Arts: changing the world?

The journalist and broadcaster Ellen E. Jones explores the immense potential of film to challenge the status quo in her book, Screen Deep: How Film And TV Can Solve Racism And Save The World. She explores different genres from superheroes and westerns to horror and arthouse. And she argues that such a popular art form - either shared in the cinema, or beamed direct into your home – revels in the diversity of its story-telling.

The Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari has chosen to draw from her own personal experience in her debut feature, Shayda (open in cinemas across the UK & Ireland on Friday 8th March 2024). Set in a women’s shelter, the film explores what it means for an Iranian woman to divorce her husband and fight for a new life for herself and her child.

But what about other art forms and the stories they tell? The Royal Academy’s latest exhibition – Entangled Pasts: Art, Colonialism and Change (until 28th April) – places work from the 18th century alongside contemporary work to explore how art, both old and new, is entangled with and reflected by Britain’s colonial past. Hew Locke will be showing his major work, Armada, which consists of a giant flotilla of model boats.

Producer: Katy Hickman