The Arts Hour on Tour will be in Seattle to celebrate the city’s unique culture. Nikki Bedi will be at The Rainier Arts Centre, in partnership with Seattle’s KUOW radio station, in front of a live audience.
Leading voices from music, film and gaming will join Nikki to share their views on what makes Seattle’s culture so distinctive; from the rich legacy of its independent music scene to the creative innovation of its tech companies.
The Grammy-nominated artist Hollis will be talking about her journey from local musical theatre to performing on the biggest of stages with hip hop superstars, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
The award winning filmmaker, curator and advocate, Tracy Rector, tells us about her work uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC voices in Seattle and internationally.
Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet Laureate, Claudia Castro Luna, reflects on expressing the immigrant experience in Seattle through poetry.
In the city of Amazon, Microsoft and Nintendo, voices from the world of tech talk about how they’ve used innovation to create new forms of artistic communities.
Plus there will be music from the Marshall Law Band, the funk-hop collective that captured the city’s imagination performing on the streets during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
We ask what action is needed to secure the future for a new generation of artists in Seattle amidst increasing inequality, a housing crisis and the challenges of the pandemic.
To attend the live recording of this show, please see the Eventbrite link below:
The Arts Hour on Tour pre-records in a different city around the world, several times a year. The idea is to showcase the best performing talent and discuss the hottest cultural trends in each city in an up-beat programme. The show is always great fun.
So far it’s hosted and recorded shows in Paris, Jerusalem, Jaipur, New Orleans, Berlin, Venice, Reykjavik, Seoul, Edinburgh, St Petersburg, Mexico City, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Addis Ababa, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Montreal, Brussels, Johannesburg, Tunis, Milan, Bogota, London, Warsaw, Nashville, Tblisi, Sarajevo, São Paulo, Miami and Lisbon. During the pandemic The Arts Hour on Tour recorded online shows from Rome, Stockholm and Sydney.
Nikki Bedi is an international television and radio broadcaster with a passion for making arts and culture accessible. Her knowledge, curiosity, world-view and comprehensive research, have led to her being described as a ‘cultural courier, de-colonising the world one programme at a time’!
She currently curates, writes and hosts The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service, its flagship arts and culture programme, which once a month becomes The Arts Hour On Tour, a show which travels to different cities in the world bringing that country’s biggest and brightest artists, actors, authors, musicians, comedians, directors, architects, poets and other bright stars in their fields, together, for a spirited debate before a live audience.
In covering the arts across the globe for over two decades, which she describes as not only a privilege but also the greatest education anyone could have, Nikki has interviewed some of the world’s biggest names and talents, celebrities and industry heavyweights.
Her other recent BBC work includes Riz Ahmed: Road To Englistan, a special in-depth TV interview with actor Riz Ahmed in New York; and the topical, weekly arts and entertainment Radio 4 programme, Front Row.
She joined the BBC as a presenter in 2003 and has rarely been off their airwaves since, hosting all kinds of TV and radio shows.
