Director of BBC Arts Jonty Claypole: 'The gap between media and the arts has closed significantly'

Another production filmed on stage for the BBC is Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes, directed for the screen by Ross MacGibbon, filmed live at Sadler’s Wells, and produced by Illuminations. “I think the gap that has sometimes lingered between broadcast media and the performing arts has closed significantly,” Claypole adds.

Also in the announcement is a new documentary from Kimmings, the artist behind I’m A Phoenix, Bitch and Fake It ’Til You Make It. Shot before lockdown and finished during it, Opera Mums with Bryony Kimmings builds on the performance artist’s experience of single motherhood. “She was interested in the lack of focus that culture has given single mums, partly because it’s not seen as very glamorous,” says Claypole. Intrigued by the sensual glamour of opera, Kimmings decided to meld the two and make an opera about being a single mum. “The first part is her journey making the work,” Claypole says, “and the second part is the work itself. It fits brilliantly into her canon of work up to this point. I think it is a really significant piece of documentary-making, as well as a brilliant performance.”

A new series of monologues is presented with Crip Tales. Over the past few years, BBC Four has presented a collection of monologues based around a particular social issue. There was the 2017 miniseries Queers, created to remember the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality. This was followed by Snatches, on the centenary of some women getting the vote, and last year’s Soon Gone, a series about the Windrush generation. This year, the monologues – entitled Crip Tales – chart experiences of disability, marking the 25th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act. All of the monologues are written and performed by people with experience of disability. “It’s very hard hitting,” Claypole says, “but also entertaining, and opens a window into experiences that aren’t often represented in wider culture and media.”

The programme marks another anniversary – 50 years since the start of Play for Today, a milestone anthology of single dramas that ran on the BBC from 1970 to 1984, and which were a platform for artistic experimentation and political provocation. In celebration of the occasion, the BBC is broadcasting a number of classic dramas from the archives, and has commissioned a new documentary – Drama Out of a Crisis – about Play for Today and the social and political context of the 1970s and early 1980s. “It’s a hugely important cultural strand, and we felt that the BBC needed to mark that anniversary,” says Claypole. Other performances included as part of the programme are Contains Strong Language, a return of the poetry series with the first live poetry festival since lockdown, and a BBC Radio 3version of Florian Zeller’s latest play, The Son.

During lockdown, Claypole reports that cultural programmes, and Culture in Quarantine in particular, have enjoyed increased popularity. “Because we’ve taken all of our arts programmes and put them on BBC World News, there’s been a huge pick-up from audiences globally as well.”

’The BBC is experiencing its own challenges – we’re now in a long period of cultural austerity and the whole sector is going to struggle’

Claypole is not in denial about the difficulties the cultural sector is facing, and will continue to battle. “The BBC is part of that and it is experiencing its own challenges. I think what we’re in now is a long period of cultural austerity, in which the whole sector is going to struggle. But I’m very proud of what the BBC has achieved over the last six months, and what it’s going to continue doing,” he says.

But when asked about the rumours that the lack of funding for BBC Four means the channel is at risk of closure, of becoming a repeats and archive channel, or of going solely online as BBC Three did in 2016, Claypole is adamant. “BBC Four is not closing,” he says. “We are still commissioning arts programmes for BBC Four, and it is going to continue to be a home for performing arts programmes. In the annual plan, the BBC had its own financial savings to make, that’s well known, and that’s impacted every single channel. But I’m continuing to commission for BBC Four.”

While Covid-19 has presented an extraordinary array of challenges to the arts, Claypole is hopeful this can be a moment for positive change. “I think we’re not going to go back to what culture was in this country, but I don’t think all of that is going to be negative. It has been a really difficult six months, but we’ve been working in a much more direct way with independent artists and organisations. When lockdown started, a lot of the red tape and complexity that inevitably sits around the cultural sector fell away a bit, and everybody was collaborating in a way I’ve never seen before. I hope we don’t retreat from that directness.”

The BBC’s Culture in Quarantine programme can be accessed via BBC iPlayer