A few hundred young people are currently using the app in a beta-test that will extend to 10,000 participants this fall, with a nationwide rollout planned for next spring. “With its key aim being to ‘encourage cultural discovery and diversification’, the project … has prompted debate about what constitutes culture, and whether some kinds should be promoted over others.” (The culture minister has declared that there would be “no cultural snobbism.”)
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Cuban Gov’t Introduces Sweeping New Law Censoring Cultural Activities
Decree 349, as the law is known, requires all performances and other artistic activity to have a government contract which forbids a wide range of content, including any “that violates the legal provisions that regulate the normal development of our society in cultural matters.” Violations can result in shutdowns, fines, and confiscations.
Chunky Move, Melbourne’s Leading Contemporary Dance Company, Loses Its Artistic Director
Anouk van Dijk, the Dutch choreographer who succeeded founding artistic director Gideon Obarzanek in 2011, will formally depart at the end of this calendar year.
More UK Theatres Commit To Giving All Actors Who Audition A Yes-Or-No Response
Last week, in response to a social media campaign tagged #YesOrNo, Britain’s National Theatre promised to contact all actors who auditioned but weren’t cast to give them a definitive answer. Now the Royal Shakespeare Company, London’s Almeida and Royal Court, and several major regional playhouses have joined in making the same commitment, as have a number of prominent casting directors.
Brazil’s First-Ever Queer Art Show, Shut Down Last Year, Reopens To Huge Crowds
The exhibition, titled “Queermuseu” in Portuguese, opened last year in a bank-sponsored cultural center Porto Alegre; it was shut down by the bank after religious conservatives loudly accused it of promoting blasphemy, bestiality and pedophilia. This past weekend, following what became the largest crowdfunding campaign in Brazil’s history, the show opened at an art school in Rio, where thousands lined up to see it.
Theatre Study In Danger Of Disappearing From UK Schools
According to a survey of 420 members of the Association of School and College Leaders, 28% said they had cut back lesson time, staff or facilities for drama in the past two years. Drama has already weathered substantial decline over recent years, with entry figures tumbling year-on-year. The ASCL’s research comes as this year’s A-level results are announced in England. Final figures show that entries for drama fell by a further 6% on last year, to a total of 11,239 students.
Why The Bass Makes Us Want To Dance, Say Neuroscientists
In the current study they found that bass-heavy music was more successful at locking the brain into the rhythm. The lower frequencies, it seems, strong-arm the brain into synchronizing. This helps explain why a bass-heavy sound might make people more inclined to move along: the lower frequencies, as the authors write, boost “selective neural locking to the beat.”
Visits To London Museums Down Last Year
Visits to museums and art galleries fell for the second year in a row, dropping by 1% both last year and in 2016. Visit England said that “this was largely driven by those based in London, who saw a 4% drop in visitor numbers in 2017″. The number of overseas tourists visiting museums and art galleries (which Visit England says is “by far the largest attraction type for overseas visitors”) also fell significantly last year, dropping by 11%.
Be Authentic! Everyone Cries. Well, That Takes A Bit Of Work, Actually
Do people judge themselves to be more or less authentic over time? My inclination is that people believe they are becoming more of their true self as time passes. After all, most of us would like to think that we are growing and changing in positive ways. And the constant bombardment of messages to be ‘true to ourselves’ can suggest that some force prevents us from fully expressing who we really are.
His Book Is A Hit. Movie Producers Want It. But He Just Ran Out Of Phone Minutes In Prison…
The book was just published by Knopf, and is already a top seller on Amazon, and got the kind of author profile in last Sunday’s The New York Times that is usually jet fuel for a book to film deal. Trouble is, the author is in prison until 2020 for committing the bank robberies that are described in harrowing detail in the novel. And late this week, he ran out of phone minutes and will not be able to entertain any offers until he can again use the jailhouse phone on Sunday.