Active energy - London: capital / climate / culture

As negotiators and the media descended on Paris, the Festival explored how culture in London interacts with the climate crisis through bringing together artists, journalists, politicians and academics to debate London’s role as a city of fossil fuels, and the responsibility of culture to drive a rupture with business as usual. The Active Energy project provided an example of how older citizens are able to draw on their extensive life experience to help counter climate crisis, and the role of the arts in facilitating that process.

Policy Solutions and International Perspectives on the Funding of Public Service Media Content for Children: A Report for Stakeholders

This project on Policy Solutions and International Perspectives on the Funding of Public Service Media Content for Children began on 8 February 2016 and concludes on 31 May 2016. Its outcomes contribute to the policy-making process around BBC Charter Review, which has raised concerns about the financial sustainability of UK-produced children’s screen content. The aim of this project is to evaluate different funding possibilities for public service children’s content in a more challenging and competitive multiplatform media environment, drawing on experiences outside the UK. The project addresses the following questions: • What forms of alternative funding exist to support public service content for children in a transforming multiplatform media environment? • What can we learn from the types of funding and support for children’s screen content that are available elsewhere in the world – in terms of regulatory foundations, administration, accountability, levels of funding, amounts and types of content supported? • How effective are these funding systems and funding sources for supporting domestically produced content (range and numbers of projects supported; audience reach)? This stakeholder report constitutes the main outcome of the project and provides an overview and analysis of alternatives for supporting and funding home-grown children’s screen content across both traditional broadcasting outlets and emerging digital platforms. The report has been made publicly available, so that it can inform policy work and responses to the UK Government White Paper, A BBC for the Future, published by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in May 2016.

The Art of the State

When we talk of culture we are talking about a source of enormous historical social power. Why did the GLC commitment to Popular Culture upset the rules of the unelected arts and sports quangos? How did the now abolished GLC get politics into arts policy?

‘State failure’ and the extraterritorial use of force in self-defence against non-state actors

The thesis is first and foremost the examination of the notion and consequences of ‘state failure’ in international law. The disputes surrounding criteria for creation and recognition of states pertain to efforts to analyse legal and factual issues unravelling throughout the continuing existence of states, as best evidenced by the ‘state failure’ phenomenon. It is argued that although the ‘statehood’ of failed states remains uncontested, their sovereignty is increasingly considered to be dependent on the existence of effective governments. The second part of this thesis focuses on the examinations of the legal consequences of the continuing existence of failed states in the context of jus ad bellum. Since the creation of the United Nations the ability of states to resort to armed force without violating what might be considered as the single most important norm of international law, has been considerably limited. State failure and increasing importance of non-state actors has become a greatly topical issue within recent years in both scholarship and the popular imagination. There have been important legal developments within international law, which have provoked much academic, and in particular, legal commentary. On one level, the thesis contributes to this commentary. Despite the fact that the international community continues to perpetuate a notion of ‘statehood’ which allows the state-centric system of international law to exist, when dealing with practical and political realities of state failure, international law may no longer consider external sovereignty of states as an undeniable entitlement to statehood. Accordingly, the main research question of this thesis is whether the implicit and explicit invocation of the state failure provides sufficient legal basis for the intervention in self-defence against non-state actors in located in failed states. It has been argued that state failure has a profound impact, the extent of which is yet to be fully explored, on the modern landscape of peace and security.