Month: February 2012

UK Business Funding For The Arts Down 7 Percent In 2011

“Overall, private sector investment in culture in 2011 rose by 4% to £686 million, driven by an increase in support from trusts and foundations and individual giving. Of that £686 million, business support now accounts for £134.2 million, trusts and foundations for £170.3 million (up 10%) and individual giving for £382.2 million (up 6%). Within those results, theatre suffered a particularly poor year with private sector support falling by 10% from £53.8 million to £48.2 million.”

Sure We’re Learning More About Brain Mechanics (But What Is Conciousness?)

“Focus on your current state of consciousness – your experience of seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, willing, and so on – and ask yourself what kind of being this consciousness is, what its function might be, how it is related to the activity of cells in your brain, what could have brought it about in the course of evolution. Allow yourself to feel the attendant puzzlement, the sense of bafflement: now you are doing philosophy of mind.”

Surprise: Grammy TV Ratings Were Higher Than Oscar’s

The Oscars weren’t even the most-watched awards show on television this month. The Grammys Got an audience of 39.9 million. “The Nielsen Co. estimated Monday that 39.3 million people watched the Oscars on ABC Sunday night, up from the 37.9 million viewers during the much-panned 2011 show where James Franco and Anne Hathaway shared hosting duties.”

The World’s Best Pointe Shoes

“In a small workshop flanked by midrise apartment blocks, a no-frills sandwich café and a betting parlor, 12 shoemakers each transform satin, canvas, cardboard, burlap and leather into 40 pairs of pointe shoes each a day. Freed maintains its approximately 50% market share (the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pacific Northwest, Miami, New York City, Paris Opera and Royal ballet companies all use Freed shoes) by offering traditionally made shoes with an extremely high degree of customization — something other companies, such as Gaynor Minden, Grishko, Sansha and Capezio — simply can’t afford to do.”

Sure Times Are Tough. So Look To Artists For How To Makes Them Better

“As Europeans we should start looking at our cultural sector as a reservoir of hope, ideas and new economic growth that can lead us out of the crisis. The Europe of tomorrow is only going to be as successful and liveable as the ideas we have to make it grow. We all need master what artists are already good at – making more with less, finding fresh new perspectives and exciting new combinations. Art is not only a pleasurable icing on the cake; it is also a way of thinking and a practice of working innovatively with reality that can inspire us all to do better.”

Why Museums Really Don’t Like Kids

“They love them in school uniform, all besuited and trotting along behind a teacher. They are very keen to support “out of the classroom learning” as long as those having the lessons are accompanied by plenty of classroom assistants. Then they’ll boast about how many young people have visited their museum each year, and how much they have learnt. Yet if these same teenagers turned up out of school hours, dressed in hoodies, T-shirts and trainers, they’d get a very different reception.”