AS ALWAYS, it feels very special to be asked to guest edit the Morning Star’s culture pages but never more so than now.

In these unprecedented times, we face a future landscape that may be unrecognisable to many of us, BC and AC, Before and After Covid.

But what will that landscape look like? Will we be faced with rubble, ruins and our foundations laid bare, confronting us with an opportunity to rebuild and rethink?

This may strike fear into the heart and minds of many, but I suspect not the dedicated readers of this paper who know that change is possible and, more importantly, essential.

I have collected together a group of artists and practitioners who I believe are making waves to find the answers by working towards a new exciting, inclusive and radical future, a new breed of scientists, artists and activists collaborating to save our planet morally, politically and environmentally.

That, I believe, is the only way forward.

The magnificent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has been a time of grief, anger and serious contemplation, forcing many people to question their own involvement and complicity in systemic racism.

It is, more importantly, a time for education, for a new class consciousness, a time of unity against the most destructive pandemic, capitalism.

If our traditional educational institutions will not step up, then it lies at the feet of the arts to join publications like the Morning Star and organisations like the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, the Marx Memorial Library in London and Salford’s Working Class Movement Library to inform, educate and enlighten —to salvage our history and unify the global working class.