This week’s blog mourns the death of the silly season and celebrates creatives for keeping us on the straight and narrow.

A curious side-product of today’s ‘post-truth’ world is that it has made the Summer silly season for news a redundant notion. Sadly, there’s very little in the current headlines that would look out of place on any April Fools Day.

Nevertheless we did have to look twice when we saw that amongst the nominations for this year’s Beazley Designs of the Year are a knitted pink (Trump protest, obviously) pussyhat, a pro-European Union poster campaign and a lending library of protest banners.

Frankie says

Of course the creative industries have long been the first to cry foul ahead of the field. Whether it’s Woodstock pursuing peace in the 60’s, Katherine Hamnett’s “58% Don’t Want Pershing” T-shirts of the 80’s or even Dove’s current challenge to gender stereotypes with #LikeAGirl, creative people have always been quick to point out the Kings absent undies. So the short-listed protest banner library follows in a solid tradition – it’s signal of dark times ahead sends a powerful reminder of the need to push back against ‘alternative facts’.

Tell me sweet little lies

But perhaps more subtle a message is in the less-well publicised news item about a small town in Tuscany. Le Piastre, which hosts the ‘International championships of liars’ has just opened a museum dedicated to lying, which includes a section celebrating lies around the world and fictional children’s stories about lambs who eat sunrays (surely everyone knew that?).

Fake news or just a sign of the times?

Who’s to say? Either way it’s reassuring to know that we can rely on the creative industries to act as our conscience. And thank goodness for that. If not, who knows, the next thing you know we’ll find ourselves reading about ‘The Tunbridge Wells Sex Festival’

Surely not?

The (slightly) more serious season returns to the Muse blog next month.