Category: issues

“Seven Chicago grantmakers have teamed up to help small arts groups develop the business side of their operations. The group has pooled more than $600,000 to create the Arts Work Fund for Organization Development. It is aimed at area arts and cultural non-profits that have been around at least three years and have operating revenues of less than $1 million.”

Issues of intellectual property in the film business are always tricky, particularly when one writer accuses another of stealing an idea or a movie plot, an accusation that can be difficult to prove legally. But claims of idea theft are way up in Hollywood these days, and a lot of the blame (or credit) for the uptick can be laid at the feet of a single lawyer, who has “spent the last two years capitalizing on having won a federal appeals court decision that makes it easier for writers who pitch an idea or circulate a script to make a claim of theft stick.”

A study released by the Guggenheim Museum suggests that arts education helps students learn in other subjects. “The study found that students in the program performed better in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills — including thorough description, hypothesizing and reasoning — than did students who were not in the program.”

And what are they going to? “Theatre, the predominant industry, accounted for 28 per cent of total revenue, followed by musical groups (everything from orchestras to rock bands), which accounted for 25 per cent. The remaining 47 per cent was split among opera, dance and a miscellaneous category including circuses and skating shows.”

Despite considerable skepticism, redevelopment of Lincoln Center is underway. But that’s not the only thing happening. Lincoln Center is loosening up, becoming more populist. “We’re all very focused on exploiting the potential of 21st-century technology to extend what happens in our halls outside of our halls.”

“The Long Tail isn’t useful as a theory of everything. It is best and strongest when it helps us understand what’s happening to our culture. It shows, graphically, the difference between the mass culture we’ve had, and the folk culture we’re bringing back. That’s an achievement worth celebrating, and it’s why the Long Tail can leave us feeling like cavemen looking at a map of the world for the first time. But the book should come with a warning: There’s more to this economy than chasing tail.”

Canada’s audience for performing arts has increased strongly, says the government’s statistics service. In 2004 “the performing arts industries reported before-tax profit of $49.2 million for the year, almost double the income reported three years earlier in 2001, the report said. Revenue in the sector hit $1.2 billion, up 4.2 per cent from the previous year, reflecting strong public support for the performing arts, the report said.”

Cork, Ireland, was the European Capital of Culture in 2005. So what was the lasting impact? “As you travel through the city barely six months after the cultural year ended, there is little sign that Cork is the new Milan, or even Cologne, for that matter. Two of the main arts venues are promoting reruns; the only cinema in the city centre has been sold for apartments; and an independent art gallery on the city’s north side has been forced to close its doors due to lack of business. It seems Cork is suffering from something of a cultural hangover.”

The Bolshoi is in the midst of a three-year £400 million renovation which has closed the theatre. “The Bolshoi maintains two and a half orchestras and a corps de ballet twice the size of the Royal Ballet’s, allowing the company to perform in two places at once.” Thus, the Bolshoi’s constituencies are almost continuously touring…

Bestselling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak is the latest to be charged by the Turkish government for “insulting Turkishness.” “Shafak joins a roster of more than 60 writers and journalists to be charged under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code since its introduction last year. University professors, journalists and novelists such as Perihan Magden, Orhan Pamuk and now Shafak have been charged under legislation drawn so broadly as to criminalise a wide range of critical opinions. Writers not only face the prospect of a three-year jail term, but the prosecutions also lay them open to a campaign of intimidation and harassment waged by rightwing agitators.”