We’re always seeking ways that arts and culture can blast hope spaces of new thinking about power and politics. Invitations into new metaphors, richer and subtler versions of being human - that then reveal what needs to be done, and built.

The above (embedded) is a brilliant example of this - a poem-film (well, that’s what it is) commissioned by the Financial Times, written by the playwright and journalist Clare Dywer-Hogg, and spoken by the great Northern Irish actor Stephen Rea.

If it is indeed a “cry from the Irish border” about Brexit, it is a soft but compelling one - militantly arguing for complexity and subtlety, amidst the crudities of Brexit politicians about the nature of the Irish border, post the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. The final lines are, to the A/UK office, tear-jerking:

We live here

And we're holding our breath

Again

Because we know chance and hope

Come in forms like steam

And smoke

More here.