Two tales of Graffiti

A couple of nice little stories to do with people daubing paint on things. Firstly Banksy who in general is considered to be more at the artistic end of things having fun with the post office in a piece called One Nation Under CCTV. The second is a an exceptionally funny reaction to 'tagging' in Greenwich with a very nicely weighted sticker.

Obvious but not iconic

To: The Editor, Observer Review.
Sir,

Thank you for publishing "One city's towering folly" on Sunday. It is indeed successfully highlighting a distinct imprudence, not that a pair of generic cooling towers that could frankly be anywhere in the UK are going to be demolished, but that Tom James and Go are so pot committed to their wonderful art project falling with the towers.

Tom hits the nail on the head, Sheffield is famous more for things like cutlery and Cocker than for many of the great culture we have going on here, but that isn't going to get better by putting art in a silly building in a part of the city that no-one goes to unless they are shopping at Meadowhall. Given that Sheffield is most famous outside the city for steel and plate, for knifes and forks, for brewing and drinking (we often come up as the "Beer Capital" of Britain in the annual choice and diversity surveys) why not pick a building related to one of these industries currently lying fallow, save it from being made into studio flats and put the art project there? The William Stones brewery lies unused, downsized steel works are ten a penny and there is an added bonus with a number of old cutlery factories that they are next to the Cultural Industries Quarter.

One thing I would say to Tom is that his idea has to be compelling on its own merits, the National Centre for Popular Music showed that an uninteresting attraction won't get more visitors just because you have put it in an architecturally striking building.

Yours,
Tony Kennick

Other arts on TV

In a debate about the cultural effect of Channel 4 launching 25 years ago on Thinking aloud an interesting tangent appeared. One of the guests right at the end of the segment said that public service arts broadcasting (in his context, Channel 4 and BBC 2)had lost us years of important culture by not having televised and therefore recorded enough live theatre over the last few decades.
I'm unsure about this, I find televised theatre quite flat compared with live or even theatre in a studio for television, and are things better with more channels covering arts, anyway this is to ask your opinions.