Category: issues

Author Neil Gaiman has won a major court victory over copyright and intellectual property issues relating to the characters in the comic book Spawn, which Gaiman claimed included characters from his Sandman series, used without his permission. “Intellectual property experts predict the appellate decision will have broader influence on joint authorship issues, giving everyone who participates in a creative work a potential copyright claim.”

Israel is not an easy place to live at the moment, with violence and terrorism seemingly around every corner, and little prospect for short-term improvement. But somehow, Israel’s artistic and cultural scene continues to thrive, despite (maybe because of?) the political and ethnic strife. “Cultural life in Israel has always been rich and vibrant, even in times of crisis… This is not simply a boost to the morale; it is something Israelis need.”

The Mondavi performing arts center at the University of California at Davis has a been a success with audiences. But there’s one thing – in its first season, the Mondavi center sold only 13 percent of its tickets to students. And why are students saying away?

“The Canada Council yesterday announced the recipients of this year’s Governor-General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts: visual artists Iain Baxter, Eric Cameron, Garry Neill Kennedy and Ian Wallace; sound and performance artists John Oswald and Istvan Kantor; and museum director and First Nations cultural activist Tom Hill. Now the discussion will begin. Is it a good list? Is it a fair list? The G-Gs seems to be the one place where you can never make everybody happy.”

Cleveland’s proposed “arts tax” went down to defeat at the polls this week, but arts advocates in the area say that they were encouraged by the level of support the idea received, and are looking into other innovative ways of increasing the level of public support for the city’s cultural scene. “One strategy under consideration is asking Ohio lawmakers to permit counties to increase user fees such as the real-estate conveyance tax on land sales. Another is to persuade lawmakers to allow counties… whose major municipality has a population under 500,000 people to establish countywide arts districts and levy property-tax increases to support them.”

The British government is offering those UK cities that lost out in the compatition for 2008 European Capital of Culture a pot of £15 million to spend on cultural projects. “The lottery-generated money, channelled through the Millennium Commission and the Arts Council, is intended for festivals, exhibitions and other events which show that culture and the arts are contributing to the area’s regeneration.”

An ambitious initiative which would have established a dedicated fund for the arts in Northeast Ohio failed at the ballot box in Cleveland on Tuesday. The tax levy was designed to make up for a critical lack of arts and cultural funding in the region, but organizers had a difficult time selling the notion of any new tax to the public, and many felt that the complexity of the funding structure made the initiative difficult to explain. The final vote tally was 54% to 46% against the ballot measure.

A new British festival staged by the terminally ill involves 250 people “ranging in age from 20 to 80, sufferers from cancer, HIV/Aids, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and other incurable conditions. “Among the works awaiting audiences at the Rosetta: Live! festival will be 15 videos made by amateur film-makers, most of whom are no longer alive. There will be performances, music, a mural, installations, workshops, collaborations with established artists including Mike Figgis, the director of Leaving Las Vegas, and talks by experts such as Dr Oliver Sacks.”

A campaign to try to convince wealthy people in Britain to give more money for the arts is about to launch. “Britain lags behind other countries. In the US 5.7% of philanthropic giving went to the arts, against 3.4% in Britain.”