The ticket-buying habits of arts groups are changing. “Across the board, concerts in general, everyone is waiting longer to buy tickets than five years ago. It used to be, you had a window that started six weeks out. Now, that’s shrunk to three or four weeks, and you see a lot of sales in the week before the concert occurs. The trend creates several problems for performing-arts groups…”
Category: issues
101 Culture Highlights Of The New Year
Looking to plan your culture calendar for 2005? The Guardian has staked out the 101 culture happenings you don’t want to miss…
The Year of Sex & Stupidity
There are worse combinations, we suppose, but looking back at what should have been a year of serious debate and international soul-searching, 2004 was instead a year in which television went from covering news in an insipid manner to actually creating its very own insipid storylines which were then imposed on the world with an unforgivable seriousness. “Both in Canada and the United States, television not only reported the news and created hit shows, it also became the news. The sex was more implied than dramatized. The stupidity was to be found in the fuss about it.”
In The UK: Proposed Laws Threaten Free Speech
The British parliament considers new laws in reaction to violence threatened over a Sikh play in Birmingham. “The fact that we have to be free to outrage one another is potentially in conflict with a law that soon will be put to the Commons that would add ‘incitement to religious hatred’–punishable by seven years in prison–to the equally dubious legislation already on the British books banning ‘incitement to racial hatred’.”
Review-Based Arts Funding – More Money, But…
“The Howard model for arts funding was set: if arts organisations wanted more money from government, they should forgo warm, fuzzy talk and instead build a business case based on thorough research. Through its review-driven cultural agenda the Howard Government has given the arts greater funding fillips than most governments. Its record for injecting extra funds into the arts is impressive, up there with the Whitlam, Keating, Kennett and Dunstan administrations. Yet it is not perceived to be an arts-friendly government, and many artists still don’t support it.”
An Efficient Freeze?
Can an arts funding freeze in the UK be made up by arts organizations becoming more “efficient”? That’s the claim, at least. But theatre managers say their operations are already pretty lean…
Philanthropic Nature – Britain Lags Behind
Breitain’s level of charitable giving is quite low, especially compared with America. “Victorian Britain invented modern philanthropy, but in the 20th century an important strand of British opinion, mainly on the left, came to see charity as a poor alternative to state-funded provision, Americans have had no such qualms. Since the time of de Tocqueville’s early 19th-century celebration of voluntary associations as a cornerstone of US democracy, philanthropy has enjoyed an honoured place in the American story.”
Cork Is For Culture
Cork, Ireland is about to be crowned the new European Capital of Culture. It’s the smallest city to win the title. “An ambitious programme of more than 230 events and projects range from the international to the idiosyncratically local, from Relocation, the pan-European theatrical collaboration which will transform the city centre in the summer, to celebrations of the late rock guitarist and local hero Rory Gallagher, and of the Corkonian passion for Gaelic football and hurling. Meanwhile hundreds of needles have already been clicking for a mammoth textile project, the Knitting Map, the pattern incorporating CCTV street images and satellite imaging.”
Culture At War – The Year Pop Culture Was Politics
“The past 12 months put forth two faces because American entertainment was riven by partisan politics and the culture wars emanating from them. We saw all the symptoms of split personality play out every day on our TVs, DVDs, CD racks, bookshelves, and movie screens, in reds and blues that rarely blended into a peaceful and Princely purple. Even the most benign of pop provocations — a metal-clad aureole, stage prattle from Linda Ronstadt, ”Saving Private Ryan” — were transformed into politically divisive events analyzed relentlessly on talk radio.”
Sikhs Lose In Play Controversy
Who loses in the controversy over shutting down a Sikh play in Birmingham? Britain’s Sikh community. “In a single act the community has overturned years of hard work and reverted to type as a militant tradition fixated with narrow communal interests. Doubtless the mobilisation will be seen as another nail in the coffin of freedom of speech, coming close on the heels of the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and the proposed legislation on incitement to religious hatred. What these interpretations overlook, however, is the pioneering role of Sikhs in framing British multiculturalism, the contribution – unwittingly – of the British state in promoting the idiom of religion in public life, and the deep tensions within the Sikh community itself that have produced such a play.”