The Cultural Tutor engagement report

Best tweets

• Sep 5, 202576x their median

  Three years later. Never stop dreaming. https://t.co/L0JmA3m6W2

  19K6183131902.3M viewsView on X
• Oct 7, 202537x their median

  I’ve made a short film. Look at the things around you: doors, bins, staircases, furniture, railings, doorhandles, windows. Do you like how they look, or not? Modern design has become boring, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The word “beautiful” is overused. We don’t need “beautiful” lamps, bus stops, and water fountains – we just need lamps, bus stops, and water fountains that are interesting, that actually mean something. Or, at the very least, not boring. Because the aesthetics of architecture and urban design aren’t just a bonus; they totally change how we think, feel, and behave. Boring environments make us more stressed and less productive; they erode our sense of community; they make us sadder, less trusting, and lonelier. A boring world is one where we spend even more time online and where our addictions are even harder to battle. The Problem There is global, widespread dissatisfaction with how the world looks. In this film, and the series it will lead to, we want to investigate that feeling and give it a voice. The point isn’t that we should return to the past or get rid of modernism. It’s about learning from the past in order to improve the present, and about giving the public what they very clearly want, which isn’t the eradication of modernism but the co-existence of modernism AND traditionalism. Just look where tourists go, where they take their photos, and that tells you everything you need to know about what most people find interesting or beautiful. And look at where people go on holiday. It’s always to cities filled with old architecture and design, with churches and mosques and palaces, with charming little alleyways and stone staircases and wrought-iron railings. Of the world’s fifty most visited buildings, only four were made in the 20th century, and they’re all museums or memorials. There’s a reason why posts about this go viral online all the time. Regardless of why the change happened, it is clearly the case that we no longer make things how we used to. People are rightly confused by the fact that old lamp posts (to take the example we focus on in the film) are usually so pretty, while modern ones are usually so boring. Some people say this is just an example of survivorship bias… and they’re mostly correct. But that’s the whole point! Saying old buildings are usually prettier than modern buildings is not to say that architecture used to be better, or that the past was better. It is simply to say that certain kinds of buildings, because they have been preserved, are good examples of what people like most. In which case... shouldn't we try to design at least some buildings in a way that we know people like? A Unifying Cause Everybody, from all sides of the political spectrum and all backgrounds, stands to benefit from a world that is designed more thoughtfully and imaginatively. The world could be such a colourful, meaningful, and thrilling place! So this isn’t about left versus right or conservatism versus progressivism; it’s about making our world a more interesting and meaningful place to live in. This should be a unifying cause, because everybody loses out when our homes and cities are badly designed. I want this film to unite people who think they’re on opposite sides, and to create a consensus that we need to change our approach to how we design our buildings and the objects – benches, bus stops, bins, lamp posts, aircon units – that fill our cities. The Importance of Details We are incredibly rich and have a sprawling choice of shows to stream, phones to buy, or shoes to wear… but everything feels more and more generic all the time. If you want to understand a society, don’t listen to what it says about itself – look at what it creates. You can learn everything about the Victorians – the good and the bad – just by looking at their lamp posts. And what do the ordinary details of the modern world say about us? That we are technologically advanced, very efficient… and care more about making money, about making things as quickly and cheaply as possible, than making our world an enjoyable place to actually live in. It’s important to learn about why and how things have changed, but that’s for another time. The first step is establishing that the public aren’t happy with modern architecture and design, and that something needs to be done. But what we need isn’t a total revival of so-called ‘traditionalism’; the truth is that traditionalism and modernism can (and should) co-exist. The trouble right now is that we only have one, and that people are tired of it. The Power of Noticing But this film (and the series it will, all being well, lead to) is about more than the specific argument it presents. Above all it’s about a way of seeing the world around us, a way of noticing and thinking. “How you do anything is how you do everything.” That is probably true, and it also applies to whole societies, not just individuals; a single doorbell implies everything else about the whole socio-economic and political system that gave rise to its creation. And, beyond being merely “useful”, the ability to notice details makes the world a richer place to live in, and life a richer thing to lead. This is what the film is about, more than anything: the power and joy of noticing. A Bigger Project This short film is just the beginning. We want to make a full series about the history of art and architecture, both for their own sake and also to see what we can learn about life in the twenty-first century and how to improve it. To keep updated you can join our email list over at our website, linked in the reply below. Final Words You can watch the film here on X, or over on YouTube, also linked in the reply below. So… this is where the dream begins, the dream of a new series and the dream of a more charming, more interesting, more meaningful modern world. Spread the word.

  7.6K1.2K3353262.7M viewsView on X
• May 27, 202636x their median

  I’m making a show about buildings. The concept is simple: do for the man-made world what Planet Earth did for the natural world. But, when I pitched the idea, the answer was that nobody would watch it. So I released a pilot episode on YouTube. It’s got 5.4 million views, 379k likes, and 23k comments. People are interested, and now it’s time to make the full show. Six episodes, filming in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the USA, and releasing on a streaming service like HBO, Netflix, or Prime. Why does this show matter? First: we’re surrounded by buildings all the time. Look around yourself, right now… what do you see? Buildings are the logical conclusion of everything a society believes in. That’s the real focus of this show: not the buildings themselves, but what they say about us. Second: there’s global dissatisfaction with modern architecture. This feeling gets written about online, but nobody’s given a voice to it on film or TV. That’s what this show will be. But this isn’t just about criticising modernity. That’s easy. This is about learning from the past in order to understand and improve the present, for everybody. Third: there’s a drought of high-quality culture shows. When I spoke to film executives they said that only documentaries about sports, music, or true crime get funded. That’s a colossal missed opportunity. Galleries are always full, content about architecture goes viral online all the time, and people spend their precious holidays visiting beautiful cities. Why no shows about architecture, then? Tourists flock in their millions to see (for example) the buildings of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. But, if you asked those same people if they’re interested in “architecture”, they’d probably say no. To put that another way: not many people want to watch “a show about architecture”, but lots of people want to watch a show that illuminates the real world they’re living in, each and every day. What will the show be like? Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period: 1. Middle Ages 2. Renaissance 3. Enlightenment 4. The Nineteenth Century 5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco 6. Present Day But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean. So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century. That’s why it’s called The Modern World. When you think of a typical history show there are loads of interviews, stock footage, archive photos, historical recreations, and graphics. We’re doing none of that. Everything will be filmed on location, because we’re telling our story only through the real world that exists right now. And, rather than going to the most obvious places, we’ll focus on buildings that aren’t well-known but should be more famous. But that’s all big picture; what will it be like on screen? Buildings used to look different in every country, and now they look the same. Why? Because the weather is different everywhere, and buildings were always a way of dealing with that weather, using local materials. Now we have air conditioning and we ship concrete around the world, so we don’t need to design our buildings with regard to local weather or rely on local materials. Look at really old clocks and you’ll notice something: they don’t have a second hand… because it was only invented 300 years ago! Then you look at the present and you realise we’re surrounded by timers, by seconds ticking down and ticking up relentlessly. If we’re looking for a cause of our anxiety-inducing culture, that might be it. When you spend time with the sun-softened bricks and time-warped timbers of old cities you notice that synthetic materials like plastic have taken over. When we’re surrounded by things that feel temporary, how do you think it makes us feel? It’s only by seeing 19th century train stations, designed like cathedrals, that you realise tradition and technology aren’t enemies. New things don’t have to look boring: if the Victorians had designed AI data centres, they’d look like Medieval castles. In the 1920s, at the zenith of Art Deco, people believed technology would uplift humanity. That’s why they decorated their buildings with statues inspired by electricity. Only by seeing their enthusiasm can we realise our own cynicism, and perhaps begin to fix it. All of that… and much, much more. But, above all else, this show is about a way of seeing. If you want to understand any society then you need to look at what it creates, not what it says about itself. There’s a worldview in every single object; our skyscrapers are designed the same way as our phones. Learn to look at this world, to notice its details, and everything else starts to make sense. What now? I’ve been quiet online recently because I’ve been researching and working on scripts for six full-length episodes. Production begins when we’ve raised the funding. The Modern World is coming.

  8.0K9862971171.6M viewsView on X
• Aug 31, 202520x their median

  We spend more than 90% of our time inside, so why do we design so many of our interiors like this? Grey carpets, white walls, harsh lighting. It's generic, boring, and genuinely bad for our physical and psychological health... https://t.co/7Cze0LEWjv

  4.7K3519844454K viewsView on X
• Oct 26, 202515x their median

  2 weeks ago I released a short film on a new channel. 2 weeks later it has 2 million views, 190k likes, 13k comments, and the channel has nearly 200k subs. Why? Two reasons, both simple. 1) The internet is sloppier than ever, and everybody knows it. When you give people something that isn't just politics, and isn't ragebait or clickbait intentionally designed to make them mad or shock them, and isn't an advert fine-tuned by experts to co-opt their attention and infiltrate their brainspace and convince them (in the end) to buy or subscribe to something, and isn't just content pushed out according to the latest attention-grabbing trends with the hope of retaining viewership long enough to bag some ad space... it turns out people like it, appreciate it, and respond well. Modern life is somehow chaotic and boring at the same time, totally unhinged but wholly unsurprising, a kind of weird neurotic tedium, and the internet is its fulcrum, a bizarre hybrid of intercontinental corporate oversight and unchained mass democratisation of information, entertainment, news, and jokes. But it doesn't have to be this way (as many people already know!) and this short film was (partly) about proving that. We live in the Attention Economy, but you can also win attention by respecting it, not only by destroying it. 2) The message of the film: people around the world are tired of modern architecture and modern design. Those things aren't bad in themselves, and lots of modern design is wonderful; the problem is that we don't have anything else. Everything is more and more the same; architecture and design, like our ways of life, are increasingly generic and standardised. We wanted to give a voice to this widespread, genuinely global feeling, to put into precise words what millions of people have been thinking but can't quite express. So, along with the medium, the message also explains why the video has done pretty well. But, in the end, they're exactly the same thing. And it's only the beginning!

  3.6K1685511353K viewsView on X
• Aug 21, 202512x their median

  The world's most famous neoclassical buildings are kind of boring and generic when you actually look at them. It's even hard to tell them apart: which one below is Versailles, or Buckingham Palace? So here's why neoclassical architecture (although it's nice) is overrated: https://t.co/hp8BoUrnCc

  2.8K21210358359K viewsView on X
• Oct 11, 202511x their median

  1 video, 96 hours later. 500k views, 48k subscribers, 4.9k comments. Not bad for a new channel. These are some of the best comments so far: https://t.co/fx38IPOZsY

  2.7K913611215K viewsView on X
• Jun 3, 202611x their median

  The truth about minimalism: https://t.co/9duhNvn9Pi

  2.6K1605223212K viewsView on X
• Jun 8, 20268.0x their median

  Taking decoration away from buildings is like creating a world where trees never have any leaves: https://t.co/dl171QWVlA

  1.8K187297105K viewsView on X
• Jun 19, 20267.8x their median

  This 143 year old church in Glasgow is going to be demolished and replaced with a block of 32 flats. New homes are needed, but this is surely not the way to do it. https://t.co/1tpQF0vja4

  1.8K1567425189K viewsView on X

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