26.8.04

Sussex pubs ban hats -- outrageous!! I was once asked to remove my hat at the bar of a pub in West London...

15.8.04

Edinburgh Art Festival: the formation of the Edinburgh Art Festival is a great encouragement to us in the Open House movement in the May Brighton Festival. Nick Dodds, the director of the Brighton Festival, has been ruthlessly adopting the 'Edinburgh Festival model' here -- ie inventing an artificial 'Fringe' in which to offload and marginalise anything not 'officially programmed', including almost all the visual arts. Maybe Richard Demarco's remarks may help him reconsider his snubbing of Brighton's unique selling point -- the thousands of artists who live, work and exhibit here, through the hundreds of Open Houses.

14.8.04

Art world attacks festival's musical focus: Edinburgh's art world has hit back at what it sees as the 'patently absurd' exclusion of the visual arts from the Edinburgh international festival. Richard Demarco, the veteran programmer who has been a key figure in the city's arts scene for decades, co-founding the Traverse Theatre and enticing such artists as the late Joseph Beuys to Edinburgh, said: 'You are morally responsible for including visual art - or you mustn't call it the greatest festival in the world'. Brighton Festival already has a vibrant, yet under-appreciated, visual arts component -- the Open Houses -- though you could get the impression that Nick Dodds wished it would quietly go away! As a dedicated follower of the Edinburgh Festival model, might we now see a change in Dodds' policy of snubbing the visual arts?

13.8.04

Romantic ruin -- my letter about the structure that was formerly the West Pier.