Category: issues

‘Ceci N’est Pas Une Rue’: Here’s What Happens When You Let Brussels Residents Name Streets

The area around a former freight train depot in the Belgian capital is being redeveloped into a neighborhood called the Tour & Taxis district, and officials decided to let the public – in René Magritte’s hometown – suggest names for the thoroughfares. So there will be Frites Street, Endive Street, Speculoos Street, Kriek Street (for the cherry beer), and (yes, really) Ceci n’est pas une rue (This Is Not A Street).

U.S. Cities Are Putting Life-Sized Games In Parks

“Whether it’s supersized chess and checkers in Buffalo or giant Scrabble at The Wharf in Washington, D.C., the games appeal to children and the young adults who have flooded into cities in recent years, and whom developers and businesses are eager to court. They’re part of a larger push for ‘playable’ cities, and for urban public spaces to be active rather than contemplative.

Increasingly Irish Arts Are Built On The Backs Of Interns

The arts in Ireland are built on top of unpaid labour. Everyone in the industry knows this. Sporadically, there is outrage about unreasonable advertisements seeking unpaid internships (recent culprits included TV3 and the Fringe Festival) but the hubbub eventually dies away and little changes. Unpaid labour takes different forms. There are the artists, writers and musicians who often create their work for little or no money and can be exploited for this by an entertainment and arts industry eager for content. There are also volunteers who do admittedly valuable work that comes, if truly a form of volunteerism, with no contractual obligations or real responsibility. Internships, on the other hand, are technically meant to be a form of skills training. In recent years, however, “internship” has become shorthand for “unpaid job” and the means by which Irish arts institutions coped with funding shortfalls.

Should Artists Be Fundraisers?

“Should we now encourage, if not outright expect, artists to take a more active and ongoing role in the fundraising business? If they indeed occupy a position that might increase their chances of succeeding at, or contributing to, the success of fundraising, shouldn’t, in the current landscape of the difficulty in fundraising, they be part of the process?”

It’s Getting More Difficult To Get Visas For Foreign Artists Coming To The US

“The whole system is a kind of trap for the unwary,” says Geoffrey Smith, former board chair at The Washington Ballet and a lawyer who has worked on visa petitions for ballet dancers and companies for four decades. “I’m a lawyer who does this for a living, and I’ve still made a lot of mistakes. The government isn’t going to go out of its way to let you know that you’ve made a mistake or, for that matter, tell you how to fix it.

France Introduces Culture-Pass App – With €500 Credit For 18-Year-Olds

A few hundred young people are currently using the app in a beta-test that will extend to 10,000 participants this fall, with a nationwide rollout planned for next spring. “With its key aim being to ‘encourage cultural discovery and diversification’, the project … has prompted debate about what constitutes culture, and whether some kinds should be promoted over others.” (The culture minister has declared that there would be “no cultural snobbism.”)

Visits To London Museums Down Last Year

Visits to museums and art galleries fell for the second year in a row, dropping by 1% both last year and in 2016. Visit England said that “this was largely driven by those based in London, who saw a 4% drop in visitor numbers in 2017″. The number of overseas tourists visiting museums and art galleries (which Visit England says is “by far the largest attraction type for overseas visitors”) also fell significantly last year, dropping by 11%.