Regeneration Songs: Sound of Investment and Loss from East London
The impact of global capital and foreign investment on local communities is being felt in major cities across the world. Since the 2012 Olympics was awarded to the British capital, East London has been at the heart of the largest and most all-encompassing top-down urban regeneration strategy in civic history. At the centre of this has been the local government, Newham Council, and their daring proposal: an “Arc of Opportunity” for developers to transform 1,412 hectares of Newham. This proposal was outlined in a short film, London’s Regeneration Supernova, and shown to foreign developers and businesses at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
While the sweeping changes to East London have been keenly felt by locals, the symbolism and practicalities of these changes – for the local area, and the world alike – are overdue serious investigation. Regeneration Songs is about how places are turned into simple stories for packaged investment opportunities, how people living...
"You can count me out... in" — Alan Bradshaw on fifty years of the Beatles' "Revolution"
On the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' "Revolution", Alan Bradshaw, co-author of Advertising Revolution: The Story of a Song, from Beatles Hit to Nike Slogan, recounts the story of one of the most famous and controversial adverts of all time. Fifty years ago, on 26 August 1968, the Beatles released their highest selling 45 rpm — the “Hey Jude”/“Revolution”...
Altered Grammar: Re-reading Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in the Time of Trump
Darren Ambrose, editor of k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016), on Orwell, through Pynchon, in the age of Trump. There is a terrifying moment in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four just after Winston and Julia have spent their final stolen afternoon together in the attic room of the old antique dealer. Believing themselves to be alone they begin discussing...
