R&B star Jill Scott: ‘I like mystery – I love Sade but I don’t know what she had for breakfast’

The neo-soul singer and actor answers your questions on being taken to a go-go club as a child, training as an English teacher and getting mistaken for footballer Jill ScottIn a recent interview you gave an invaluable life lesson which involved a go-go bar and your mother’s love. What are your tips for living life between adversities? Integrity411My mother’s ex-husband was a questionable man and after he picked me up from elementary school he used to take me to a go-go bar where ladies were dancing in their panties. I was a child, so I thought: how nice for them, I hate getting dressed too! They dance all day and then some nice people put money in their panties. The ladies would give me milk or Coca-Cola and give me a dollar, so I wanted to be a go-go dancer when I grew up. At that age I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me going there and I learned not to judge people so quickly

Letter: Colin Ford obituary

Colin Ford was a most supportive critic. In 2006 I was invited to speak about Virginia Woolf and Photography at the Women’s Library in London. Part of my paper was about Julia Margaret Cameron, Woolf’s great aunt, and her many influences on Woolf’s writing and photography.Already then the world expert on Cameron, Colin was in the audience, having trekked all the way to Whitechapel on a wet weekday evening. Terrified that I might misconstrue or misrepresent Cameron in front of him, I fumbled the slide projector

Museums must reach all parts of UK, says Nandy as £1.5bn of arts funding announced

London-based museums need to ensure they reach every part of the country, according to Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, who on Wednesday announced a landmark £1.5bn funding package for the arts meant to restore national pride.National museums including the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery will be handed a £600m package but the culture secretary has urged them to look outside the capital to extend their sphere of influence.“Almost all of our national institutions are based in London, which means they need to work harder to make sure that they are genuinely national institutions [by] opening opportunities for young people from every part of our country,” she said.Nandy praised the outreach work of the Royal Shakespeare Company as an example of how national institutions could engage visitors across the country

Stephen Colbert on Trump’s first year back: ‘Today’s maniacal criminality distracts us from yesterday’s maniac crimes’

Late-night hosts acknowledged one full, maniacal year of Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States.Tuesday 20 January, marked one full year of Trump’s second presidency, and “during that time, he has monopolized our attention every second of every minute of every hour of every day,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “Which is sad. Because today we’re not focusing on the real meaning of January 20: it’s Penguin Awareness Day.”On a more serious note, “a lot has happened in a short time”, the host noted

‘We played to 8,000 Mexicans who knew every word’: how the Whitest Boy Alive conquered the world

He lit up Europe with bands ranging from Peachfuzz to Kings of Convenience. But it was the Whitest Boy Alive that sent Erlend Øye stratospheric. As they return, the soft-singing, country-hopping sensation looks backIf you were to imagine the recent evolution of music in Europe as a series of scenes from a Where’s Wally?-style puzzle book, one bespectacled, lanky figure would pop up on almost every page. There he is in mid-90s London, handing out flyers for his first band Peachfuzz. Here he is in NME at the dawn of the new millennium, fronting folk duo Kings of Convenience and spearheading the new acoustic movement

Sally Tallant appointed as new director of London’s Hayward Gallery

Sally Tallant, the former boss of the Liverpool Biennial, has been announced as the new director of the Hayward Gallery and visual arts at London’s Southbank Centre.Tallant, who is currently in charge of the Queens Museum in New York, will return to the UK to take over from Ralph Rugoff, who will step down after two decades in charge of the institution, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.The Leeds-born Tallant has been in the US since 2019 after an eight-year stint in charge of the Liverpool Biennial and more than a decade working at the Serpentine Gallery, where she was head of programmes until 2011.She said she was delighted to be returning to London and excited to build on the “outstanding legacy” of Rugoff, who also took charge of the Venice Biennale in 2019. She said she was looking forward to “shaping the next chapter of this vital cultural destination and civic institution”