Art and Culture - British Council Italy

Milan, 18 April 2012: Stephen Benians (left), British Council Director Programmes, presenting the New Connections Award to the UK author and actor Kwame Kwei-Armah (right) for his valuable contribution in developing closer relations between Italy and the UK.

NEW CONNECTIONS: OUR WORK IN ARTS

New Connections is the British Council’s arts programme, offering a series of inspirational events that create new connections between top talents from the UK and audiences in Italy. Innovation, Creativity and Excellence – the three values that underpin this programme.

New Connections is a journey – across Italy, across the UK, across business ideas and networks underlying the creative and cultural sectors and across artistic disciplines. Our core offer includes events in Music, Literature, Theatre, Architecture and Design, Visual Arts and business of Creativity.

NEW CONNECTIONS IN MUSIC

The Heliocentrics, the ‘hippest, funky young group from the jazz world’, playing at the Rome Jazz Festival, mid November 2012. Listen to The Heliocentrics on myspace.

Concerts during Turin Art week featuring best of UK techno music, organised in collaboration with Xplosiva, a pioneering contemporary ‘pre-pop’ event organisers, mid November 2012.

NEW CONNECTIONS IN LITERATURE

Welsh Children’s poet laureate Eurig Salisbury, Mantova Literature Festival, September 2012.

Rome Book Festival where an acclaimed UK author will explain their writing methodology to audiences. Rome, Auditorium Parco della Musica, March 2013

NEW CONNECTIONS IN THEATRE

Short Latitudes project: Theatre Workshops with UK playwrights and Mise en Espace in Puglia, in partnership with Teatro Pubblico Pugliese.

Workshops by Kwame Kwei-Armah’s ‘Intercultural dialogues theatre project’ take place over the course of the year in partnership with the Università degli Studi di Milano.

Four UK theatre groups will take part in Teatro a Corte festival which features theatre and dance, Turin and Piemonte.

NEW CONNECTIONS IN CREATIVITY

This strand of New Connections deals with the buzz behind the scenes – the business of creativity. We bring together young innovators and cultural entrepreneurs to share new ideas on the business of the creative economy. The talents we bring together are at the nexus of science, business and culture.

NEW CONNECTIONS IN FILM

We propose a great opportunity to co-create a film festival dedicated to new UK talents: deciding together theme and format, with British Council film experts selecting most outstanding pieces and delivering the event.

NEW CONNECTIONS IN ART

The British Council possesses the British Council Arts Collection, one of the largest private art collections in the world. Following the phenomenal success of our Passports exhibition in 2010, we would be happy to discuss with partners the creation of a public or private art exhibition using our own artworks.

One event scheduled in this module is Emma Smith’s ‘Soundscape’ of the city of Milan, in early October 2012. It is a cutting edge event mixing science with art, and involves a walking tour of six neighbourhoods of the city.

NEW CONNECTIONS IN ARCHITECTURE

The British Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale. Venice Takeaway will present proposals for British architecture inspired by an ambitious global research project. The aim is to inject new ideas into the UK and create a platform for discussion about what and who makes great architecture.