History
It was designed and dummied with collective input by dance critic Ismene Brown during 2009 and initially built on the Joomla! open-source platform by Alex and Jack Bremer of 3B Digital. It launched on 9 September 2009 with Ismene Brown (dance), Peter Culshaw (new music), Fisun Güner (visual art), Veronica Lee (comedy), Jasper Rees (film), Adam Sweeting (TV), Igor Toronyi-Lalic (classical music) and Matt Wolf (theatre) serving as founding section editors, and a team of some two dozen writers, critics and photographers. The content includes overnight reviews, arts news, extended interviews, festival guides, and video and visual features. The website has staged public debates and panel discussions. In its first year, it drew around 60,000 monthly visitors. Since late 2009 its commercial director and publisher has been Kevin Madden. From January 2010 to 2013 its honorary chairman was Sir John Tusa. Its contributors are professional critics and veteran journalists most of whom have worked for publications such as The Times, The Guardian, and The Telegraph, and guest creatives and performers are also sometimes invited to post first-person articles on the site. In 2019, The Arts Desk signed a deal with JPI Media that would allow I news to feature arts reviews and other articles written by the website's editors.
Core contributors to the website have included David Benedict, Anne Billson, Tom Birchenough, Richard Bratby, David Cheal, Russ Coffey, Alexandra Coghlan, Katie Columbus, Tim Cumming, Bruce Dessau, Gavin Dixon, Jillian Edelstein, Lisa-Marie Ferla, Judith Flanders, Graham Fuller, Jenny Gilbert, Caspar Gomez, Thomas H Green, Florence Hallett, Rachel Halliburton, Barney Harsent, Nick Hasted, Helen Hawkins, Stuart Houghton, Mark Hudson, Bernard Hughes, Sheila Johnston, Sarah Kent, David Kettle, Mark Kidel, Howard Male, Sam Marlowe, Demetrios Matheou, Joe Muggs, Simon Munk, David Nice, Steve O'Rourke, Claudia Pritchard, Peter Quinn, Graham Rickson, Markie Robson-Scott, Robert Sandall, Sebastian Scotney, Edward Seckerson, Aleks Sierz, Emma Simmonds, A S H Smyth, Josh Spero, Sue Steward, Roslyn Sulcas, Adam Sweeting, Graeme Thomson, Liz Thomson, Simon Thompson, Boyd Tonkin, Kieron Tyler, Marina Vaizey, Stephen Walsh, Hanna Weibye, Hilary Whitney, Carole Woddis, James Woodall and Matthew Wright.
