Category: issues

It wasn’t too many years ago that Australia made attempts to export and promote its culture. Now not so much. “Is culture a dirty word in federal cabinet? Many arts academics and practitioners fear so and see Australia as struggling with a stereotyped ocker image abroad, to its cultural, artistic and economic detriment.”

It was a great fiscal year for the performing arts in Kansas City, where the ballet company set records for subscription sales and overall revenue; the symphony saw a second consecutive double-digit spike in revenue and made its first commercial recording in years; and the opera bumped its subscription sales by 16%.

Toronto’s young Luminato Festival may have much to learn about both content and promotion from the success of Charleston’s Spoleto USA fest. “It is challenging for a festival to make a major impact in a sprawling metropolis, as Luminato has already discovered. It is much easier where, as in Charleston, visitors can walk from venue to venue, past historic houses in a postcard-pretty community totally focused on what is happening on local stages.”

“Russia has renewed its campaign of harassment against the British Council by demanding that the cultural organisation move out of one of its offices in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.” The move is being seen as a strong-arm move by the Russian government, in response to the UK’s ongoing demands that former spy Andrei Lugovoi – charged with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko – be extradited to Britain.

Chicago is looking into the possibility of creating a public arts high school. You probably assumed that they already had one. The truth is that Chicago “is the only city of its size that doesn’t have a pre-professional arts public high school.”

“By 2020, there will be a 77 percent increase in the Hispanic population and a 32 percent increase in the black population, with less than a 1 percent increase for whites. In 1980, whites were 82 percent of the working age population. By 2020, they will be 63 percent of workers. From 1980 to 2000, the educational gap between whites and blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans has actually widened. Finally, those same people of color earn less than whites at all equivalent levels of education.”

In its first outing, “Toronto’s newborn Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity, which ended on Sunday, became the biggest multi-site, multidisciplinary festival in North America, well beyond South Carolina’s Spoleto, or the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City. Over Luminato’s 10-day run, attendance topped 1.03 million people, more than double the festival organizers’ modest first-year projections.”

“Clearly corporate America gets it when it comes to arts education, but why don’t education policy makers in Massachusetts? The Commonwealth has the weakest arts education requirements of all the New England states, several of which have specified high school graduation requirements in the arts. In many Massachusetts school districts, including Springfield and Boston, there are students who graduate from high school without ever having a single arts course taught by a licensed arts educator.”

“An economic study shows that arts spending in the Washington region has reached $2.15 billion, according to data released yesterday. … The survey of local economic activity also measured audiences’ arts-related spending beyond admission fees and tickets — things such as meals before shows, transportation to concerts and parking. Such spending amounted to $118.9 million in the District.”

“The good news for Michigan arts and culture groups is that on Friday Gov. Jennifer Granholm lifted the two-month moratorium on funding that threatened to take $7.5 million out of their pockets. The bad news is the Legislature followed through on a $3.6-million cut in arts funding for this year. When the dust settles, arts groups will receive only about $6.5 million of the $10 million they were promised from the state arts council for 2007. State arts funding in Michigan has now fallen 73% from its peak of $24 million in 2000.”