CounterpointStimulating debate with the British Council

Counterpoint invites you to the launch of John Holden’s pamphlet Culture and Class at The Circus Space on 7 September. In a debate chaired by Catherine Fieschi, Director Counterpoint, the panel and guests will be discussing the urgent questions around the role of culture in the promotion of social justice, in the Creation Studio of the UK’s premier circus school.

Using the UK as a case study, Counterpoint is turning the spotlight on the interplay of culture and class today. In advance of the publication of Culture and Class (forthcoming September 7), Catherine Fieschi outlines why it is crucial that we forge a new relationship between the two. Read the pamphlet's preface and have your say.

It's not exactly a good time for Britain's far-right radical movements.

While the BNP is rocked by internal squabbling, the English Defence League is not doing well in its demonstrations or public image.

How is Cloud Culture transforming lives around the world? Counterpoint is in the running to present research into this question at SXSW interactive 2011. The research presented will challenge assumptions about the relationship between cultures and technology, highlighting the flow of ideas from the perceived global periphery to the perceived centre. Thank you to everyone who voted for or commented on our submission to the SXSW panelpicker. Maybe we'll see you in Austin!

de.bunked is ‘a diverse collective of performance makers established out of the MA in Advanced threatre Practice at Central School for Speech and Drama’ announced the brochure. But I have to say that nothing in the programme notes prepared me for the unusual and provoking evening directed by Rob Drummer at Bethnal Green’s People Show Studios, under the title, Whose Cloud is it anyway?

If events continue as they have been, historians are likely to look back one day and write about how Marmite (yes, the spread) brought down the BNP.

Yesterday, the Lancaster Unity blog revealed that the BNP's legal director Lee John Barnes has resigned from the party.

Students of all disciplines, civil society practitioners and other young professionals with an active interest in international affairs, culture and identity will be tackling the issue of nation branding – what it is, who does it, and how – at the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) event “The Future of Europe: National Brands and Regional Integration”.

Yesterday the local newspaper Telegraph and Argus launched a campaign to stop the English Defence League coming to Bradford for a demonstration.

EDL supporters plan to demonstrate in the city on Saturday 28th August. But will they be allowed?

Lawrence Lessig's article For the Love of Culture: Google, copyright and our future, written for The New Republic, provides a lucid and nuanced guide to the central challenge facing policy makers in this area: how to promote democratic access to culture, while at the same time supporting its creation.

The travails of ethnic Uzbeks in Southern Kyrgyzstan may have (briefly) brought Uzbekistan into the media spotlight recently, but Uzbekistan, from the outside, is not a place we know all that well. Uzbekness: from otherness to ideology, a paper by Hamid Ismailov - emigre poet, novelist and Writer in Residence at the BBC World Service - provides an insider's view.