110.Souls Grown Deep and Berlusconi the Musical: with Curator Raina Lampkins-Fielder and Producer Francesca Moody

Break Out Culture With Ed Vaizey by Country and Town House

We’re talking to curator Raina Lampkins-Fielder about ‘Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers’, the ground-breaking exhibition at the Royal Academy, showcasing the collective creativity of black artists from the American South. Most of these powerful works, many made from reclaimed materials, have never been seen outside America’s so-called ‘Black Belt’ that encompasses Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, a region associated with slavery and racial oppression. This is any eye-opening exhibition representing the triumph of artistic expression and hope over appalling discrimination and persecution.

On a much lighter note, we also talk to Francesca Moody, the award-winning producer of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s ‘Fleabag’, about her new venture ‘Berlusconi the Musical’, on for a short run at Southwark Playhouse. It’s guaranteed to be a highly entertaining tragi-comic rollercoaster about Silvio Berlusconi’s life as a media tycoon, politician and Italian Prime Minister, a life extraordinary enough to defy belief.