Category: issues

“You could argue that the massive growth in arts and cultural activity in the United States over the past 50 years has been about innovation and diffusion, rather than true invention. Building and blending creative forms invented centuries ago (theater, opera, orchestral performance, and such), creative people have found new innovations in how to bundle and present these forms to wider and more diverse audiences, while funders, nonprofits, universities, and others have built a new infrastructure to distribute them across the country.” But how do we get to be more “inventive” with the arts?

“Arts spending in Scotland accounts for less than half of 1 per cent of all public expenditure in the country, a major University of Glasgow survey has found. But spending per head is sharply higher in Scotland than in other parts of the UK.”

A new report says that Scotland spends less than a half per cent of its public funding on the arts. A review of the government’s arts funding is underway.

In a year when cultural warriors could have been attacking the National Endowment for the Arts, where’s their attention? On TV and obscenity. “It’s great to see huge media corporations in the hot seat instead of a handful of artists and an arts endowment that deserves more robust federal support. And it’s wonderful to see at least the rudiments of a public debate over a culture awash in images of sex and violence, not to mention spam e-mail.”

Barcelona has opened a five-month-long festival of international cultural programs. “Organisers say they expect more than five million visitors to the 2004 Forum of Cultures. It is being promoted as part-festival, part meeting-of-minds on broad themes such as peace, cultural diversity and sustainable development.”

“San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom riled some of the city’s big arts organizations Thursday night when he unexpectedly announced plans to cut city funding to the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, Ballet and Museum of Modern Art by 25 percent to help deal with San Francisco’s $325 million budget deficit.”

The mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota has released a report that says that the city should commit to a $25 million annual investment in the arts. Why? The report says “the city’s arts, culture and entertainment sector — a broad category that includes everything from concerts at Xcel Energy Center and exhibitions at the Minnesota Children’s Museum to scrappy, itinerant theaters staging edgy work in makeshift Lowertown performing spaces — draws more than 5.6 million people to St. Paul each year. Those visitors, about 90 percent of whom come from outside the city, add more than $600 million to St. Paul’s economy.”

More than 150 Cuban artists have recently been refused visas to perform in the United States. “U.S. officials say the restrictions implemented in November are among a series of measures designed to further isolate the hemisphere’s only communist regime and pressure Cuban President Fidel Castro to make democratic reforms. The officials contend that Cuban artists are using concert tours in the United States to promote the sales of CDs and other products, with a majority of the profits ending up in Cuban government coffers.”

Cincinnati’s Fine Arts Fund became “the largest united arts fund-raiser in the country this year, raising $10.4 million in its annual pledge campaign. That’s 4 percent more than last year, faster growth than 59 similar regional campaigns in cities such as Milwaukee, Charlotte and Louisville that also raise money for a number of arts organizations at once.”

Arts supporters in Sarasota, Florida are making their case for the arts. “The Urban Institute’s Performing Arts Research Coalition study shows that 71 percent of residents attend arts events. In addition, 43 percent of those surveyed said that the arts played a part in their decision to move to Sarasota. Data gathered by the Renbrook Consulting Group shows that 20 percent of all arts admissions are free, and that people of all income levels attend the arts. This dispels the popular notion that culture in Sarasota County is for the elite few.”