‘No barriers to entry’: George the Poet reframes art world for young people with immersive exhibition

Immersive installations could be a gateway into the world of visual arts for young people, according to George the Poet, who said the new technology removes traditional barriers that have historically excluded certain groups.George the Poet, the award-winning podcaster and spoken-word performer, has worked with a group of young people from the Mayor of London’s violence reduction unit, who he helped reinterpret classic works of art.The Scream by Edvard Munch, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, the Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch will all be shown during the summer as part of Art of Expression in Frameless, an immersive art space in London.He said: “When it comes to immersive art, there are no barriers to entry. You don’t need a language for this

Girls gone bad: Lena Dunham’s Too Much is just not good enough

There is one TV show that has been enjoyed most often, and most reliably, among my cohort in New York: Girls, the seminal HBO dramedy about Brooklyn’s downwardly mobile and highly self-important creative class of the 2010s. Though a cultural lightning rod when it aired from 2012 until 2017 – its whiteness, convincing narcissism, frank sexuality and frequent nudity all catnip for the cresting blogosphere and cyclical moral panic – Girls has rightfully settled into its status as one of the best television series of the 21st century, a foundational text for millennials as well as a biting satire of solipsistic, Obama-era striving. (Although viewers too young to remember it as anything other than canon now see the girls’ flailing – their freedom to wear terrible prints, listen to Vampire Weekend and be earnest – as something to be envied rather than derided, a core tenet of the millennial redemption arc.)The show was always sharper than tendentious criticism acknowledged, a knowing send-up not to be taken too seriously, though it did seriously shape the TV that followed – the idea of an “unlikable” female protagonist was always ahistorical, but messy, compelling women on television proliferated in Hannah Horvath’s wake, from the girls of Broad City to Insecure’s Issa, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag to Pamela Adlon’s Better Things. It is unfortunately still radical to see someone who looks like creator, writer and star Lena Dunham be naked on screen without judgment; though television has explored sex much more successfully than movies in the years since, no show has fully succeeded Girls’ unvarnished vision of sex as something both banal and essential

Stephen Colbert on Pentagon deal with Musk’s Grok AI: ‘Such a bad idea’

Late-night hosts mocked the Department of Defense’s contract with Elon Musk’s Grok AI, Donald Trump’s White House decor and Maga infighting over the Epstein files.“Trump got elected last year by making two promises: racism and bringing down inflation using racism,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. “So far, not so great”, as, thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs, inflation increased in June to 2.7%. And it could get worse, as Trump announced he would impose a 30% tariff on European goods starting in August

Post your questions for Craig David

It is, incredibly, 25 years since Craig David broke out with his debut album Born to Do It, a classic of British garage and R&B. The Southampton-born musician has since proven to be one of the former genre’s greatest ambassadors: he has said his recent single, Wake Up, is about “respecting my garage roots” and the importance of preserving genres and cultures “for generations to come”.That mission feels typical of David, a tireless and earnest pop presence due to release his ninth album, Commitment, next month. You can see the esteem he commands from the collaborators on it, among them Toddla T, Wretch 32, Jojo and Tiwa Savage. “Making music still turns me into that giggly, excited little kid who wants to feel the magic of it all,” he has said

The left must learn to take (and make) a joke | Letters

George Monbiot manages to achieve something quite remarkable: an essay on the corrosive potential of humour that ignores the decades-long tradition of the left wielding satire like a broadsword (How does the right tear down progressive societies? It starts with a joke, 10 July).Did we all dream Spitting Image, Saturday Night Live, Have I Got News for You, Ben Elton, or Jo Brand’s “battery acid” quip about Nigel Farage? The left practically invented modern political satire as we know it – and rightly so. Holding power to account through ridicule is not only legitimate but essential. But suddenly, when humour points the other way, it becomes seditious? Dangerous? Please.Humour is neither inherently leftwing nor rightwing – it is anti-hypocrisy, anti-power and often subversive

Stephen Colbert on Paramount’s $16m settlement with Trump: ‘Big fat bribe’

Late-night hosts rebuke Paramount’s settlement with Donald Trump and mock the Maga movement infighting over the Jeffrey Epstein files.Stephen Colbert returned to The Late Show on Monday after two weeks in Turkey – “I heard so many great things from Mayor Adams about it,” he quipped – to blast his network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling with Donald Trump for $16m. “As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended,” he said. “And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16m would help