Culture

WISE Up for Bradley Manning is a loose network of groups and individuals in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England (WISE) taking action for Bradley Manning, the young US military intel. analyst with Welsh roots who has been held for almost two years without trial accused of blowing the whistle on war crimes and revealing other truths the US would have preferred to keep buried. Bradley Manning has been tortured and denied his…

These alternative audio tours are fun and innovative, interventionist sound artworks dealing with oil companies and their sponsorship of the arts. (In December, four of the UK’s biggest cultural organisations – the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the Tate galleries – renewed sponsorship deals with BP worth £10m.)

The three audio tours are for Tate Britain and Tate Modern (in London),…

Commentators in Peace News often refer to the video game culture that pervades the war in Afghanistan. The video game industry is far bigger than the music and film industries. The big sellers consistently feature high body counts or reckless driving (which turns up later on the roads). So what are we doing to change the culture? Is it beyond games designers to create exciting games based on the real bravery of fire fighters, lifeboat crews, etc?

The Tricycle Theatre, ‘Britain’s leading political playhouse’ according to The Times, is running a packed season of events examining nuclear weapons and the nuclear debate.

A centrepiece of this season is an ambitious two-part, five-hour sequence of 10 new short plays exploring nuclear issues, the performances punctuated and complemented by verbatim readings, archive footage and images.

The 10 plays explore nuclear weapons from a refreshingly diverse range of…

On 17 March, a north Wales village, Y Parc, near Bala, whose local school is under threat became the first area to join a new alliance to lobby for the future of Welsh language communities, Cynghrair Cymunedau Cymru (the Alliance of Welsh Communities).

The launch was held during a day of protest in the village against Gwynedd council’s decision to seek to close Ysgol Y Parc.

The alliance is an initiative of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society),…

One of the most important poems of the 20th century was Christopher Logue’s “To My Fellow Artists”, first printed in the New Statesman in 1958 and published by Logue as a posterpoem designed by Germano Facetti shortly afterwards. This was followed in the mid-’60s by half a dozen others including “Be Not So Hard”, “London”, “Crime One”, “Goodnight Ladies” and “I Shall Vote Labour”.

Logue took part in the famous International Poetry Incarnation gig at the Albert Hall in 1965 where 7,000…

Bongo-player, brilliant raconteur and Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman was also one of the scientists who helped to build the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos.

After the first successful test Feynman was elated, playing an improvised drum on the hood of a jeep, but later sank into a deep depression, convinced that global nuclear war was inevitable. To his credit he later came to regret at least part of his role, and decided never to work on classified projects again.…

The Bomb: a partial history, in two parts. Directed by Nicholas Kent. Tricycle Theatre, London, 9th February – 1st April 2012. www.tricycle.co.uk

The Tricycle Theatre, “Britain’s leading political playhouse” according to the Times, is running a season of events examining nuclear weapons and the nuclear debate. A centrepiece of this season is an ambitious two-part, five hour sequence of ten new short plays exploring nuclear issues, the…

The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) has reclaimed the art of Rebel Clowning: its combatants don't pretend to be clowns, they are clowns, real trained clowns. Clowns that have run away from the anaemic safety of the circus and escaped the banality of kids' parties.

CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society.

Peace News was honoured to sponsor Guy Smallman ís stunning exhibition of photographs from Afghanistan for the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. "Afghanistan: Ten Years On", which was on display at the Amnesty International Human Rights Centre in London in October. It is now available for groups to host (it is appearing in Derry at the end of January).

Please note that while the exhibition is about Afghanistan, it does not feature soldiers or warfare, and it does not…

I was inspired to look at the story of Harry Potter as a one of resistance and direct action by Shami Chakrabarti. In a BBC Radio 4 programme, the director of Liberty once talked about The Order of the Phoenix as a text which has many vivid examples of acts of resistance to dark forces and the abuse of power. Taking this observation as a starting point, I have looked at the whole Harry Potter story and discovered that it teaches us a great deal about what is needed to form an effective…

The well-titled A Thorn in the Flesh is the latest book from the indefatigably wondrous poetry publisher Hearing Eye. It contains 37 (mostly short) poems from the equally wondrous Eddie Linden.

I've heard of Eddie, know of his place in, and impact on, the poetry scene but, prior to this book, had encountered only one poem - and that in an Hearing Eye anthology. Now Iíve made his literary (not physical) acquaintance, I understand the impact he made when he arrived from Scotland in the…

Emily James spent a year embedded in the environmental direct action movement with groups like Plane Stupid, Climate Camp, Bike Block and others, gaining their confidence and trying to capture the passion, commitment, and excitement of putting direct action into practice.

The resulting film is a dense, fascinating, fast-moving work in which we meet and follow a variety of individuals, and hear stories from their lives as activists. We see them in action at the Vestas wind turbine…

I suppose for me as a Christian activist Christmas is a particularly important time of the year. After all, the Christmas story focuses on the birth of a baby who was born into poverty, and whose parents were fleeing a repressive regime - lots of resonance there with stuff I'm concerned with.

When I first began to connect my activism with my faith, it gave Advent and Christmas a new meaning. Itís now a time when I take stock and really think about the meaning of the season.

I…