Abstract

the london journal, Vol. 46 No. 2, July 2021, 121–127 VIEWPOINTS Covid commentaries: London’s cultural landscape Deborah Bull and Luke Dickens luke.dickens@kcl.ac.uk Baroness Deborah Bull CBE, Crossbench Peer, Chair of the Arts & Culture strategy group of the London Transition Board and Vice-President and Vice-Principal (London) at King’s College London; in conversation with Dr Luke Dickens, Exhi- bition Reviews Editor for the London Journal. Interview recorded online March 2, 2021. LD: In place of our usual theatre and exhibition reviews, we’re looking to get an overview from key cultural commentators about the impacts, mainly of COVID but also perhaps other recent events, on London’s cultural landscape with an emphasis on museums, galleries and theatres. It would be useful, just to start though, for our readers to be able to position you as a cultural com- mentator. DB: The perspective I bring to this is from my work on the London Transition Board, which is a board co-chaired by Robert Jenrick MP and the Mayor of London, which is aiming to oversee London’s transition out of the COVID pandemic. It was active in the first six to eight months of the pandemic, and it is just about to stand up