Since its inception, Tate Modern was set to move beyond the canon of western art history into the relatively uncharted waters of the global contemporary. This programme was set to celebrate Tate Modern's 20th anniversary, but was stalled by the lockdown, during which time the role of museums and galleries in a pandemic world have been in the spotlight and Tate has been entreated to decolonise and to deal with its patriarchal past. For Director Frances Morris, there is an urgency to ensure Tate Modern is fit for the future. She talks to artists Lubaina Himid, Sonia Boyce and Suzanne Dhaliwal, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, critics and curators including Clara Kim and Hammad Nasar and lawyer and activist, Farhana Yamin to understand how Tate can not only explode the canon, but redesign the institution in which art is shown. A Cast Iron Radio production for BBC Radio 3

Cast Iron Productions

Tate Modern - Exploding the Canon

Stella Sabin hears from dyslexic people across the world who reveal the challenges of growing up and working with dyslexia, and from experts at the cutting edge of dyslexia research. Reading and writing are fundamental tools in most societies, necessary for even the most basic of tasks. For the dyslexic this can cause an agonising disjuncture from an early age. Many dyslexic people will recall the difficulties of decoding words, the horror of the spelling test, the forgetfulness, and the shame of struggling with things that other people find so simple. Stella Sabin who has dyslexia herself, looks at the impact of the condition in adult life, and asks what difference does it make to know the name of what you are experiencing? Dyslexic people are disproportionally represented in low paying jobs and in the US and the UK 50% of the prison population are dyslexic. She visits the intelligence and security organisation GCHQ who are positively recruiting dyslexic thinkers, who are able to find unusual and imaginative solutions to complex problems…like cracking codes. Produced for the BBC World Service

Dyslexia: Into adulthood

'These are the topping tooters of the town, who play "Lilliburlero" to my Lord Mayor's horse through the city.' In an exhilarating programme, William Lyons (musician and specialist in performance and Renaissance music) celebrates the music of the Waits - a professional band of musicians who played for civic and ceremonial occasions in major towns across the country until 1835. Produced for BBC Radio 4

The Topping Tooters Of The Town (produced with Just Radio)

Carlos Gardel Tango To The New World Part 2 by

Carlos Gardel Tango To The New World Part 2

Carlos Gardel Tango To The New World Part 1 by

Carlos Gardel Tango To The New World Part 1

Albrecht Dürer - the artist who depicted the stout Rhinoceros (1515) or the Young Hare (1502) or the Self Portrait in the image of Christ (1500) - was the first truly international artist. No artist before him had been a famous name around Europe in his own lifetime. What brought him that fame was the print: reproducible art sprung from brand new technology. Dürer was someone who we might refer to today as a "printing press native". While Michelangelo was covering the vast ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with a single fresco, Dürer was making numerous small, reproducible prints that he could sell across Europe. He spent years of his life on the road, managing his business and his brand - his famous AD monogram stamped on every sheet. Recorded in his hometown of Nuremberg, Charlotte finds out why Dürer always returned there, between travels north to the Netherlands or south to Venice. Nuremberg was then a trading hub in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire and humming with printing presses - not long before Dürer was born in 1471, Johannes Gutenberg had built the first printing press in Mainz, a town 70 miles away from Nuremberg. Dürer's skill and prowess with woodcut and engraving would lead him to use the very technology that was creating multiple books for brilliant, beautiful single sheet images. First broadcast in January 2014 Charlotte Higgins is Chief Arts Writer for the Guardian and author of the recent "Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain. Contributors include the artists Antony Gormley and Deanna Petherbridge, Professor in History of Art at Cambridge, Jean Michel Massing, Curator of German Prints at the British Museum, Giulia Bartrum and Durer experts who Charlotte met in Nuremberg.

Albrecht Durer Printing Press Native

The Syrians and the Kindertransport

Journalist Hugh Muir travels with Sir Simon Woolley, head of Operation Black Vote, to Buckingham Palace, where he is to receive his knighthood from HM The Queen. It’s a journey that lays bare the dilemma, the joy, the soul-searching and the agony of being honoured for services to the British Empire, for anyone whose family history is one of oppression, slavery or violence as a consequence of the Empire. When Sir Simon heard he had been selected for a knighthood, he felt elation - then anxiety. The offer needed thought. It said much about his lifetime’s work as a political and anti-racist activist, but accepting it could ultimately say much about him and his standing within the community – and not in a good way. Could he take the honour and risk tainting himself with the association between the British honours system and the British Empire? If he took the honour, would the good he might do with it be outweighed by the disapproval it might engender? Sir Simon did some research. He concluded his knighthood was distanced from association with Empire as the title dates back to medieval times. With that comfort, he accepted and was named in the Queen’s Birthday Honour’s List in June. But why should he, or any minority who might qualify for an honour, be forced to agonise in that way? Why should they be placed in the invidious position of having to weigh up the pros and cons of Britain’s most official form of recognition for fear others will think less of them and they might even think less of themselves? The programme includes the views of Benjamin Zephaniah, journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, TV producer Samir Shah, Peaches Golding Lord Lieutenant of Bristol, Novara Media senior editor Ash Sarkar, former MP Tony Wright, and broadcaster Dotun Adebayo. Produced by Shelley Williams A Cast Iron Radio production for BBC Radio 4

The Empire Strikes Black

In the first of a two part series, journalist Hugh Muir examines Carib-British identity through the descendants of Windrush. Seventy years ago, 492 men and women disembarked at Tilbury dock from the Empire Windrush. We have seen the photos and the newsreels. But what happened next? What do we know about the families they built here, the children and grandchildren? Did the Caribbean culture they brought with them endure, or are their children and grandchildren in all ways British? Hugh Muir explores the lives and identities of British Caribbeans in the UK. There are almost 1 million people in the UK who identify as having Caribbean or mixed Caribbean heritage. Through the stories and memories of Hugh's family and others, he tries to understand how a British Caribbean presence and identity was formed over three generations. This first episode is set between two homes - that of Hugh's dad, William Edward in rural Aberdeen, south west Jamaica, and the traditional Caribbean front room of the 1960s and 70s. It was in this symbolic space that many West-Indian parents, including Hugh's now ageing and frail father, paraded the beliefs and values they sought to pass down to subsequent generations - religious values, work ethic and aspiration. It was where children absorbed their parents' culture via the radiogram, blues parties, prayer gatherings and stories of "back home". But passing the torch from conservative parents with a sense of Empire and notions of the Motherland to children forced to navigate Britain as it was, while forming their own identities, was not an easy process. There was conflict inside and outside the home and a struggle with the authorities, which continues to this day with the Windrush immigration scandal. And yet there emerged from that process an explosion of vital and distinct British Caribbean culture - lovers rock, the soundsystem, a look, and a vocabulary that helped the Windrush children stamp their imprint on British society and pave the way for the next generation.

Caribritish: Children of Windrush (Part 1)

To mark the life of the irrepressible Phyllis Diller, the first female stand up comedian, who died on August 20th this year, BBC Radio 2 returns to a recent documentary, recorded with Diller in her glamorous Brentwood Home in LA, when she was still going strong aged 94. The programme features interviews with Roseanne Barr, David Sedaris and Roby Wax, and Barbara Windsor takes you back to the early days when Diller was flat broke, working as a copywriter in San Francisco. She had a natural talent for making people laugh and urged by her out of work husband, Diller decided to pursue a career as the first female standup comedian. This was no mean feat in the early 1950s - her role models were all men, in particular Bob Hope who she would later befriend and regularly perform with. She had a small army of children to feed and the lure of big money dazzled her - leading standups on the circuit, touring the Cocoabana and Playboy Clubs and the borscht belt resorts could be earning $40,000 dollars a week - then! Her determination and her ability to make people laugh, would bring her fame in the early 1960s when she appeared on the Jack Paar show and she never looked back. Mixed in with archive recordings of Diller's great live performances, the remarkable achievement of this extraordinary woman becomes clear, along with her contagious humour and love of life. She was a major influence on all female stand up comedians, in particular, Joan Rivers.

Barbara Windsor's Funny Girls: Phyllis Diller (produced with Just Radio)

Pioneering artist Laurie Anderson traces the roots of performance art - the most daring and popular of contemporary art forms, which blurs the boundaries of art, theatre and dance. More and more artists are drawing on the live quality of performance in their work: the artist Marina Abramovic was present for three months in New York's Museum of Modern Art for visitors to lock eyes with, silent and motionless; this year's prestigious Venice Biennale Golden Lion prize was given to the performance artist Tino Sehgal; and the newest addition to the Tate are the Tate Tanks, dedicated to Performance art. But what is this transient medium and where has it come from? Laurie Anderson, famous for bringing her song O Superman to the British pop charts in the 1980s, focuses on this innovative and elusive art form, drawing out the qualities of ritual and gathering, pain and endurance. She turns to the earliest recordings of the Futurist artist, Marinetti's Zang Tumb Tumb, the actions of German artist Joseph Beuys; the influence of John Cage in contrast to the risk of Yoko Ono, the sexual politics of Vito Acconci, the confrontation of the Viennese Actionists or British artist Stuart Brisley's offal bath and the explosive shock of Chris Burden's Shoot.

Living And Present: Laurie Anderson on Performance Art

In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova, a simple factory worker, was sent on a solo mission to space. She became a hero in her country, a legend around the world and an icon of gender equality. But what really happened on the flight was kept secret in Soviet times and remains mysterious, earning Valentina the moniker 'Greta Garbo of Space'. No woman would travel to space for nearly 20 years after she returned. Lucy Ash travels to Valentina's hometown Yaroslavl, on Moscow's Golden Ring, in search of the person behind the legend, meeting her daughter, workmates and relatives. At a time when Putin is reviving Soviet-era pride in the motherland, we look at what Valentina's incredible journey means today. Producer: Dorothy Feaver

Maiden Voyage: The First Woman In Space

Recorded with dancers in Pina Bausch's Tanztheater company in Wuppertal, former lead dancer for the Royal Ballet, Deborah Bull, pays tribute to this extraordinary artist. Bausch's subject is the relationship between men and women, which is played out in all her pieces. Her dancers, who break any conventional rules about age and shape, actively share in the creation of the choreography - bringing their life experiences, memories and personalities to the dance. Each of the performances has the capacity to provoke immense, powerful and individual responses. There's no single narrative in each piece; it's more like a sequence of captured moments, close ups and sometimes lucid, sometimes inexplicable enactments of life. Tanztheater, literally, means Dance Theatre. It's a hybrid or a genre that slips between the definitions and breaks down the formal boundaries between different arts. The raw, expressionistic movements, often so extreme, pose open questions about culpability, moral responsibility and humanity's dark side. For all the intensity though, she incorporates humour - her dancers will leave the stage and offer the audience jam sandwiches, cups of tea, or ask someone in the front row if they are in love. Pina Bausch alongside other German artists and performers, including her mentor Kurt Joos, also addressed the aftermath of war on a profound level, asking again and again what it is to be human. With Fiona Shaw, Antony Gormley, Michael Morris, Wim Wenders, Judith Mackrell and principal dancers from the Company - Dominique Mercy, Julie Shanahan, Julie Anne Stanzak and Eddie Martinez

Pina Bausch: Dance For Your Life (produced with Just Radio)

In an ongoing collaboration with BBC Radio 3, Wellcome Collection's Reading Room is the setting for a series of 'The Essay' devoted to the bodily organs. 'Body of Essays' invites five writers to ruminate on a different organ of the body. This strange proposition has a mysterious allure: the organs are hidden, buried from view, and yet are at the very core of our physical functioning as well as our mental and emotional world. Suctioned together in dark flesh, the organs can be all the more puzzling and intriguing. New York Times best selling author Philip Kerr is the creator of Bernie Gunther, an unflinching private eye. Philip immerses himself in the real world to inform what he puts on the page whether fiction or fact - in this essay we accompany him into a brain surgery operating room.

A Body Of Essays : Philip Kerr : The Brain

Established in 2011 Cast Iron’s mission is to make life enhancing, important, informative, inspiring, imaginative and memorable productions. The company is an affiliation of producers, directors, writers, composers and engineers. We work with experts and artists in all fields and collaborate with recordists in far flung places, to bring the voices and sounds of the world to bear.

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