A catwalk show with real people instead of models - and it was beautiful

Titled What Is The City But The People?, it's the opening event of the Manchester International Festival, the city's biennial arts festival.

Lots of people here probably wouldn't think of 150 men, woman and children (and some dogs) walking up and down a walkway as art.

But it took an artist and an arts festival to make it happen. And it's often only artists who have the licence to make us stop, see things we hadn't spotted before, and hit us where we feel it most.

The simplicity and beauty of this event puts Jeremy Deller up there as the king of great ideas that reach into our lives and touch us.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40452973

http://mif.co.uk/mif17-events/

How San Francisco is leading the way out of bottled water culture

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mericans drink enough bottled water each week to circle the globe two times around. That was one of the many alarming facts that motivated politicians in San Francisco to pursue a progressive environmental regulation no other major US city had dared – a ban on bottled water.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/how-san-francisco-is-leading-the-way-out-of-bottled-water-culture

'I wanted the building to fly': Renzo Piano's Santander gallery opens

“The idea was not to create an icon like Bilbao,” says Vicente Todolí, president of foundation’s visual arts committee and former director of Tate Modern. “The building is not trying to show off or give the impression that Santander is more than it is.”

With a population of 170,000, the culturally conservative Santander is about half the size of nearby Bilbao, and Piano has created a suitably modest addition to the waterfront.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/renzo-piano-santander-spain-art-gallery-opens

After Grenfell Tower unbridled anger won't make our homes any safer

There is so much anger in the wake of the horror of Grenfell Tower that it feels controversial to ask whether anger unbridled is a helpful reaction. Much of it is clearly a righteous anger, not least that seen yesterday when protestors marched on Kensington Town Hall and some entered the building. But it invites the response that, until now, people haven’t been angry enough. Yet in recent decades anger has become riot in Britain many, many times. Once anger is unleashed, it is hard to contain. Once it is contained, however, it tends to stay that way, for a time at least.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/17/grenfell-tower-anger-homes-proeprty-rage

Room in the middle: the Africans repopulating Spain's dying villages

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ith its abandoned houses, empty streets and ageing, shrinking population, Visiedo in northern Spain could be the poster village for European rural decline.

On sunny days it looks like the set of a spaghetti western. Its streets are home to more dilapidated brick houses than people and you’re as likely to come across a tractor than a car.

But salvation may be at hand, and from an unlikely quarter. The Spanish interior may be slowly dying but there is one class of people ready and willing to help bring about a revival: immigrants.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/11/room-in-the-middle-the-africans-repopulating-spains-dying-villages