Category: issues

“For many respondents, going to the park or eating at a food truck counts as a cultural experience, while attending a museum does not. … Below, we spotlight seven findings from the study could have major consequences for how traditional cultural hubs like museums think about audience outreach, development strategies, and cultural participation in the 21st century.”

Last month, the country’s first major show of queer art was shut down in Pôrto Alegre after conservative groups began protesting, claiming that the art endorsed blasphemy and pedophilia. A couple weeks later, the same groups loudly objected to dancer Wagner Schwartz’s La Bête – in which he lies on the floor naked and invites audience members to manipulate his body – after a woman brought her five-year-old daughter to participate and video of the incident went viral.

Private employment grew almost twice as fast in large metropolitan areas as it did in small ones from the trough of the recession, in 2009, to 2015. Income grew 50 percent faster. And the labor participation rate — the share of the working-age population in the labor force — shrank only half as much. “Economic transitions work against smaller America. This is a period demanding excruciating transitions.”

In a letter to arts organizations this week, Iain Munro, deputy chief executive of Creative Scotland, outlined the decline in National Lottery income, which he said had a 15% year-on-year reduction in 2016/17 and is continuing on this downward trend. “This means we are having to budget very carefully for 2018/19 and subsequent years,” he said.

“President Trump’s decision to withdraw from UNESCO undermines the historic role of the United States as a leader in this effort and weakens our position as a strong advocate for cultural preservation.”

The UK study “reveals the average donation to participating organisations increased by 17% when the project was match funded, and over three quarters of crowdfund backers gave more than they usually would. In addition, more than 66% of fundraisers reported improvements in pitching and fundraising skills, and 32% of project participants leveraged additional funding from other sources after completing their campaign.”

Trump’s cuts would affect all research universities, but not equally. The problem is more pronounced at public universities than private ones, and especially at public institutions in the Midwest, which have historically conducted some of the nation’s most important research. These schools are desperately needed to diversify economies that rely disproportionately on manufacturing and agriculture and lack the wealthy private institutions that fuel the knowledge industries found in Silicon Valley or along Boston’s 128/I-95 corridor. Yet many flagship Midwestern research universities are being weakened by deep state budget cuts.

That’s bad for state coffers, and thus possibly for arts budgets. How can states get Millennials addicted to what is, after all, legalized gambling? The obvious: “Georgia, which runs the fifth largest US lottery program in terms of sales, introduced smartphone lottery game apps in an attempt to appeal to millennials.”

“A team of officers has been established to look into the alleged crimes, which are said to have taken place in London between 2010 and 2015, as well as an allegation of sexual assault previously passed on to the Metropolitan police by detectives from Merseyside police, which relates to the late 1980s.”