Theatre tax relief was introduced in 2014, offering qualifying productions a reduction in corporation tax of 20%, or 25% if they were touring. It is among a suite of tax incentives offered by the Government to the creative industries, with other beneficiaries including film, video games and high-end television. Last year there were 910 successful claims for theatre tax relief, with both large and small productions benefiting. About half of the relief awarded (£39m) went to claims for over £500k, of which there were 40. At the other end of the scale, more than a third of the claims (330) were for amounts of less than £10,000.
Author: Douglas McLennan
A Public UK Museum Releases Its Images To The Public Domain, Abolishing License Fees
“I bring better news from the campaign to abolish fees for images of works in British public collections. Birmingham Museums Trust has decided to go for “open access”, the first major British museum to do so. In a pioneering move, the trust will make images of copyright-expired works of art freely available to use under a CCO Creative Commons licence.”
Translation Matters
History is littered with more consequential mistranslations — erroneous, intentional or simply misunderstood. For a job that often involves endless hours poring over books or laptop screens, translation can prove surprisingly hazardous.
Study: Do Sci-Fi Readers Make Better Lovers?
The cliché of fans of these genres being lonely geeks is clearly mistaken. No doubt they have difficulties with relationships like everyone else. But it apparently helps to have J.R.R. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin as your unofficial couples counselor.
Remember The Great Recession? Where Is The Music Of Social Commentary?
Part of what looking across the genres shows you is that the big-selling, celebrity-driven mainstream of just about every style of music offers very little social or economic critique. If that’s what you’re looking for, look to the edges.
Dalouge Smith On How You Bring Back Music Education To Schools
The outgoing president of the San Diego Youth Symphony explains how he helped rebuild music ed in San Diego area schools: “We started with violins and cellos and violas and double bass. Actually we put third graders on double bass. We started that because we had asked the leaders in the community and the principals of the schools what instruments would be the right instruments to start with and the response we got was We have a tradition of string instruments in our community. We believe that there would be a strong response to string instruments. So when we first started this was 2010 we saw that kids were simply behaving better in their classes and as a result there was less disruption in the class. And that meant everybody was learning better in the class.”
Educator Warns: Big Orchestral Instruments Are In Danger Of Extinction
“Oboes and bassoons are generally not known at all in schools. They might have picture on the wall but they haven’t seen them in the flesh. This has been reflected in the massive falling off of the number of children learning them. The sheer physical size of the instruments, the complications of the reeds, and the expense of lessons has led to these instruments being sidelined.”
Dance Craze: People Are Dancing Alongside Moving Cars. Surprise! They’re Getting Hurt
A recent internet trend is inspiring drivers all over the world to jump out of moving vehicles and dance in the street while a friend in the passenger seat films, and now transpiration officials and law enforcement are starting to speak out against the dangerous fad.
Kennedy Center Takes A Risk With Honoring “Hamilton”
Is the wildly popular “Hamilton,” unveiled to the world in 2015, a classic? Do we know yet if it is a transcendent touchstone of American culture, in the manner of a Sinatra, a Sondheim, or even a Dolly Parton? Does it merit this recognition before, say, Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” or Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” or Duke Ellington’s jazz compositions? Surely not. In this sense, the Kennedy Center is taking a risk with its long game, and messing with the mission of the Honors. Which is to say that the Honors have long sought to set in stone artistic achievement — not be part of the original, taste-making plaster.
Good Art, Bad Person – The Moral/Aesthetic Judgments Are Complicated
When we turn on a movie or when we pick up a book, are we hoping that the movie or the book is good or are we hoping that the artist who made it is good? Run through your list of favorite movies or novels or paintings, then ask yourself what initially drew you to them. Was it the quality of the art or the quality of the artist’s character? Most people, if they are honest with themselves, will probably acknowledge that it’s the former, but that doesn’t mean that an artist’s character has no effect on how we see their art.