Artistic Licence: From poverty to poetry

How will recession affect the arts? So far, predictions have ranged from the dire to the despair-inducing.

As anyone with an eye on the arts will have noticed over the past months, theatre funding has been swallowed up, book publishers are shutting down divisions and even well-known musicians are crashing and burning, losing their record deals as their labels go bust.

In times like these, it may be hard to think of positives, ...