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Editor: Alex Pleasants

 Government Stuff 


DCMS has announced plans to overhaul the Information Commissioner’s Office to boost innovation, economic growth and protect the public.
 
UKRI has announced 97 new Future Leaders Fellowships, backed by £113m of government funding to help commercialise their innovations.
 
A £4m competition has launched to explore ways that street lamps and bus shelters (maybe even ice cream vans? I’m no expert) can be used for the 5G rollout.
 
The government has launched the Safety Tech Challenge Fund, giving 5 companies £85k each to develop innovative ways to keep children safe online.
 
The Competition and Markets Authority has raised concerns over Sony’s £312m deal to buy artist services company AWAL.
 
A new AI ecosystem survey report from the UK AI Council and the Turing Institute to help inform development of the National AI Strategy.

 Culture Stuff 


Arts & Culture 

Major new research from the Creative PEC showing the extent to which people from privileged backgrounds still dominate roles in the arts and creative industries.
 
New stats showing the UK events industry has lost £57bn of its £70bn pre-pandemic value over the past 12 months, including 126,000 jobs. Yeesh.
 
Arts Council England portfolio organisations reduced their carbon footprints by 12% in the year before the pandemic, but there’s been a 13% drop in reporting.
 
Jerwood Arts has announced the innovative 1:1 FUND – offering awards of £2,000 to 35 random pairings of independent early-career makers and creators.
 
Similarly, the Centre for Cultural Value has launched a new Collaborate fund, supporting 15 research partnerships with awards from £5k to £20k.
 
Cultural and diplomatic institution British Council is to shut offices in 11 countries from Belgium to the US amid a financial crisis.
 
Visual artists’ rights manager DACS has hit the £100m mark
(total, not each. I checked) for royalties distributed.

Design
IKEA is set to take over the former Topshop flagship on Oxford Street in a £385m deal. Meatballs for lunch everyday then, I guess.
 
RIBA has revealed the UK’s 54 best buildings for 2021, including a floating church on an East London canal.
 
84% of the world's skyscrapers have been built in the past 20 years. Here’s Dezeen with eight trends which have defined their design.
 

Theatre & Dance
The Guardian on how disabled and clinically vulnerable people are being shut out from the return of theatre and live music.
 

Classical Music & Opera
This year’s Royal Philharmonic Society Awards will take place at London’s Wigmore Hall in November.
 

Museums
The Design Museum has launched a free 8 week entrepreneurs programme for 15 emerging designers.
 
The Guardian explores Berlin’s bizarre new museum: a Prussian palace rebuilt for €680m.


Press, Books & Libraries
ROONEY FEVER! It’s not Euro 2004, it’s his cousin Sally whose third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You, is out and flying off shelves.
 
The longlist for the UK’s top non-fiction award, the Baillie Gifford Prize, has been unveiled, including Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland.
 
Likewise, the shortlist has been announced for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2021.
 
Award season, baby! British author Susanna Clarke has won the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction, the follow-up to her acclaimed 2004 debut.
 
A number of US magazines have doubled their reach on Apple News+ this year.
 

Exhibitions and Events
Get ready to dive head first into Yinka Ilori’s colourful world at a major Design Museum exhibition next summer.
 
Creative Entrepreneurs have a whole host of exciting (free) events lined up for autumn, including an in-depth chat with Marine Tanguy, founder of MTArt Agency

More on that HUGE Judge Dredd and Call of Duty: Warzone news here from Screen Rant. And it hit your consoles yesterday so what are you waiting for?
 
Rebellion’s Jason Kingsley spoke at OxTech Fest this week about how creative subjects and high tech are combining to further the gaming industry.
 
If you’re reading this from across the pond, Mike Brooks’ book
(that rhymed) Splinter King is now out in the US.
 
Rebellion with a glimpse at how the team made the Evil Genius 2 CGI trailer so deviously good.
 
TIGA has summarised recent parliamentary debates on BTEC and T-Level qualifications and outlined their stance on further education reform.
 
Whether it’s gaming, publishing or film, Rebellion has over 40 roles up for grabs across the country right now.

 Creative Industries & Tech Stuff 


Film & TV
Ant and Dec bagged their 20th consecutive win at the National Television Awards last night.
 
October’s BFI London Film Festival 2021 is set to feature 21 world premieres. Here’s Empire with its must-sees.
 
Channel 4 has opened its new Leeds HQ, set to be home to 200 of the channel’s 900 staff. And today also saw their Black To Front takeover day on our screens.
 
The Conversation on how Michael K Williams and The Wire redefined television.
 
The Guardian with its top TV picks for the autumn season. Where’s Married at First Sight UK? Weird?
 

Fashion
Over 8,700 shops closed for good in the UK in first half of 2021, including 1,063 fashion retail stores.
 
Nensi Dojaka has won the eighth edition of the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers.
 

Music & Radio
Arlo Parks won the 2021 Mercury Prize last night for her debut album, Collapsed In Sunbeams.
 
Rather unsurprisingly ABBA have broken Universal Music UK’s all-time album pre-order record. Over 80,000 have said ‘thank you for the music’ in just three days.
 
New research funded by Arts Council England has found that half of disabled music workers don’t disclose their conditions out of fear of discrimination.
 
Sales of LPs have outstripped CDs for the first time in major label BMG’s 13 year history. R-r-r-run it back.
 

Gaming
GamesIndustry.biz on why PlayStation is buying Firesprite, one of the UK's fastest growing studios.
 

Tech & Telecoms
Apple has shelved plans to sweep iPhones for evidence of child sexual abuse after backlash from privacy campaigners.
 
Facebook has partnered with Ray-Ban to launch smart glasses with a built-in camera.
 
Amazon paid just £3.8m more in corporation tax in the UK last year, despite sales increasing by £1.89bn here.
 
But they (Amazon) are set to cover the cost of college tuition for all 750,000 of their US frontline workers if they so wish.
 
TikTok has overtaken YouTube for average watch time per user in both the US and the UK.
 
Insurance start-up Marshmellow has become the UK’s second Black-founded unicorn.
 
Three has become the latest mobile network to bring back roaming charges in Europe #BluePassports.
 
PayPal is bumping up fees between the UK and Europe #SeeAbove.
 
A new federal report in the US has shown that solar energy could power 40% of the country’s electricity by 2035 without raising prices for consumers.
 
El Salvador has become the first country to use Bitcoin as an official currency… but it had a bit of a rocky start. Buy high! Sell low! Always said it!

 Appointments & Movers 


The BBC’s director of news Fran Unsworth is to leave next year after 40 years at the corporation; ITV entertainment commissioning editor Asif Zubairy is departing after nine years; Shaun Keaveny’s last show on 6 Music after 14 years is this afternoon; Ford has poached Apple’s car project chief Doug Field; Cush Jumbo has joined the board of trustees at the BRIT School; Leaf Arbuthnot is joining The Week as assistant editor; New Look has hired ex-Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe as chair; Pelin Başaran has joined Battersea Arts Centre as head of programming; David Kimbangi is the new senior commissioning exec at Film4
 
And are you the person for THIS role? The Arts Foundation is looking for a new director

 ...And Finally 

A 37-year-old Italian pastry chef is now living permanently as a hobbit. He even walked to Mount Vesuvius to chuck a ring into its crater. He’d been Tolkien about it for ages tbf.
 
Amazingly this isn’t a hoax. I have quadruple
(quackdruple) checked. The first ever recorded instance of a duck mimicking speech: an Aussie musk duck saying ‘YOU BLOODY FOOL’.

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