đ„ Check out this trending post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Music,Punk,Experimental music,Culture,Bradford,West Yorkshire,Yorkshire,UK news,UK city of culture đĄ **What Youâll Learn**: âThings were getting darker,â says Gary Kavanagh, reflecting on Bradford in the early 1980s. âThere was a lot of unemployment, and people were thrown on the scrap heap.âKavanagh was working for the Bradford Claimants Union in 1981, helping the city's poor and unemployed get benefits, when a government report said one in 12 benefit recipients was defrauding the state. So he and some friends reclaimed this statisticâwhich they thought was ludicrousâas an identity. âWe became…
đ„ Check out this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Comedy,Comedy films,TV comedy,Culture â
**What Youâll Learn**: Not all standup comedians wake up one day and decide to be funny for a living. That wasnât the case for John Bishop, anyway. He took up comedy to avoid paying a barâs cover charge and to escape his failing marriage â a story that inspired Bradley Cooperâs new film, Is This Thing On? And Bishop is not the only comic with an unusual origin story. From impressing girlfriends to losing their voices, brain tumours to bad bosses â…
đ Explore this trending post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Lucinda Williams,Americana,Music,Pop and rock,Culture â
**What Youâll Learn**: 'TâThank you for taking up my complaint,â Lucinda Williams says late, after a series of songs about power and consequences. Outside, Storm Chandra keeps the streets turbulent. Inside Belfast's Limelight, a sold-out crowd sat on folding chairs for a show that had been moved from the Mandela Hall at short notice, the room strangely quiet for a venue known for sweat and jostling.Williams is a leading star in the vast galaxy of music still called Americana, and two days…
đ Read this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Theatre,West End,Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,Stage,Culture,UK news,Harry Potter,JK Rowling,Jack Thorne,John Tiffany,Books đĄ **What Youâll Learn**: For nearly a decade, this play has been the most epic fixture on West End theatre: a two-part play that runs five hours, including intermissions. But later this year, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will only be shown in London as an abbreviated 175-minute solo production.The new format is in line with other versions of the hit play presented in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. The one-part…
đ Explore this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Art and design,Culture,Art,Performance art,Sculpture â
**What Youâll Learn**: 'I âI don't know what you want to know,â says Anne Imhoff, three-quarters of the way into our interview. Her cautious smile, between the curtains of dark black hair, turned into a skeptical frown. I just quoted a headline from Imhoff, one of Germany's most important contemporary artists, who called her 2025 New York show a "bad ad for Balenciaga."Just a few years ago, Imhoff was the hottest ticket on the international art circuit: a Golden Lion winner at…
âš Check out this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Classical music,Music,Culture,Hamnet,Film,Philip Glass đ **What Youâll Learn**: forIn 2008, Transport for London came up with a trick to dispel anti-social behaviour: it moved classical music to supposedly troublesome stations in south London's crime hotspots. I think that was when I realized how far the connection had come between classical music and a relaxing effect rather than real emotion. Once an entire genre of music becomes associated with relaxation, it's enough to hear the sound of an orchestra and think, "This isn't for me." Whatever its rhythms,…
âš Read this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Art and design,Culture,Photography â
**What Youâll Learn**: TIt was taken in a village in rural Moldova that no longer exists. Thirty years ago, Dobrosa's population was 200, typical of settlements around the country after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. When this Gresa man moved there in 2000 to start a sheep farm, the population had dropped to 70. When it happened, in July 2019, he was the only resident of the village. He was 65 years old.A few months before it was taken over,…
đ„ Read this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Dance,Ballet,Royal Ballet,Royal Opera House,Stage,Culture,JS Bach â
**What Youâll Learn**: pOl Taylor is no satirist's choreographer. Then again, maybe it's exactly what the cynic needs. At the beginning of his 1988 piece âBrandenburg,â with dancers in tight green velvet smiling at us delightfully, a hardened viewer might think: This is a bit of an old-fashioned little piece. Twenty-five minutes later, after a tornado of jumping, spinning and perfecting techniques, you think about how much fun it is to be alive.Taylor was one of the most prominent and celebrated…
đ Discover this trending post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Film,Richard Linklater,Drama films,Comedy films,Breathless (A Bout de Souffle),Paris,Cannes film festival,Comedy,Culture,Festivals,France,Europe,World news đĄ **What Youâll Learn**: forIt is merciless and does not die... and has no meaning? Here is Richard Linklater's impeccably subdued and tasteful drama about the making of Godard's 1960 classic debut film Ă Bout de Souffle, which starred Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo as star-crossed lovers in Paris. Linklater's homage has French-language credits and is beautifully shot in monochrome, as opposed to the boring old color of real life in which the events were actually…
đ„ Explore this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian đ đ **Category**: Jeff Buckley,Music,Pop and rock,Culture,US news đ **What Youâll Learn**: Jeff Buckley has achieved his first No. 1 single on the US Hot 100, 29 years after his death, with "Lover, You Should Come Over" at No. 97 this week.The popularity of TikTok is behind this success, as a new generation of listeners have discovered Buckley's soulful, romantic songwriting and paired it with videos on the social media platform. TikTok videos don't count among U.S. chart positions, but widespread trends are pushing listeners toward songs on streaming services…
