Category: issues

Hall: Arts Funding Crucial To A Healthy Country

Tony Hall, chief executive of London’s Royal Opera House, says increasing funding for the arts is a “no-brainer” for government. “If you put the arts in the bigger picture, and talk about them as part of the framework of the creative and cultural industries, the argument that asks ‘can the arts really make a splash, do they really matter?’ becomes very clea. “They are part of something fundamental and big, which is the creative economy, which is now what we live off. And when you look at it like that then arts funding becomes a no-brainer … our future depends on creativity.”

Sharpton Calls For Ban Of Artists Connected To Violence

The Rev. Al Sharpton says that there is a need for a new law that would ban “artists who are connected to any violent acts, denying them airplay on radio and television for 90 days. ‘There’s a difference in the having the right to express yourself and in engaging in violence and using the violence to hype record sales, and then polluting young Americans that this is the key to success, by gunslinging and shooting’.”

An Irish Town Rises To A Capital Challenge

“Cork has always had its home-grown art, theatre, and, especially, music. When it was designated European Capital of Culture 2005, the smallest city ever to win the title – and, with a measly 15 million euros, given the smallest ever budget – it ingeniously issued a “public call” for ideas. The result, a wide-ranging programme of 236 creative projects, takes in football, rowing and hurling, as well as the Knitting Map, an attempt at the world knitting record using satellite images of Cork as a pattern.”

Can Philly Find A Stable Arts Funding Source?

Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center budget woes points up the need for some sort of stable public funding, writes the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page. “Mayor Street hopes to revive that important conversation with his proposal to raise a sizeable endowment to supplement ticket sales and other grants. No single funding source has been identified. The mayor proposed at least one idea – selling off the naming rights to the Pennsylvania Convention Center – that, while well-intentioned, had the drawback of commercializing the center’s identity.”

Arts Bundling – Charlotte Tries For More

Charlotte (NC) arts leaders are struggling to keep $147 million worth of arts projects bundled in a request to the state for funding. “The wish list encompasses a 1,200-seat performance hall, a museum for an art collection owned by Andreas Bechtler, a relocated Mint Museum of Art, a new home for the Afro-American Cultural Center, rehearsal space for the N.C. Dance Theatre and renovations at Discovery Place.”

Theatre Naming Rights Fail To Translate Into $$$

Winnipeg’s historic (but ailing) “Walker Theatre was in rough shape at the turn of the century. The 95-year-old building was saddled in debt and close to being shut down. It was renamed the Burton Cummings Theatre for the Performing Arts in August 2002, in exchange for an agreement that Cummings would perform five free concerts to raise funds for the theatre. At the time, newspaper reports heralded the yearly concerts as having the potential to bring in over $1 million. So far, however, only one of those concerts has happened, back in April 2003. That concert brought in a profit of $55,000.”

Is There A Link Between Art And Violence?

“There is, like it or not, a deeply held suspicion that fictional representations of violence steadily rub away at our sensibilities, so that when the real thing comes along we’re too numb and jaded to react as human beings. The issue is as ancient as creativity itself, but it has lost none of its urgency over the centuries: Just what is the impact of art? Does watching stories about terrible acts desensitize us to the horror of those acts when they actually occur?”