabled musicians are making their...
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Celebrating Commonwealth writing with HRH The Duchess of Cornwall
The Commonwealth is an association of 54 countries from across the world. It’s home to a third of the world’s population including from Australia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya to the UK, Canada and many island nations in between. The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition is the world’s oldest...
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Is comedy a risky business?
In the last few months two renowned comedians have experienced violence on stage. Chris Rock was slapped during the Oscar’s ceremony and Dave Chapelle was attacked during one of his shows by a member of the public. In this week’s The Cultural Frontline we explore the risks and challenges of...
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Breaking the boundaries of fiction
How novelists working across popular genres like crime, horror and fantasy are overcoming literary snobbery to get their work the credit it deserves and broaden the definition of what makes truly great writing. South Korean horror writer Bora Chung, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker...
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The art of memory
Lola Arias is a well-known and influential Latin American theatre director, writer and filmmaker. Her powerful stage pieces are created from real life testimony. She gathers material for these works by talking to and workshopping with people who have witnessed, or been part of a particular,...
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How is the arts world responding to the Ukraine conflict?
Sanctions, boycotts, bans, cancellations: from the Bolshoi to Eurovision - how the international arts world is responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the tension when arts meets politics. From world leading classical music, opera and ballet, to art, funding, film, pop concerts and...
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Making ballet a stage for all
Mamela Nyamza has been called a movement maverick and is one of South Africa’s most celebrated dancers. She speaks to Tina Daheley about how she uses dance to tackle the continuing inequality and social division in the Rainbow Nation. French Algerian ballerina Chloe Lopes Gomes made history by...
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New global art at the Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale was created in 1895 as an international art exhibition and after a year’s delay due to Covid, it’s just re-opened. Artists from across the globe have descended on the enchanting Italian city of canals and churches. There are over 1400 works on display, as well as the Pavilions...
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What does history sound like?
Indigenous cultures have been suppressed since Europeans first arrived in Mexico. But increasingly, modern Mexicans want some sort of connection with their indigenous past. At its height, the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan had 100,000 citizens and was the largest city in the Western...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Cultural Frontline have?
The Cultural Frontline currently has 148 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Cultural Frontline about?
The Cultural Frontline: where arts and news collide.
How often does The Cultural Frontline release new episodes?
The Cultural Frontline publishes regularly with 148 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Cultural Frontline?
You can listen to The Cultural Frontline on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Cultural Frontline?
The Cultural Frontline is created and hosted by BBC World Service.
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