Theatres that normally function as places of gathering, storytelling and entertainment have found themselves playing a very different role in the age of coronavirus. – The Stage
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Arts’ COVID Losses By The Latest Numbers
How have things changed since the pandemic? A recent Brookings Institution report shows America’s arts and creative industries lost $150 billion in sales and 2.7 million jobs through July. The “fine and performing arts” alone (commercial and nonprofit) incurred losses of $42.5 billion and a whopping 50% of its workforce (-1.4 million jobs). – Americans for the Arts
Study: Hunger And Loneliness Activate Same Part Of The Brain
“[This study] provides empirical support for the idea that loneliness acts as a signal—just like hunger—that signals to an individual that something is lacking and that it needs to take action to repair that.” – Smithsonian
Spotify’s Most Streamed Tracks Of 2020
Bad Bunny was the biggest artist globally, amassing 8.3bn streams. The Puerto Rican star’s second album YHLQMDLG notched up 3.3 billion streams, followed by The Weeknd’s After Hours and Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding. – BBC
How Your Brain’s Built In Biases Let You Believe Untrue Things
There are several well-known mechanisms in human psychology that enable people to continue to hold tight to beliefs even in the face of contradictory information. – The Conversation
Time To Talk About Dancer Body-Shaming?
Dancers are rarely ever given comprehensive or healthy guidance on how to get into the shape that’s being asked of them—even when the resources are available. – The Observer (UK)
BookExpo And BookCon Are No More
“The pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo and BookCon where we were already examining the restructure of our events to best meet our community’s needs.” – Publishers Weekly
An Emerging “Museum of The Future”?
A long period of relative peace, prosperity, and globalisation after the Cold War had lulled the museum field into complacency not only about its financial viability, but also about its relevance and credibility. The Covid-19 crisis—which coincided with a painful reckoning with the intertwined legacies of colonialism and racial injustice—has accelerated a push to adapt and innovate, in six principal ways. – The Art Newspaper
Objections To Giant Publishing Mega-Merger
In a statement on Wednesday, the Authors Guild laid out its opposition to the proposed deal. The sale “would mean that the combined publishing house would account for approximately 50% of all trade books published, creating a huge imbalance in the U.S. publishing industry,” the Guild said. – Publishers Weekly
Magazine Slammed For Performance Of Audio Narration
“The first line identifies the writer as a “southern Black woman who stands in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement.” The essay itself appeared in Fireside on Nov. 24 and an audio version was published alongside it. Despite the topic and its author, the person who narrated the audio recording was a young, White male voice actor who spoke in an accent that listeners interpreted as something that would appear in a minstrel show.” – Washington Post