Category: issues

More than 3,000 archaeological sites — among them standing stone circles, Norse halls and a Neolithic tomb graffitied by Vikings — have endured for millenniums, scattered across the roughly 70 islands that make up the Orkney archipelago. Today, in forays to remote spits of land, people are working to save some of these places for posterity from the climate changes accelerated by human activity.

“I think the key thing with philanthropy is, if you want to normalise the practice you’ve got to make it public and normal. So if want philanthropy to invest in the arts and in creative development, and we want that to be normal, you’ve got to advertise it, not be shy to talk about your giving. And so eventually with philanthropy generally, giving will become normal; it will become normal to give when you have wealth to give money away.”

A visit to the Brain Museum at India’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, where guests can see and touch whole brains, slices of brain, healthy brains, and brains with all manner of pathologies. (One is full of holes made by a tapeworm.) Writes Maya Prabhu, “I feel like I’m in some kind of eccentric petting zoo.”

“Because I’m Black, because I’m a woman, and because I’m the daughter of immigrants, I can look to my own experiences and write about marginalized groups with a sensitivity that has yet to become the standard. That said, as a freelancer, the “Black” beat is unofficially assigned to me at every publication I’ve worked under. When I was a freelancer at the East Bay Express and wanted to write about something not directly related to Blackness (whatever that even means), my pitches were given away to other writers so that I could focus on the black stuff. As is the case for other Black women writers I know, a number of publications are looking to exploit my internalized racial trauma for emotion-bait and can’t fathom a use for me outside of that role. Publications need to do better.”

“In sectors as diverse as finance, fashion, culture, and languages, innovators are stepping in to preserve decades or centuries-old systems for the future. These digitization projects have spawned new collaborative networks, bringing together people from different backgrounds who share similar cultural traits or interests.” Reporters Abdi Latif Dahir and Lynsey Chutel spotlight some examples.

“[New South Wales] Minister for the Arts, Don Harwin, rejected independent recommendations to distribute $660,000 across 17 projects in a recent Create NSW funding round. [Create NSW is the state’s arts funding body.] Harwin instead signed off on funding for only six of the 16 applications, reallocating $404,000 towards a single project, which the ABC identified as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.”

Many experts on cultural democracy have suggested that the Arts Council has misunderstood the idea. Community arts specialist François Matarasso made a distinction between the democratisation of culture and cultural democracy. He told AP that the former is a policy – “an initiative as a cultural organisation or as a national body to promote access to culture”. By contrast, he said cultural democracy “is a process, not a state, like democracy itself, in which we negotiate what we believe to be valuable. I don’t think it’s something that you can achieve through policy or initiatives at a national level or at an institutional level.”

In my opinion as an artist, an accountant, and a citizen, the effects I outline below make a strong case for traditional protocols including a longer period for deliberation and public comment, befitting massive legislation. Tax changes can have serious ripple effects, which must be fully understood by institutions and the public before they are put into effect. This benefits everyone, regardless of political leanings; whether you’re donating to the Southern Baptist Convention or MoMA, nonprofits can’t function without your contributions.