Category: issues

In 1957, the cities of Calgary and Edmonton opened multi-purpose performance halls. Now they’ve been restored. “It would be hard to find someone in either city who hasn’t had some first-hand experience with the Jubes. From the start, they were supposed to be civic meeting places, as suitable for high-school convocations as for musicals, operas and ballets.”

Wondering what has happened to cultural institutions on the Gulf Coast after huricane Katrina? Here’s a list compiled by the American Association of Museums…

The British government’s controversial plans to ban incitement to religious hatred are facing growing opposition from the arts world. “It’ll have a terrible effect on writers. The ones who will get prosecuted are the new, up-and-coming writers, comedians and playwrights.”

After two decades of talking, Orlando Florida is working seriously on building a new performing arts center. “A glittering new performing-arts complex in downtown Orlando could draw the best performers from Orlando and around the world and could serve as a uniting force for Central Florida. A poorly planned and supported project could become a giant vacuum, sucking up the Orlando area’s energy and cash.”

The classic civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize has been out of circulation because copyright licensing of clips in the movie had expired. “The 14-part series, which chronicles the history of the civil rights movement in America, has been blocked from television rebroadcast and DVD release by a thicket of copyright restrictions on the hundreds of photos, music tracks and video clips used in its making. But thanks to a $600,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and a philanthropist’s $250,000 donation, the process of re-licensing that material has begun.”

It used to be that ticket scalping was a shady illegal transaction that had to be carried out on street corners. But increasingly, “secondary ticket selling” has become respectable as it moved online and established a thriving business. Now AOL has joined the act…

The chairman of the Scottish Arts Council has made an impassioned plea to the Scottish Executive to boost support for the arts. “The Cultural Commission is full of good things and full of rags and bones as well. Culture isn’t just what they do in Edinburgh: it could make Scotland great again in a new way. If we can get this through to our Scottish politicians, they will unfold the treasury.”

In the past decade, non-profits have created one in every four jobs in Pennsylvania. “Nonprofits now employ about one in 10 working Pennsylvanians, among the highest rates in the nation. Philadelphia itself is almost off the charts, with one in five workers in the city employed by nonprofits at the end of 2003. The comparable rate for the United States: one in 14.”

A nation’s culture, exported to the world, acts powerfully in the arena of diplomacy. But “despite a mounting stack of reports recommending drastic changes in the organization and funding of public diplomacy, very little of substance has been done. And most Americans, including many who make it their business to analyze public diplomacy, seem unmindful of the negative impression that America has recently been making on the rest of humanity — via our popular culture.”

Miss Manners has observed that “heckling is attempting to reinvent itself under the popular name of ‘audience participation.’ The Internet having given us the means of widely disseminating immediate personal reactions to just about everything, the idea has arisen that doing so will enhance any format. Sorry, all you little whizzes who thought you could outsmart Miss Manners: Using a new method of achieving a rude aim does not catapult you into etiquette-free territory.”