Arts funding in England must be protected from politics, Hodge report urges

Arts Council England must ensure funding is protected from politicisation and simplify its application process in order to regain trust, a damaging report has found.The investigation into the national body for arts funding found there had been a “loss of respect and trust” for ACE among those it backed, in part because of “perceived political interference in decision-making”.The report was written by the Labour peer Margaret Hodge, who recommended that ACE be retained but with the arm’s-length principle strengthened at all levels of government “to ensure that arts funding is protected from politicisation”.She said: “There have been attempts to exert more political control over ACE decisions in recent years and this has to stop. The Arts Council must remain free from political interference

The Hodge report into Arts Council England: ‘Not exactly a ringing endorsement’

The arts in England are underfunded, and were dealt a blow by Covid from which many organisations have not yet recovered. But that has been only part of the story. The sheer weight of required form-filling, the endless bureaucracy, the impracticable length of time it takes to simply be funded by Arts Council England (ACE) have caused universal frustration among those working in the arts. There is much talk of exhaustion and burnout.Many organisations have felt frustrated, too, by the strictures of ACE’s flagship strategy, Let’s Create, which, though admirable in principle, with its focus on participation in the arts, is perhaps tilted too far from recognising the expertise and individuality of artists and arts institutions

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s Rob Reiner comments: ‘So hateful and vile’

Late-night hosts reacted to the murder of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as well as Donald Trump’s 10-minute tangent about Christmas snakes.“This is the kind of weekend that makes you wonder if things will ever feel good again,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Monday evening, after a couple days of horrific news: the terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach, a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island, and the “murder of one of our greatest directors and patriots, Rob Reiner, and his wife, Michele Reiner”.“What we need in a time like this, besides common sense when it comes to guns and mental health care, is compassion and leadership,” he continued. “We did not get that from our president, because he has none of it to give. Instead, we got a fool rambling about nonsense

‘Fans stole my underwear – and even my car aerial’: how Roxette made It Must Have Been Love

‘We had 2,000 people outside our hotel room in Buenos Aires singing our songs all night. David Coulthard later told me that all the Formula One drivers were staying there and were annoyed because they couldn’t sleep’In my early 20s, I was in the biggest band in Sweden. But after Gyllene Tider [Golden Times] collapsed, I was depressed for two years. At first, Roxette only got together when Marie Fredriksson, our singer, wasn’t busy with solo stuff. To keep her in the band, I needed to make it successful, so I was very motivated

From Eleanor the Great to Emily in Paris: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

Eleanor the GreatOut nowJune Squibb stars in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which premiered at Cannes and tells the tale of the eponymous Eleanor, a senior citizen recently relocated to New York, who strikes up a friendship with a 19-year old – and then stumbles her way into pretending to be a Holocaust survivor.LurkerOut nowA hit at Sundance, this is the story of a lowly retail employee who happens to strike up a friendship with a rising pop star, becoming the Boswell to his Johnson, if Boswell was part of a pop star’s entourage. But the path of friendship with a famous person never did run smooth, and the uneven power dynamic soon prompts some desperate manoeuvring in this psychological thriller.Ella McCayOut nowEmma Mackey stars in the latest from James L Brooks (his first since 2010), a political comedy about an idealistic thirtysomething working in government and preparing to step into the shoes of her mentor, Governor Bill (Albert Brooks). Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as Ella’s aunt

‘Like lipstick on a fabulous gorilla’: the Barbican’s many gaudy glow-ups and the one to top them all

The brutalist arts-and-towers complex, where even great explorers get lost, is showing its age. Let’s hope the 50th anniversary upgrade is better than the ‘pointillist stippling’ tried in the 1990sThe Barbican is aptly named. From the Old French barbacane, it historically means a fortified gateway forming the outer line of defence to a city or castle. London’s Barbican marks the site of a medieval structure that would have defended an important access point. Its architecture was designed to repel