Category: issues

Coffee Culture – Finding Ourselves In A Starbucks

Starbucks seems to be everywhere. But does the “Starbucks experience” tell us anything about ourselves? “Founded in Seattle in 1971, Starbucks Corp. now has 11,000 outlets in 37 countries, including 500 in Tokyo. There is a Starbucks’s in Beijing’s Forbidden City, and the round green logo adorns the streets of Edinburgh and the boulevards of Paris. The company expects to open 1,800 new stores this year and aims eventually to have 30,000 outlets, half of them outside the United States.”

Torontopia – A City Building On Culture

“A generation ago, an astonished Toronto was energized when its multicultural neighbourhoods won favour from international urban thinkers such as Jane Jacobs. Then, for 30 years, the city the rest of Canada loves to hate cruised back into mediocrity. Today, it is regaining a sense of its own singular potential. In once derelict, now glamorous industrial lofts and hotels, indie rockers talk with hip architects and earnest young public-space activists about books like uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto and debate whether the term ‘Torontopia’ has gone too far in “fetishizing” the city’s newfound energy.”

Is Nothing Sacred? Cell Phones In Libraries?

People are using their cell phones everywhere. But libraries? That’s intolerable, writes Scott McLemee. “Being forced to listen to one side of a manifestly inane conversation is now a routine part of public life. It is tolerable on the street — but not, somehow, in a library; and in one mostly full of academic tomes maybe least of all. What’s worse, the rot is spreading.”

Is It True There Are No British Intellectuals?

“The claim that Britain lacks ‘real’ intellectuals is usually based on a normative model derived primarily from France, where the term ‘intellectuels’ was applied to the members of a group of writers who supported Alfred Dreyfus in 1898. Since at least the eighteenth century, the British have constructed their national identity by contrasting themselves with the French. When the image of intellectuals as a dissident and cohesive group intimately involved in politics began to emerge in France, in the early twentieth century, it was only natural that the British should define themselves in opposing terms…”

Has New York Priced Out Artists?

“According to a recent Freelancer’s Union report, the city’s creative sector—comprised of artists, photographers, designers, composers and writers—is facing increasing economic uncertainty related to a lack of stable employment. Over 40 percent report making less than $35,000 last year, half have little to no personal savings, and over a third lack proper health insurance. Ninety percent cited ‘unstable income’ as the major disadvantage of their chosen profession. All these factors, the study suggests, means that the city’s creative class—including its emerging artists—may leave New York in favor of cities with a “lower cost of living and developing creative centers.”

KC PAC Is Finally A Go

After much debate and delay, the board behind the proposed $326 million performing arts center in Kansas City has decided to break ground on the project this fall, despite being somewhat short of initial fundraising goals. The Kansas City Symphony, which will be one of the center’s primary tenants, celebrated the decision.

Two Quebec Luminaries Rethink Sovereignty, Cause Furor

Artists and celebrities frequently gather on the cutting edge of controversial issues, and in Quebec, that’s always meant a general consensus among the province’s artists in favor of gaining independence from Canada. “So when two of the province’s artistic luminaries questioned their sovereigntist faith this week, their remarks fell like a bombshell. Michel Tremblay, the world-acclaimed playwright whose works have helped capture Quebec’s soul, declared that he was no longer a separatist. It was as if the Pope were renouncing Catholicism. Mr. Tremblay’s words were front-page news. Then another light of the Quebec stage, Robert Lepage, enjoined that he, too, was ‘less convinced’ about independence.”

Playing Arts & Politics In Beantown

Boston is known as a city where patronage and politics travel hand in hand, but still, many in the Hub’s arts community were surprised and bemused when longtime Mayor Tom Menino appointed a political ally with no arts experience to head Boston’s Office of Arts, Tourism, and Special Events. But some say that, in a city like Boston, what the arts community really needs is an advocate who knows the area’s political labyrinth inside out, and can negotiate from a position of strength.

Lending All Well And Good, But Ownership Questions Not Going Away

“A circumcision mask from western Kenya and a headdress made from human hair from Uganda are among 140 artefacts from the British Museum that have gone on show in Nairobi – the first time the museum has lent objects to Africa. But the exhibition has sparked debate about whether such objects should be returned to their home countries for good.”