Suite (212) is a radio programme, broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm, and podcast that explores the arts in their social, political, cultural and historical contexts, hosted by Juliet Jacques. We take an inter-disciplinary approach, with an emphasis on innovative, underground or avant-garde work. Sometimes, panels discuss cultural politics; sometimes, we focus on a new publication or exhibition, or a specific individual or group whose work we admire.
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In our latest Session, Juliet talks to William Raban about his five decades in film, and especially his engagement with London, from his time in the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative in the early 1970s to his most recent work in 2020. They discussed William’s origins in the Structural and Materialist movement of the Seventies, and his use of different film formats from 8mm to digital; how he made his feature-length Thames Film (1986), narrated by John Hurt and shown on Channel 4; his A13 (1994) and Island Race (1996), made partly in response to the election of a British National Party councillor on the Isle of Dogs in east London; how authors such as Charles Dickens and T. S. Eliot have come into his work; and the difficulty of making films in the wake of the atrocities in Gaza and elsewhere.
A full list of references, with links is available to Patreon subscribers – go to https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212 to subscribe to Suite (212) for as little as £3.50 a month.
The Suite (212) Sessions no. 20 - Jill Westwood
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 • Duration 48:56
In the first of our Sessions for five years, Juliet speaks to artist, filmmaker, performer and art psychotherapist Jill Westwood (b. 1960) about her work in the early 1980s and its rediscovery after it was included in Tate Britain’s landmark exhibition Women in Revolt: Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 in 2023. They also discussed how Jill’s practice was formed in the Black Country, where she encountered punk as a teenager, at art school in Stourbridge, and then in Sheffield amidst the city’s post-punk music scene, with deindustrialisation, misogyny and the Yorkshire Ripper in the background. We talked about her photography, performances and films, made as a student at the Royal College of Art in London between 1979 and 1984, how her art intersected with the queer and fetish scenes, and her subsequent work as an art psychotherapist in Australia and London. Finally, we talked about how group exhibition, Protect Me from What I Know with Sohrab Hura and Adam Lewis Jacob at Glasgow International, and how people respond to her work decades after its creation.
For a full list of references, as well as links to Juliet’s Frieze article on Jill’s work, please go to https://patreon.com/suite212 and subscribe for as little as £3.50 per month.
Creative Growth: Labour's cultural policy since 2024
Friday, June 5, 2026 • Duration 01:02:11
Since Labour returned to power in the 2024 UK General Election, announcing their landslide victory with a speech at the Tate Modern, little has been made of their cultural policy. In this free episode, Juliet talks to Dr David Hesmondhalgh – Professor of Media, Music and Culture at the University of Leeds, and the author of Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (2015) and five editions of The Cultural Industries – about Labour’s approach to art and culture, looking at their policies and the ideology behind them.
Looking primarily at England as cultural policy is devolved in the rest of the UK, Juliet and David discussed the move away from Jeremy Corbyn’s arts policies; Labour’s Plan for the Arts, Culture and Creative Industries and the 2024 manifesto; the centrality of local government and education to cultural policy; Margaret Hodge’s review of Arts Council England; the timidity of Labour’s approach and the limits of their idea of ‘creative industries’; how this has differed (or not) from the Conservative and New Labour governments before them; and the need to shift the emphasis from financial returns to the intrinsic social and cultural importance of the arts.
Subscribe to us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212 for £3.50 per month to get a full list of references from this episode, as well as bonus episodes, Juliet’s archived articles, and more.
New horizons: The Return of Suite (212)
Friday, May 22, 2026 • Duration 01:14:01
Suite (212) returns after five years – and true to form, it’s with an episode analysing the current political and cultural climate in the UK and beyond, and why we brought the show back into it. There’s a twist, however, as frequent guest Owen Hatherley asks regular host Juliet Jacques the questions, about why Suite (212) ended in December 2021, what’s changed since, and what the programme might do differently this time around.
Along the way, we talked about the differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Zack Polanski as leaders of political projects and their respective tastes shape them; how the left reacted to the defeats of 2019-24 and the cultural effects of their withdrawal; the decline of the US as a cultural hegemon, and the rise of Chinese and Korean culture in the west; the international far-right attacks on the arts and the parts of society that uphold them; the concept of ‘counter-counterculture’; the impact of developments from the genocide in Gaza to the coming of AI on the arts; the crushing disappointment of Starmer’s Labour and their lack of interest in culture; how ‘stanning’ sells artists short; and some ideas for future episodes, ending with an appeal for our listeners to get involved in shaping its new direction.
To subscribe to Suite (212) for as little as £3.50 per month, please visit https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212.
EXTRA: It's a Sin [unlocked]
Tuesday, March 1, 2022 • Duration 01:06:10
Following from December 2021’s Resonance 104.4fm show on the cultural impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with James Butler and Sarah Schulman, Juliet talks to writer Huw Lemmey about Channel 4’s landmark miniseries 'It’s a Sin'. Written by Russell T. Davies and broadcast across January and February 2021, 'It’s a Sin' follows a group of friends who meet on London’s gay scene in September 1981, just as the first British cases are being diagnosed, and charts the impact of HIV/AIDS on their sex lives, relationships, families, friendships and careers over the following decade. In this subscriber-only episode on the miniseries, Juliet and Huw talk about the conservatism of British television and their reluctance to commission it; critical reactions to the show, and call-backs to the 1980s ‘moral panic’ about homosexuality; Davies’ skill in writing for television; how the programme looks at the personal impact of HIV/AIDS, and its portrayal of LGBT activism and its relationship with wider British politics; and how 'It’s a Sin' is ultimately a show about care, and how it represents models of queer (and straight) kinship.
The End: Politics, culture and criticism in the UK in the 2020s
Tuesday, March 1, 2022 • Duration 58:27
For Suite (212)'s final edition, host Juliet Jacques talks to writer/editor Owen Hatherley (Tribune and elsewhere) and Fatema Ahmed, acting editor of Apollo, about the current state of British cultural criticism and what the next few years might have in store. They discuss the reasons for stopping Suite (212) and the changing cultural climate between and after the General Elections of 2017 and 2019, and what's happened to the Labour Party; the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic; state funding, the media and the BBC; and what the left might focus on when thinking about the arts and culture.
We: An interview with Pil & Galia Kollectiv
Tuesday, November 16, 2021 • Duration 59:16
In this month's Resonance 104.4fm, Juliet spoke to London-based artists, writers, musicians, curators and teachers Pil and Galia Kollectiv about their practice, the art world's reaction to Covid-19 and the state of British higher education, especially in arts universities. They talked about Pil & Galia's Immigrants exhibition (2018), their short films, their bands WE and UrBororo, their background in Israel and their writing for the music press, and more.
A full list of references from this episode is available to Patreon subscribers. To sign up for as little as £1 per month, visit patreon.com/suite-212.
These are the Times: An interview with Trevor Griffiths
Tuesday, October 19, 2021 • Duration 59:37
In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to playwright and screenwriter Trevor Griffiths, born in Manchester in 1935, about his life in writing for stage and screen since the late 1960s. Although Griffiths wrote the scripts for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) and Ken Loach's Fatherland (1986), this interview focused on his plays Occupations (1970) and Comedians (1975), his TV series Bill Brand (ITV, 1976), his BBC TV film Food for Ravens (1997) and his play A New World, staged at Shakespeare's Globe in 2009.
A full list of references for this episode is available to Patreon subscribers for as little as £1 per month. You can subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212.
Poetry and Politics in 21st Century Britain
Tuesday, September 21, 2021 • Duration 58:45
In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poets Ed Luker (based in London) and Nat Raha (based in Edinburgh) about the state of poetry, publishing and funding in 21st century Britain. She asks Ed and Nat to share their poetry and their influences, discussing the Cambridge school of poets around J. H. Prynne and their studies at Sussex with Keston Sutherland. They discuss the divides between 'big' and 'small' presses and what sort of work(s) they publish, and the flaws of the 'underground' vs. 'mainstream' binary; the relationship between contemporary poetry and new currents in feminist and socialist politics; funding models for poets and publishers; and how new left-wing media might work with sympathetic poets.
For a full list of references from the show, please subscribe to our Patreon for as little as £1 per month, via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.
EXTRA: Literature about and after Corbyn's Labour [unlocked]
Monday, September 6, 2021 • Duration 52:25
Now unlocked, this subscriber-only bonus episode came about because Juliet enjoyed talking so much to Sam Byers and Carl Neville about the 'state of the nation' novel for our monthly Resonance 104.4m show that they decided to keep going. They expanded on the question of what literature about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party might look like, and how both the defeat and the intensification of neoliberalism might shape the form and content of British literature throughout the 2020s.
For a full list of references with links, please subscribe for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.
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