Collectively, councils still spend over £1 billion a year on cultural services, making them the largest public funders of culture outside London. But where this money is spent has changed. While most arts and cultural services are not statutory services (councils are not legally required to provide them), libraries are. While this fact alone has not been able to preserve all libraries, councils are getting smarter at using libraries to deliver a variety of artistic and cultural programming.
Category: AUDIENCE
National Portrait Gallery Doubles Annual Attendance Because…
The museum served over two million visitors in its 2018 fiscal year (which ended September 30), doubling its annual average of 1.1 million patrons since 2013. In a press release from October 3, Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, said 66 percent of attendees in 2018 were millennials or gen-X individuals.
Why Getting Diversity In Theatre Is Complicated
Surveying the acres of white faces (and mostly greying or balding heads) in the West End, it is hardly surprising that theatres have traditionally deliberately catered to them. But what happens if you put on a show that doesn’t only speak to them? You might get a different sort of audience.
Why Is Museum Attendance Falling In London?
London’s issue with cultural tourism stands in contrast to other global cities, like New York City and Paris, where museums are seeing steady growth and record-breaking numbers of visitors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art even saw a record 7.35 million visitors in last year’s fiscal year. The Louvre welcomed 8.1 million visitors last year, up 10% from 2016.
The All-Powerful Media Influencers? Is It Just Empty Power?
By most accounts, “influencing” has something to do with social media and something to do with marketing. Money, power, and popularity are involved, as are brand identities, promotional samples, and likes. But like so much corporate jargon, when taken literally, the phrase, denoting only a vague power to affect, is spectacularly hollow.
What Exactly Is A “Private” Museum, Anyway?
In a country full of museums, however, the purpose of private museums — a broadly defined type of institution based on a single collector’s vision — isn’t always clear — besides, that is, giving an uber-wealthy art collector a glitzy vanity project and perhaps a tax write-off. What such museums offer, says one expert, is an opportunity to see art that might otherwise be hanging in a wealthy home or stuck in storage.
How Bad Actors Are Using Pop Culture To Fire Up Culture Wars
According to a new paper from Morten Bay at the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, a large majority of the social media comments about the film were “deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments.” By analyzing tweets about the movie, Bay found a coordinated effort, similar to the one used in the lead-up to the 2016 election, to weaponize the debate about the movie to further the notion of chaos in American society. “Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the US alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation,” Bay writes.
After Years Of Decline, Video Piracy Is On The Rise Again. Here’s Why
Sandvine’s new Global Internet Phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50 percent of internet traffic is now encrypted, video now accounts for 58 percent of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now comprises 15 percent of all internet downstream data consumed. But there’s another interesting tidbit buried in the firm’s report: after years of steady decline, BitTorrent usage is once again growing.
National Theatre In London Is Really **Royal** National Theatre, But They’d Rather You Forget About That
Why? Because “Royal” might make them seem elitist. Said (R)NT artistic director Rufus Norris, “This country is still very class divided and anything that adds to that perception, that this place is not open to everybody, could be a downfall. I fear that for some people that [the ‘Royal’ prefix] adds to that perception.”