“At the end of a year of confusing cuts, un-cuts and renewed cuts, the Scottish Government’s latest pledge is to invest £100m in the cultural sector over the next five years. How widely and how quickly that will be shared is not yet known.” We report on how successive governments starve a sector that’s key to the Scottish economy – and identity.
A splash of sunshine
“Perhaps it would be nice to be a degree or two warmer than today’s 16C. But every day brings news of the burning reality of climate change in blistering heatwaves reaching 50C in many places across the world.”
Sunshine on Rachel House
Fund-raising is a constant fact of life for a charity providing high quality, multi-disciplinary “life and death affirming” care for a growing number of children and families facing the reality of life with life-shortening conditions. Medical advances mean longer lives for more children with terminal illnesses (recent CHAS research estimates more than 16,000 children aged 0-21 are in need of specialist care).
For future generations from our here and now
Survival, war, poetry. What is it like to fight for your motherland with words and on the streets? Here is a message to transcend time and place.
One snort for hello?
“It doesn’t have to be like this, as David Attenborough has reminded us at the end of every episode of his most urgently powerful and poignant series: Green Planet, and with force in the final fifth, Human Worlds. Solutions are tantalisingly within reach. At no risk to ourselves we can make our own surrounds much greener – and a lot more pleasant.”
Blow winds…rage, sing, make music
there’s something comforting about listening to the music made by a different natural force over which we have no control.
A kind of healing: poetry for endings and beginnings
How and when do you mark the passing of a pandemic which is not yet done? Politicians stumble, their messages swaying between promises of better days ahead and threats of worse to come. Can poets help us?
NHS alert: code red for climate change
Bold declarations of climate emergency and world beating targets came before the pandemic showed just how quickly human behaviour can change. We can do it when we have to. Yet last year’s euphoric thoughts of ‘building back better’ seem to have got lost.
Covid inspires a can-do response to old problem
Brace yourselves for good news. A ‘can-do’ story of enterprise, ingenuity, and kindness. Though, there is a familiar theme – how Covid has exposed the faultlines of our society. Who knew so many university students would be going hungry?
Emergency: close the gap between real life and government ‘FACTS’
“Too many lives have been lost or destroyed. Integrating equitable support services for those most at risk for covid-19 is a national emergency and governments should act accordingly”