Poets, we all agree, are terribly misunderstood and undervalued. If it were not for poets, how would we know what things were like other things. How would we live! How would we love! How would we die!
For the last two decades the stubborn, powerful myth that the creative arts and the Protestant working class in Northern Ireland do not go together has been regularly proclaimed, Connal Parr writes
Belfast’s Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle is one of those things that makes a soft Southern Irish atheist Catholic like me think I’ll never truly understand Northern Ireland.
The message and tone of the “trigger warning” suggests a sad lack of faith in the power of art, and, by extension, humanity. We’re capable of better, writes Padraig Reidy
There is absolutely no one engaged in modern public life at any level at all who has not complained that they’ve been silenced, denied a platform, bullied into submission by a cruel cabal of agents of reaction or “the liberal agenda”, take your pick.
The Arab Spring has not stopped Britain from helping crush free expression by selling crowd control ammunition to authoritarian states including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Alex Stevenson reports
Julia Farrington travelled to Northern Ireland to participate in the 2014 Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast. While there she saw four plays that deal with the Troubles as Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was questioned by police
Do we have the right to not be offended? Newtownabbey council said “yes” when they cancelled what they labelled a blasphemous play, writes Katie Dancey.
Ofcom’s decision to declare the UKIP a ‘major party’ has led to questions about who should be allowed to address the public. Behind the scenes, broadcasters have asked why their right to editorial freedom is restricted at all, Sophie Armour reports
Ben Jennings on David Cameron’s war on online pornography.