Category: issues

British MPs don’t want to ban the secondary ticket-selling market, but say that promoters and artists should get a share of the sales.

“As anonymous giving to charities increases, it’s getting harder for donors to maintain the anonymous part… Proponents of greater disclosure by charities, including some lawmakers and consumer groups, argue that keeping givers’ identities secret can mask efforts by wealthy individuals and corporations to use philanthropy as a tool of undue influence.”

The U.K. vowed to defy a Russian order to shut down its cultural offices outside Moscow, setting the scene for possible confrontation between the two countries.

The Langston Hughes cultural arts center is in a crisis of leadership. “Conflict is nothing new to Langston Hughes, which, after a holiday break, reopens today amid unanswered questions that go beyond the fate of its artistic director to the mission and even future of the center itself.”

“Ultimately, critics agree: Merit isn’t recognized as a value in Italy. According to a 2006 study by Censis, a Rome-based think tank, more than 60 percent of all Italians believe that economic resources and personal relations count for more than merit in getting ahead in life.”

“Once painted by Constable, who praised it as standing “remote on a bare and boundless heath”, Stonehenge has declined into a place mostly tourists visit, and then only once, a break on a trip from Oxford to Bath.”

“An audacious move by director Fergus Linehan to make the festival more public and inclusive paid off handsomely, as an estimated 200,000 Sydneysiders came out to play.” But not everyone is happy with the populist approach, and Linehan has been criticized for not balancing serious art, music, and drama with the party-on atmosphere.

The NEA scored itself a $20m funding boost in this year’s federal budget, and compared to the early 1990s, when controversial art and angry Congressmen threatened to kill the endowment off, things seem positively rosy for government arts funding. But that could change again in the blink of an eye…

Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture has finally arrived, and it’s the city’s time to live up to the hype. But the truth is that Liverpool never really expected to win the honor, and when it did, a five-year scramble to get ready ensued that seems to have inspired equal parts civic pride and exasperation in locals.

The legal arm of InterChange Studios, a community charity and education centre that has been running since the seventies, currently provides advice for almost 50 arts organisations and community groups in London every year – amounting to more than 25% of its annual work load.