Read our posts about Culture

16Jan

Culture Tip: Birdman

Jacqueline Palmer

culture, films

Soul

A review of dark, comic satire Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone.
» Read More

20Dec

Culture Tip: Electricity

Jacqueline Palmer

culture, films

Soul

Jacqueline Palmer, therapist and film critic, takes a look at Agyness Deyn's star turn in creative film: Electricity, an exploration of epilepsy.
» Read More

28Nov

Culture Tip: The Homesman

Jacqueline Palmer

culture, films

Soul

Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones star in The Homesman, a powerful film which addresses feminism and mental health issues.
» Read More

21Nov

Culture Tip: Grayson Perry's Who Are You?

Camilla Nicholls

creativity, culture

Soul

The Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry talking recently about Who Are You?, his display of new works at the National Portrait Gallery in London, commented that, “identity is one of those words that gets used a lot particularly in political terms and it always seems a slippery term to me”. In this diverse collection of 14 portraits shown in the Gallery’s nineteenth and twentieth century rooms Perry uses his fierce intelligence and particularly winning aesthetic to try to pin that term down. The works have all been made in response to meeting...
» Read More

14Oct

Is Masculinity A Cultural Myth?

Chris Taylor

culture, emotions, men, psychology, society

Therapists

Counsellor Chris Taylor shares his opinion on the cultural myth of masculinity: the dangerously damaging effects of exerting such pressure on men in society
» Read More

23May

Culture Tip: All in the Mind

Camilla Nicholls

culture, depression

Soul

I had to stop the car when I was driving home from the Tavistock clinic recently. There was nothing wrong with me, or the car, I just needed to focus on what was happening on the radio. A young woman, Sally, suffering from long-term depression and what she described as a ‘constant state of disassociation’ was telling presenter Claudia Hammond why she was nominating her friend, George, in the individual category for the BBC All in the Mind 25th Anniversary Awards. She read out part of the email she had sent to the programme in support of her nomination. Anyone who...
» Read More

16May

Culture Tip: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Camilla Nicholls

books, culture, psychology

Soul

This week's Culture Tip is the first, and may possibly be the last, to incite in me an urgent need to increase dental flossing. Joshua Ferris’s new novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour follows anti-hero, Paul O’Rourke, who is a Red Sox fan, an avowed atheist and an acclaimed New York dentist with a thriving practice. He is a man who cares deeply about oral hygiene and his pain at his patients’ dental deterioration is palpable. He is impotent in the face of a prolific alter ego who, it seems, might just be a kinder, nicer and far from agnostic him. Paul...
» Read More

15May

Therapy and Cultural Difference

Christina Moutsou

counselling, culture, identity, therapy

Therapists

London is a very multi-cultural place and so cultural difference is an important consideration when choosing a therapist says Christina Moutsou
» Read More

21Mar

Culture Tip: The Pale Fox at Chisenhale Gallery

Camilla Nicholls

creativity, culture

Soul

The Pale Fox, the first UK solo exhibition of the French, New York-based artist Camille Henrot, is currently on show at Chisenhale Gallery a publicly funded space that garners awards and frequently punches above it’s weight in terms of its programming and outreach work with local communities. On the day I saw the show there had already been a visit by members of the East End Women’s Institute and the gallery was filled with comprehensively tall-haired students from Wimbledon College of Arts. Henrot was awarded the Silver Lion for most promising artist at the Venice...
» Read More

14Mar

Culture Tip: The Book of Mormon

Claudine Levy

culture

Soul

The next morning my cheeks are aching. A solid two and a half hours of smiling is hard to beat, and that’s exactly what The Book of Mormon induced in me. From the makers of South Park, the musical charts the progress of Elder Cunningham and Elder Price, two Mormon missionaries sent to Uganda on a divine quest to baptise as many people as possible. It simply feels gloriously unacceptable.  This musical is camper than a Carry On film, and so self-aware it almost hurts. It would be easy to piously reject jokes about rape, racism and Aids, but once you embrace the...
» Read More