The Vaizey View

Government Stuff

Another change to the Online Safety Bill could see tech bosses face jail time over persistent breaches of the new rules.

The government has awarded £50m of Levelling Up funding to a new Eden Project project bubbling away in Morecambe - and £594m of the total amount distributed has gone to culture and heritage.

DCMS has confirmed that Barclays have been awarded the Digital Growth Grant to support the growth of UK scale-ups over Tech Nation.

The Lords Comms and Digital Committee has published its report into the future of the creative industries and the risks posed by “government complacency”.

The government has awarded £36m to Wildanet to bring superfast broadband to thousands more homes in Cornwall.

DCMS has placed a temporary export bar on an ancient Egyptian sculpture. I know exactly how to raise the £6m to save it. Sign up 10 people and I’ll tell you how.

(Please take a moment to sit with this joke. It’s one of my better ones)

Culture Stuff

Arts & Culture
Creative Scotland has warned that it’ll have to cut the number of companies with long-term funding in half due to Scottish government cuts.

UNESCO Is training countries bordering Ukraine in how to spot and save art being looted by Russia.

Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread has called for an end to Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth sculptures as sculptors struggle to find permanent homes for their work.

Paging 24 hour party people: Manchester's new flagship arts venue Factory International has been granted a 24-hour licence.

At a Sotheby’s auction, Kim Kardashian has bought a necklace previously loaned to Princess Diana.

Artist Peter Doig has been awarded $2.5m after a gallery tried to force him to take credit for a painting that wasn’t his. Not mine either. Cough up.

Design
Very cool. A set of renderings have been released depicting extraordinary unbuilt projects by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, including a mile-high skyscraper.

The Design Museum has launched an Eco Seed created by student winners of their Design Ventura competition with Deutsche Bank.

Researchers from MIT and Harvard have cracked (quite the opposite actually) the mystery behind the durability of ancient Roman structures.

Theatre & Dance
A new organisation, Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority, has been formed to tackle bullying and harassment in the theatre and the creative sector.

The National Youth Theatre is to hold free auditions in five UK cities and online next month.

Classical Music & Opera
The English National Opera is to get a year’s reprieve of £11.46m Arts Council England funding after all.

Love this. The Beeb on Gen Z’s surprising obsession with classical music. Babies get Bach.

Museums
A major new gallery exploring how engineers change the world is to open at London’s Science Museum in June.

The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford is closing for a lil’ £6m facelift.

Pollock's Toy Museum, the oldest of its kind in the UK, is closing and sending thousands of antique toys into storage.

Press, Books & Libraries
Author Boris Johnson (who you may know from books such as The Churchill Factor) has signed a deal with publisher HarperCollins for his memoirs.

RIP Vogue House. Condé Nast is moving out of its iconic Mayfair office after six decades.

Trust in UK media is up, according to an annual Edelman survey. Hoorah! But it remains among the very lowest in the world. Oh.

The Booker Prize has launched a competition to name its trophy. Booky McBookface. Done. Next.

Exhibitions and Events
Here’s the i with its pick of 37 events and exhibitions taking place across the UK in 2023.

Hahahaha. Ryan Reynolds, Graham Norton and Katherine Ryan are among the acts for the first Just for Laughs Festival at London’s O2 in March. Hahahaha.

A message from Skylarks

Before the current economic crisis, families with disabled children faced extra costs of over £1,000 a month compared to other families. Now, these families are becoming increasingly isolated, unable to access the vital services they need.

At Skylarks, we help children with additional needs to thrive. We are a small independent charity based in South London providing vital resources for children and young people and their families. We provide a supportive and active community, with opportunities to play, develop and feel empowered. We want to remove the isolation that can be created for families and their children who have a disability.

Since our establishment in 2006, we have worked with thousands of children, young people and their families while supporting the professionals who work with them. We deliver:

Activities - Free inclusive pre-school, afterschool and holiday activities
Therapies - Including counselling, hydrotherapy, and equine therapy
Employment skills - Early career development courses for young people with disabilities
Advocacy - Ensuring children receive access to an education
Advocacy - Ensuring children receive access to an education
Peer support - Helping build long-lasting relations for families.

To find out more or learn how you can get involved, please email aaron@skylarks.charity or visit www.skylarks.charity.

Creative Industries & Tech Stuff

Film & TV
All Quiet on the Western Front is making noise with 14 BAFTA nominations, followed closely by The Banshees of Inisherin. Richard E Grant is set to host.

The Beeb has penned a new deal with Discovery to air the Olympics for the next decade in the UK… but coverage will remain ‘severely limited’.

The Last of Us is HBO’s third largest debut of the streaming era. The Guardian on why this game adaptation is perfect for the telly box.

Only Fools and Horses’ Nicholas Lyndhurst is to star in the upcoming Frasier reboot.

Disney and the National Film and Television School are teaming up for a new £25,000 short film initiative for emerging directors.

Chaos! CHAOS! On the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s £99m comeback film Megalopolis reports The Times. Only been 40 years in the making after all.

Fashion
Bienvenue mes petits pois! It’s that time again! Paris Fashion Week! Here’s The Guardian on the Louis Vuitton and Rick Owens shows.

M&S is planning to open 20 new stores across the UK, creating 3,400 jobs.

For those attending (I’m busy, sorry), this year’s dress code at the Met Gala will be tributes to Karl Lagerfield.

Music & Radio
To celebrate 40 years in the biz, Madonna has announced a huge greatest hits tour covering every little thing that she’s said or done.

PRS for Music and the PRS Foundation have announced a new multi-year funding agreement for the latter’s work in talent development.

NME has the inside scoop on the fight to save BBC Introducing.

Gaming
Google Stadia. Launched as a ‘Netflix for games’ in November 2019. Completely closed down in January 2023.

Tech & Telecoms
Google is axing 12,000 jobs - around 6% of its total global workforce - and Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees.

ZeroAvia has made aviation history with a test flight of the largest hydrogen-powered aircraft to date.

Apple has unveiled a new MacBook Pro and HomePod speaker (but still no rumoured headset…). Yahoo on how it plans to control EVERYTHING.

While we’re on them… Half of all iPhones could be made in India by 2027. Here’s the Financial Times on what it would take for Apple to disentangle itself from China.

Battery start-up Britishvolt has gone into administration. TechCrunch on what the collapse means for the UK’s electric vehicle sector.

Despite cuts, Microsoft is still considering investing $10bn in OpenAI and they’ve expanded access to ChatGPT across its services.

On the flip side… Getty Images is suing the makers of one popular generative AI art tool for allegedly stealing photos. Gulp.

Millions of UK mobile and broadband users are facing 14% bill rises from April.

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried’s interview with Puck News, his first on-the-record chat since being arrested, is worth the admission fee.

And save some popcorn for The Verge’s long read going behind the scenes of three months of “extremely hardcore” Twitter under Elon Musk.

Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett is raising a $100m VC fund to back early-stage companies. I’m in.

JP Morgan has been quietly working with TikTok on payment tech for the platform.

Did somebody say Just Eat has signed a deal with Sainsbury’s to deliver food through its app?

Another day, another video from Boston Dynamics showing how their robots will eventually take over. They can now pick things up and throw them.

BITCOIN IS BACK, BABY! It’s up 22% in the past week alone. Fool me once - shame on you. Fool me… I’m investing.

Appointments & Movers

Greg Peters is the new co-CEO of Netflix, with Reed Hastings moving to the role of exec chairman; Ben Taylor has been named as the new editor of the Sunday Times; Ken Bruce is leaving is mid-morning Radio 2 show after 31 years to join Greatest Hits Radio; Dr Paul Thompson is to step down as vice-chancellor of the Royal College of Art after 15 years; Opera North general director Richard Mantle is retiring after 30 years in the role; Alex Chesterman, founder and CEO of used car marketplace Cazoo, is stepping down as CEO; The Sun’s managing editor Victoria Watson is moving to the same role at The Times; long-time Times columnist David Aaronovitch is leaving the paper after 18 years; the New York Times has appointed Adrienne Carter as its next Europe editor; Justin Audibert has joined Chichester Festival Theatre as artistic director; The Times’ Charlotte Edwardes has joined The Guardian as an interviewer; SoundCloud has appointed Emmy Lovell as global head of music

Ed Stuff