Category: issues

“A ‘once in a generation’ review of the arts, which makes widening access to arts and culture a cornerstone of public policy, was announced by Scotland’s culture minister yesterday”

What will Scotland’s year-long culture review consist of? “The culture minister, Frank McAveety, called the review the start of a ‘new era’ and a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”. But there were few specifics in the “cultural policy statement” that the executive produced yesterday in a glossy brochure. Mr McAveety talked repeatedly of changing a “20th- century” arts infrastructure in Scotland and of “trimming unnecessary bureaucracy” to achieve ‘best value’. But the document offered no concrete working proposals.”

“Protesting French actors and technicians, who prompted the cancellation of most summer arts festivals last year and forced the resignation of the French culture minister this spring,” are again disrupting cultural events in France and threatening the Cannes Film Festival.

Philadelphia cultural leaders are protesting the mayor’s plans to cut $4.4 million of cultural funding. “The city now spends just 12 cents per $100 on the city’s arts and cultural sector, which in turn supports 11,000 jobs, generates more than $560 million in regional spending and returns $6.5 million in city tax revenue, according to a 1998 Pennsylvania Economy League study.”

As mid-sized American cities go, Minneapolis has a fairly thriving urban center. But what the city has always lacked is a heavily populated downtown neighborhood to anchor its impressive cultural scene. A new building spree aims to create that sought-after mix of residential and commercial space, but Minneapolitans have seen this type of ambition before, only to see the grandest plans fall to the budget knife or the wrecking ball. And at the core of the debate is the question of what makes a neighborhood vital: is it upscale boutiques? Affordable housing? Lots of coffee shops and bars? Easy access to theatres and baseball games? The goalposts seem to move with each passing year.

The new Savoy Opera in London is a grand experiment in the business of art, writes Norman Lebrecht. “The revolution was, unseen, in the bottom line. This was opera without subsidy, opera with an entrepreneurial spirit – opera as it used to be, organised by resourceful enthusiasts for an audience that consisted not of bow-tied aesthetes and glams in gowns but, in the main, of working men and women who might otherwise have been watching farce in Whitehall, a musical on Shaftesbury Avenue or a DVD at home. After sixty years of public support for the arts and a general recognition that they are a jolly good thing, here was a genuine attempt to test the market and see what sort of people, and how many of them, might go to the opera if it was brought to them at a guaranteed professional standard and at a reasonable price.”

Cultural leaders in Australia are warning that a proposed free trade agreement with the US will impinge on Australia’s home-grown culture. “The proposed deal caps the amount of local content at existing levels of 55 per cent on free-to-air commercial television and 25 per cent for commercial radio, and at 10 per cent on pay TV. If the government reduces these content levels, they cannot be raised again. The deal also prevents the government from regulating local content levels for new media without consulting the US, which can challenge any proposed changes.”

“Two national arts groups, the State Arts Advocacy League of America (SAALA) and the National Community Arts Network (NCAN), have agreed to be folded into Americans for the Arts.”

Giving to the arts was up in the UK last year. “Donations to the arts by companies and individuals rose last year to £376m – equivalent to more than a third of the total of £957m of taxpayers’ money spent on subsidies. But art galleries and museums remain unglamorous causes to both kinds of donor, according to figures issued today. They are in low places for largesse from business sponsorship and private giving.”

The state of Florida slashed arts funding last year. But arts supporters were cheered in the past few weeks when members of the legislature proposed a cultural trust fund that would provide long term funding for the arts, restoring last year’s cuts. But Governor Jeb Bush has been throwing cold water on the plan: “The priorities of the future should be established by future governors and legislatures. That’s the general principle that I support and believe in.”