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The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘No barriers to entry': George the Poet reframes art world for young people with immersive exhibition
Immersive installations could be a gateway into the world of visual arts for young people, according to George the Poet, who said the new technology removes traditional barriers that have historically excluded certain groups. George the Poet, the award-winning podcaster and spoken-word performer, has worked with a group of young people from the Mayor of London's violence reduction unit, who he helped reinterpret classic works of art. The Scream by Edvard Munch, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, the Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch will all be shown during the summer as part of Art of Expression in Frameless, an immersive art space in London. He said: 'When it comes to immersive art, there are no barriers to entry. You don't need a language for this. It's accessible in many ways. 'Sometimes it gets exhausting reading all of the texts of all the artworks that you find interesting. But in an immersive setting, you literally come and sit in some art.' George the Poet chose Reflections on the Thames by John Atkinson Grimshaw, the enduring image of the moonlit river that runs through the centre of London. Alongside the immersive artwork that will be projected on to the walls, ceiling and floor of the space, are spoken-word pieces about the paintings, which were developed during workshops. The poet, who has worked with offenders in prison, believes art can broaden horizons. He said: 'A lot of the conflict that I saw growing up was exacerbated by the feeling of not being able to leave the community, not being able to see beyond our immediate environment. One way to combat that is to invite new experiences.' A new piece of research was commissioned as part of the project, which surveyed 2,000 young people, asking them about their views on art and accessibility. It found that almost two-thirds of young people want more access to art, while a quarter said that art galleries 'can be intimidating'. Nearly half said that historical art is not relevant to their modern lives, and when asked if they considered a career in the arts, 40% stated they did 'not know where to start'. Tafari Clarke, a member of the Young People's Action Group at the violence reduction unit, said: 'Being an artist isn't really glamorised like being a lawyer or being a footballer. For me, art was definitely outside the box.' Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion Access to the arts differs greatly depending on someone's class background. Sutton Trust research released last year found the creative industries were dominated by people from the most affluent backgrounds, which it defined as those from 'upper middle-class backgrounds', while a Netflix report claimed working-class parents did not see film and TV as a viable career for their children. The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, according to one piece of research, while another study found fewer than one in 10 arts workers in the UK had working-class roots. Guardian analysis from earlier this year found that almost a third (30%) of artistic directors and other creative leaders were privately educated, compared with a national average of just 7%. George the Poet said improving access to the arts is beneficial for young people and arts institutions themselves. 'When you give a young person the confidence to explore their own artistic interests, it does untold things for their mental health, it has untold benefits for their confidence and their ability to express themselves,' he said. 'And then with these institutions, it brings them into the future. The future is our young people. And if our young people don't feel like they are custodians of these arts and these institutions, then it seems to me we would be moving backwards.'
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
The huge new London park that is the biggest to open in 13 years with playgrounds, ponds and amphitheater
FOR the first time in 13 years, a new park has opened in London. Springfield Park in Tooting has been opening in phases since 2023, but it officially opened fully to the public earlier this week. 5 5 Inside, locals can now enjoy a stroll through the green space, or check out what else there is to offer. The park has a brand-new pavilion café, an amphitheatre, youth shelter, play areas, trim trail, ponds and sensory gardens. 700 new trees have been planted, and there are open areas for people to play sport during the summer. Springfield Park has been built on the site of a former Victorian mental health hospital as part of a wider expansion. The park has been created around Springfield University Hospital in south west London along with new healthcare facilities and housing. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan opened the park and said: "It is a wonderful example of partners working together as we continue to build a fairer, greener and healthier London for everyone." The closest tube stations to Springfield Park are Tooting Broadway and Tooting Bec, or Earlsfield Overground. The last purpose built park in London was the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford which was created as part of the 2012 Olympic Games. The park has a blossom garden, and the 2012 garden with over 70,000 plants from 250 different species across the world. There's the tumbling playground for children, and all the sporting facilities around the park too. The unique dinosaur attraction in a famous London park that is free to visit 5 5 Another London park has one of the best play areas in the UK and welcomes more than 1 million people every year. The completely free play area is in Kensington Gardens, it's called the Princess Diana Memorial Playground and was designed to create an area where less able and able-bodied children can play together". The park has a giant wooden pirate ship with its very own sandy beach, as well as a sensory trail and teepees to play in. There are play sculptures set among the trees, including a tree-house with walkways, ladders and slides. And for the grownups there's plenty of seating so parents can relax while their kids explore. Here's another huge new public park and play area to open in London will be the 'biggest in the city'. Plus, the other London park with one of the UK's best playgrounds that welcomed its first herd of deer in years. 5
BBC News
30-06-2025
- Climate
- BBC News
London swelters in heatwave as amber health alert extended
As London experiences what could be one of the hottest June days on record, authorities have urged people to keep safe. Temperatures are expected to soar well above 30C (86F) - but is not forecast to beat the capital's all-time heat record for the month when temperatures reached 35.6C (96F) on 29 June 1957, according to the Met Lynn Thomas, the medical director for St John Ambulance, said the "heat is wonderful for some people but can cause an awful lot of stress". Amber alerts covering the capital, Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, South East and South West have been extended to 09:00 BST on Wednesday. "We're not saying don't go outside, we're not saying don't enjoy it but some people will find it difficult," Dr Thomas advised people to take precautions to avoid overheating and to check on those who could be particularly vulnerable. A spokesperson for the mayor of London said that with increased demand on emergency services "it's really important that Londoners look out for older people, children, and pets, and take sensible precautions to stay cool and beat the heat".In response to the hot weather, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) issued a warning for a "severe risk of wildfires".LFB Assistant Commissioner Thomas Goodall said: "London is already facing its second heatwave of the year and we know that people will be looking forward to getting outside to enjoy the wonderful weather. "But the high temperatures and low rainfall in recent months means the current risk of wildfires is severe."He said that firefighters had responded to 14 wildfires in the capital so far this year alongside "countless callouts" to smaller fires involving grass, trees and in people's gardens. Among those feeling the heat will be players and spectators at Wimbledon which saw spectators queuing from the early hours of Monday. The previous hottest opening day was in 2001 when temperatures reached 29.3C (85F). Wimbledon's heat rule could come into force, allowing a 10-minute break in play when the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) is at or above 30.1C (86F).The WBGT, which will be taken before the start of play and then at 14:00 and 17:00, takes various factors into account including ambient temperature, humidity, wind and sun rule will apply after the second set for all best of three set matches, and after the third for all best of five set matches with players allowed to leave the court during the break, but not to receive coaching or medical treatment. Transport for London (TfL) also issued advice to commuters on the London said 40% of trains across the network have air conditioning, including the Circle, Hammersmith & City, District and Metropolitan linesOn older lines, it said it had introduced "a range of station cooling systems including industrial-sized fans and chiller units to pump in cold air".Carl Eddleston, TfL's director of streets and network operations, said: "With continuous hot weather forecast over the coming days, we are encouraging customers to carry water with them when they travel. "We have a comprehensive hot weather plan in place to protect the network's infrastructure with resources on standby to help respond to the impact and to keep services running."
Telegraph
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We need better paid and fewer MPs rather than preening power-hungry mayors
It's that most dangerous of political schemes, a legacy moment. Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London since 2016, is steam-rolling through his passion project to pedestrianise a large part of Oxford Street, a mile-long section of that ancient thoroughfare known in Roman times as Via Trinobantina. Once you could travel from Fishguard in Pembrokeshire to central London. Now, for the first time in some 1,500 years, your caravan, donkey or bike must stop at Marble Arch. At which point you can join a massive queue of traffic heading down Park Lane as taxis and buses on new, permanent diversion try to figure out how the hell to get to Tottenham Court Road. Sir Sadiq's renderings, his fantasy drawings doubtless etched at vast expense by one of a dozen architect firms commissioned to consult on this project, show a vast avenue of greenery. There are young trees in enormous plant pots and the old tarmac covered in triangles of different shades of green. And along this glorious, unpolluted thoroughfare walk Khan's happy, devoted people. Needless to say, moving down the street are the diverse multitude; men holding hands, people in wheelchairs and the blind. What is not rendered is the view of the surrounding streets, where it's a technical car park of buses, taxis, juggernauts and cyclists, the fuming hot air of the riders, drivers and passengers able to power a small city district. Yet here is Sir Sadiq's legacy. Not a reduction in knife crime nor an increase in arrests for burglary, but a dreamy, long walkway. Meanwhile, Soho, the area that could be successfully pedestrianised (if you insist on such things) becomes further blocked and clogged. Soho's alleyways and narrow streets, its cafes, restaurants and clubs would make a marvellous, local economy-generating island of wandering, mooching, dining and drinking. But no, it's the one straight road, a key artery of London through which buses and taxis and bicycles can freely flow (normal traffic having been banned during daylight hours and Saturdays since the 1970s) that is kiboshed. The opposition has been vociferous. Tim Lord, the chair of the Soho Society, says nothing came from the Mayor but a shoulder shrug when he raised concerns about 'the impact of moving 16 bus routes into narrow, congested one-way streets in Marylebone and Fitzrovia'. The Labour leader of Westminster city council has said, politely, that the plan 'was not the council's preferred outcome'. Yet Sir Sadiq says he's 'proud'. Indeed, releasing the results of a local consultation, he joked that he had received 'North Korean' levels of support from London, or from those who bothered to respond to his survey, doubtless hustled by the mayor's savvy electioneering team. Because the London Mayor appears to love power, and this is manifested in the mechanism that he has used to steamroll this process through, there is a magic lever in his office, deployed sparingly, (think, 'Break glass in case of emergency'), called the Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC). Originally developed to accelerate housebuilding after the Second World War, if you can argue the need for regeneration, it gives you the power to ignore local decisionmakers and accelerate your plans. Hence it being used, obviously, to implement the HS2 Crossrail intersection at Old Oak Common (where white elephant meets gazelle). Sir Sadiq revels in his power, imagining the high-fives he'll be getting from passersby as he sips his beloved flat white on his traffic-free Oxford Street. And quite why he loves Oxford Street is beyond me for, save the likes of Selfridges, it is actually, when it comes to retail brands, one of the grottiest streets in the capital. Perhaps he has a penchant for candy, the street being littered with those dodgy American-style sweet shops as well as homogenous global retail brands, the ubiquitous vape stores, not to mention the hoards of pickpockets and that new scourge, the electric bike-driven phone thieves. And if one makes the strange choice to shop on Sir Sadiq's Oxford Street of the future, how do you cope with lugging your purchases a mile up the road to the nearest bus stop? Yet Sir Sadiq's power-hungry zeal is not unique to London. We have become a nation in thrall to the powers of over-paid council officials. Reforms to local authorities over the decades have been what Sophie Stowers, of think tank More in Common calls, 'piecemeal [and] incoherent', so much so that most voters wishing to moan about a missing bin collection have no idea whether to moan to a councillor, local mayor, police and crime commissioner, metro mayor or MP. A letter of complaint, doubtless, being passed from one to another while they, eagerly, exercise what powers they have. And, as George Jones, emeritus professor of government at the LSE, has argued, this so-called innovation of George Osborne to introduce regional mayors concentrates power in a single person, which is 'unlikely to represent the diverse complexities of a large urban, metropolitan or county region area better than collective leadership'. There was the preening mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees (2016 to 2024) who paraded his plans for an unaffordable underground mass transit system, a £132 million refit for the Colston Hall music venue, and who flew to Vancouver to deliver a 14-minute Ted Talk on the climate crisis. The people of Bristol saw sense and in 2022 voted to replace the mayoral system with a committee. Or there's the power-mad mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby. He called for the abolition of the city's chief executive, flouted the Covid lockdown by visiting his girlfriend (he publicly apologised later), has been linked to accusations of bullying, intimidation and harassment (he denied knowledge of such behaviour and said he would never condone such an approach) and has faced criticism for plans to demolish a central car park and replace it with a public square. One local described the plan as 'delusional, considering that it rains 178 days a year'.
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Automotive
- BBC News
Drivers use Woolwich Ferry to cross Thames and avoid tunnel tolls
Hundreds of drivers are using a free ferry to cross the River Thames instead of using two tunnels which now have a result, drivers have described lengthy queues and a surge in the number of lorries using the Woolwich Ferry after tolls began on 7 April for the Silvertown and Blackwall have said although the ferry is like a "cargo ship" as lorries use a lot of space, it was still preferable to the "too high" £8 daily tunnel for London (TfL) has said it is monitoring the situation closely. Its figures show an additional 1,800 vehicles use the boat-based crossing every day since tolls came in. The Mayor of London has been asked for comment. The combined Silvertown and Blackwall corridor averages 88,000 vehicles across both directions on a typical weekday, TfL is a reduction from the 90,000 to 100,000 vehicles that were using the Blackwall Tunnel on an average day before the Silvertown opening, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said. Motorists are charged to use either the Blackwall or Silvertown tunnels. The peak charge for cars is £4 for one living in east London boroughs north of the river get a 50% discount. Those south of the Thames do 3,500 residents are currently registered for this discount. Letisha Hyde, who lives in Thamesmead, used to regularly use the ferry to get to work and get her children to school and nursery. Now she chooses to use the tunnels because of how busy the ferry has said: "I was expecting the ferry to be a lot busier since the tunnel charges and it definitely is. However, there is always a two boat service, which runs until later now."Congestion at peak times wouldn't be as bad if the lorries weren't taking up so much space - it's like a cargo ship at times. "Since the tunnel the amount of lorries in the morning has tripled and one lorry alone takes up three to four cars on the ferry."Having to use the tunnel has "put a lot of pressure" on Ms Hyde's said: "Eight pounds a day adds up and I've had to budget elsewhere to make sure I'm able to afford essentials. The extra petrol I'm having to use also has been a strain." Woolwich resident Dev Der uses the ferry to get to his office in Canary Wharf and said he would continue to do so because he felt the £8 daily toll on both tunnels was "too high". Greenwich resident Loong Chung said: "I use [the ferry] when the queue isn't too bad and I am willing to queue if it's less than 30 minutes' wait."Eight pounds for a return trip is just too much. If I'm not in a rush, I will try to use the ferry or the Rotherhithe Tunnel."Tony Silver, also from Greenwich, said using the Blackwall Tunnel was now "a pleasure" with less traffic. It would take an act of parliament for TfL to charge ferry users, as the service has been free since Lord, TfL commissioner, said: "Our staff are working hard to manage the additional customers and keep the ferry on schedule, and we are monitoring this situation closely with the expectation it will settle in the coming months as new travel patterns are established."
