Read, Watch & Listen

From Shostakovich to Frank Zappa, Elvis Presley and The Beatles, writer Ariane Todes investigates what has caused aural offence and how artists have boldly defied the censors through music.

How can exploring alternative realities make a difference? We meet performing arts organisation METIS to see what impact the arts can have on the big issues...

What does it mean to be a 'change maker'? We've been working with students and teachers from one of Britain’s largest secondary schools, Sydney Russell School in Barking & Dagenham to explore that question...

Music has a unique role to play in war time. Dr Kate Kennedy looks at a number of solider-composers from World War I, from different backgrounds and nations, exploring the vital importance of music for survival.

We look back through the life and work of pioneering documentary photographer and visual activist, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) to coincide with the first UK retrospective of her work, 'Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing'.

In an extract from 'Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds' exhibition catalogue, photography historian David Chandler reflects on Winship’s Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation award-winning body of work: she dances on Jackson.

Tokyo-based journalist Ian F Martin looks back through the decades to see who was responsible for the genre-defining music emerging from the Japanese underground scenes over the past 40 years.

We look back at our June 2018 Instagrammer, Anna Heath to explore her Barbican shots.

Choreographer Ann Van den Broek joins curator Leila Hasham in conversation ahead of her ten-day performance installation in The Curve, a ‘total experience’ of live performance, spoken word, sound and video with Dutch-Flemish dance company WArd/waRD.

As we start to build a Barbican Archive, we uncovered every edition of the Barbican Guide. Documenting the range of events we've hosted since we first opened in March 1982, browse the first year of our monthly guide.

We look back at our May 2018 Instagrammer, Tiny Kingdom to explore their Barbican shots.

Discover a less well known world of cinema in these bold and ground-breaking films from French agitators and directors from newly independent countries in Francophone Africa from the 1950s to the 1970s.