“Many programs focus exclusively on craft and artistry, but rarely — if ever — address the nitty-gritty topics such as finding work, money management, or entrepreneurship, although these are all critical to finding success in many areas of the arts.” Camille Schenkkan writes about how she’s worked on these issues as Next Generation Initiatives Director at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. – Americans for the Arts
Category: issues
Engaging In A Creative Activity Really Does Make You Feel Better: Report
“Almost 50,000 people took part in the BBC Arts Great British Creativity Test. It suggested that being creative can help avoid stress, free up mind space and improve self-development, which helps build self-esteem. The findings also said there are emotional benefits from taking part in even a single session of creativity.” – BBC
Amazon Is Offering To Pay New York Times, BuzzFeed, New York Magazine To Expand Abroad
The online-shopping juggernaut is reportedly in talks with those three outlets (and possibly others) “about deals that would reward them for expanding their international presence, specifically in consumer-oriented shopping sites” such as NYT’s Wirecutter and New York Media’s Strategist. – Vox
George Soros’s Foundation Starts Up New Arts Fellowships
“Soros Arts Fellowship [is] an initiative to support innovative mid-career artists using art and public space to advance ‘pluralistic, democratic, and just societies.’ The eight fellows received an $80,000 stipend to realize an ‘ambitious socially engaged art project’ over the following 18 months.” – Inside Philanthropy
You Have One More Year To Pull In A Bigger Audience, Scottish City Government Tells Arts Centre
The municipal council of Perth and Kinross, alarmed by poor attendance and financial performance at the Perth Theatre and Perth Concert Hall, warned the nonprofit which operates the twin venues that it has a year to work a turnaround. – The Stage
Let’s Take A Little Closer Look At This Claim That A Netflix Show Caused A Spike In Teens Dying By Suicide
Did the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why *cause* the spike? Bit of an issue with a recent study that claims it did: “Importantly, the researchers don’t know if the people who died by suicide watched the show or not.” – Vice
Medieval Studies (Yes, Medieval Studies) Is Actively At The Heart Of Debates Over White Supremacy
The fault lies in contemporary politics, of course, but also in the origins of the discipline: “In Europe, academic study of the Middle Ages developed in tandem with a romantic nationalism that rooted the nation-state in an idealized past populated by Anglo-Saxons and other supposedly distinct ‘races.’ In the United States, universities, cultural institutions and wealthy elites drew on Gothic architecture, heraldry and other medieval trappings to ground American identity in a noble (and implicitly white) European history. So did Southern slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan.” – The New York Times
Growing Disparity: Mapping The “Brain Drain” Of US States
The end result is a lopsided “winner-take-all” pattern of regional haves and have-nots. Our politics become ever more divisive and polarized as the “big sort” grows ever bigger, eating away at the social fabric of our nation. – CityLab
Confederate Statues In Charlottesville Are Protected As War Memorials, Rules Judge
In 2016, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson that were erected in the 1920s. (It was this vote that the notorious 2017 Unite the Right rally was protesting.) A group called the Monument Fund sued to have the vote reversed, arguing that Virginia law forbids cities to remove war memorials; the city maintains the statues are, in effect, monuments to white supremacy. The state judge wrote in his ruling, “the statues to [Lee and Jackson] under the undisputed facts of this case still are monuments and memorials to them, as veterans of the Civil War. … It does no good pretending they are something other than what they actually are.” – The Daily Progress (Charlottesville)
If You’re Applying For A Grant, Don’t Do These Things
“To improve their chances of winning a grant, foundation officers and professional grant writers say charities should avoid making the following mistakes in grant proposals and applications.” – Inside Philanthropy