“We can’t have it both ways. We can’t keep saying we’re a wonderfully endowed cultural nation and boast about our artists and our poets and our writers and everything on the one hand, and then turn around and say we’re not good enough.” – Irish Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Story-Sharing Platform Wattpad Became A Hollywood Player
Beyond its handful of higher-profile productions, including a feature film coming this spring, Wattpad estimates that nearly 1,000 of its stories have been turned intotraditional books, TV shows, films and other digital content. It’s partnered with NBCUniversal, SYFY, CW Seed and others around the world to develop film and television projects, and last week it announced that it’s launching its own publishing imprint, Wattpad Books. – Los Angeles Times
First Issue: When A Museum Wants To Be Relevant To Its Community – What Does Relevance Mean?
“Our breakthrough moment was when we took ownership of the fact that we didn’t need to write a “social impact statement” (which might be seen as competing with our mission statement). Rather, we simply needed to articulate the problem our community is facing that we are uniquely suited to address, the best solution we believe exists for that problem, and the concrete and tangible outcomes we’re going to measure that will demonstrate our positive social impact.” – Medium
When A Civil Rights Worker Takes Over A Performing Arts Center… New Things Happen
Doug Shipman — the founding CEO of the Center for Civil and Human Rights before taking over running Atlanta’s Woodruff Center — seems the right person to carry the momentum forward into a new era. In his 18 months at the helm of Atlanta’s mecca of high arts, he has taken steps to broaden the arts center’s reach. In his first months on the job, Shipman made a point of meeting with numerous smaller arts groups with a simple message: how can we help each other? His openness and desire to give Woodruff a deeper imprint on Atlanta’s arts community are palpable. – ArtsATL
Doomsday Art – Culture And Our Threat Of Apocalypse
If every age has its version of apocalypse, the soft tragedy of our own is that it can no longer be safely situated in the future. Our end-times, instead, lurk among us, furtive and fierce and all too present-tensed, waiting, watching, lingering, biding—understanding, far better than we allow ourselves to, how little it takes to turn the good place into the bad. – The Atlantic
Arts School Tuition Is Too High. So One Seattle College Cuts Tuition By 20 Percent
Cornish officials believe theirs is the first arts school to reset its tuition rates alongside a growing list of small, private, liberal arts schools like the Cleveland Institute of Music, Mills College in California and Avila University in Missouri. – Crosscut
Why We Should Read About Ideas We Don’t Like
First, an idea, while unpleasant, may well be correct or true, in which case we gain insight by being exposed to it. And even if it is only partially true, it can help us reach a more complete understanding of the whole truth. Second, even if the idea is simply wrong, we benefit from hearing it and having to think through why it is wrong. This connects to the third point, which is that even true or useful ideas need to be contested and re-evaluated if they are to remain fresh and avoid calcifying into rigid dogmas. – Quillette
The World In 2019: Better Or Worse?
So are things getting better or worse? Both, evidently—different things for different people in different places. And which way of answering the question is best: compiling statistics, or conjuring science-fictional utopian/dystopian scenarios, or in-depth reporting on living, suffering individuals? All three. – The Baffler
The Powerful Role Of Gossip In Ancient Greece
While Aristotle suggests that gossiping was frequently a trivial, enjoyable pastime, he also makes clear that gossiping could have malicious intent when spoken by someone who has been wronged. This evaluation of words as weapons in the hands of the wronged is particularly pertinent when thinking about how the Athenians made use of gossip in the law courts in Athens, because Ancient court cases were based heavily on character evaluation of those involved in the case rather than on hard evidence. – Aeon
How Instagram Is Changing Book Covers
At a time when half of all book purchases in the U.S. are made on Amazon — and many of those on mobile — the first job of a book cover, after gesturing at the content inside, is to look great in miniature. That means that where fine details once thrived, splashyprints have taken over, grounding text that’s sturdy enough to be deciphered on screens ranging from medium to miniscule. – New York Magazine