“The overly complex process leads to mistakes being made by both applicants and by assessors, and refusals being made for visas that could theoretically be granted. The situation has led to artists now telling festivals they are much more reluctant to accept invitations to come to the UK due to the visa process, despite the assistance we receive from bodies such as the British Council and UK embassies across the world.”
Blog
So There’s A Word You Use Countless Times A Day That Stems From The African Slave Trade? Mmhmm.
Wait, so mmhmm counts as a word, even though it’s not in the dictionary? That’s what some academics are arguing – and they say that the word’s origin among enslaved Africans in the U.S. is the reason it never was recognized by dictionaries (and thereby had its spelling standardized).
How Art For Justice Aims To Reduce Mass Incarceration
It’s worth remembering that the Art for Justice Fund is barely a year old. Yet in that short time frame, the fund, along with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, has placed the issue of mass incarceration front and center across the arts giving landscape. The rapid evolution of Art for Justice has provided socially driven funders with a template for leveraging the arts to change public policy, and has shown metrics-driven naysayers—often referred to as “effective altruists”—how the arts can drive measurable positive outcomes.
A 1,600-Year-Old Poetry Trope, Revived For The Contemporary Middle East
“Stopping by the ruins” – wuquf ‘ala al-atlal – was one of the primary themes of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry: the poet visits the ruins of a spot where he once camped with his beloved, now lost to him. The trope was already being mocked as a cliché and parodied by the eighth century CE, but it held on, and today a new generation of writers and other artists is using the imagery of the ruins to address the devastation caused by wars and violence in the Arab world.
Singer Claims Two Classical Music Stars Raped Him
Samuel Schultz, then a 23-year-old graduate student at Rice University, says he was frightened of repercussions and hid the alleged event for years. Emboldened by both the #MeToo movement and upon learning that David Daniels had made tenure at the University of Michigan — where he’d be in close personal contact with young aspiring singers — Schultz filed a complaint with the U-M Police Department’s special victims unit in July.
Contemporary Music Is Finally Like Contemporary Art – All Over The Place: Alex Ross
Ross looks at the zillion different directions new music has gone in since the eclipse of modernism. He also discusses what he calls the “Kandinsky Problem”: “In the art world, instinctive antagonism to the new, the weird, and the absurd is less common. People think nothing of queueing for hours in order to sit in a chair opposite Marina Abramović or to grope their way through a foggy tunnel designed by Olafur Eliasson. Indeed, composers can often find a more appreciative audience if they reclassify their music as an installation or as performance art.”
‘Ceci N’est Pas Une Rue’: Here’s What Happens When You Let Brussels Residents Name Streets
The area around a former freight train depot in the Belgian capital is being redeveloped into a neighborhood called the Tour & Taxis district, and officials decided to let the public – in René Magritte’s hometown – suggest names for the thoroughfares. So there will be Frites Street, Endive Street, Speculoos Street, Kriek Street (for the cherry beer), and (yes, really) Ceci n’est pas une rue (This Is Not A Street).
Berlin Train Station To Play Atonal Music To Drive Away Drug Users
“Germany’s national rail operator, Deutsche Bahn (DB), is planning to pipe ‘atonal music’ into the Hermannstrasse station in Berlin’s Neukölln district in an attempt to drive away people who use the place to take drugs. … The music has not yet been chosen, though, according to a report in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper, DB has opted for atonal music ‘because it completely undermines traditional listening habits.'”
Actress Barbara Harris, Co-Founder Of Second City, Dead At 83
“[She was] one of the last surviving members of the founding generation of Chicago-style improvisers and a shy, eccentric, brilliant, publicity-averse performer who preferred rehearsing to working in front of an audience, but who nonetheless pursued a successful Broadway and movie acting career.”
In Two Months, Alaska’s Largest Theatre Bounces Back From Financial Disaster
“In June things were looking bleak for Perseverance Theatre, a 40-year-old institution and the largest theatre in Alaska. The company had been forced to cancel its spring show, a new musical called Snow Child, had furloughed several employees, and was more than $200,000 in debt. Local press wondered if the theatre was on its deathbed. Then something miraculous happened.”