BBC Ramps Up Arts, Music Fare

LONDON: The BBC’s director-general, Mark Thompson, is promising more arts and music content from the public broadcaster, with a view to supporting "the cultural life of Britain," he said.

"Today we are not only reaffirming our commitment to arts, but we’re announcing a series of measures that will put this relationship on an even stronger footing," Thompson noted. "Through innovative new partnerships, I believe the BBC can deliver big, bold arts programming that is accessible, distinctive and enjoyable."

The new initiatives include the creation of an arts editor role for BBC News and the launch of an Arts and Culture section of the BBC News website. The BBC is also setting up an arts board that will assist in the development of new ideas and foster partnerships. The board will be sponsored by Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision, and Tim Davie, the director of audio and music, and will consist of senior arts and creative leaders from across the BBC. 

Creating strong tie-ups with entities that can tap into opportunities in the digital world is a priority. Projects in development include an alliance with the Public Catalogue Foundation that would enable the public to view online every one of the U.K.’s 200,000 publicly-owned oil paintings by 2012. The partnership would establish a destination within the BBC’s website called Your Paintings, where the public can view and find information on every oil painting in public ownership. The Public Catalogue Foundation, a registered charity, is 30 percent of the way through cataloguing the U.K.’s national collection of oil paintings.

The BBC is also in talks with the Arts Council, which could give the public free online access to a wealth of archive arts content, such as the Council’s film collection that dates back to the ’50s. The project will also explore the possibility of aggregating archive material from the Arts Council with related BBC arts archives and those from other major content holders.

Content initiatives include the BBC Poetry season, with programming across BBC Two, BBC Four and CBeebies, BBC Radio 4 and online. Coverage on BBC Two from the spring will include an authored documentary from Simon Schama on John Donne and a film by Armando Iannucci on Milton. And on BBC Four, Owen Sheers explores six great British works, Ian Hislop welcomes the new Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage goes in search of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight and there’s a documentary about the world’s longest-running poetry program, Radio 4’s Poetry Please, among other programs.