“In quite a short time, copyright has come to be seen by many outside our industry as an inhibitor to creativity and innovation instead of the enabler and protector it once was. It’s true to say that the consequent disruption to our industry has been felt more intensely in some countries than others. Canada stands out in this regard.”
Category: issues
How We Can Get The Arts To Connect With Conservative Audiences
“The first challenge is to convince prospective audiences that there should be no fear of embarrassment associated with coming to a performance. Decades of research have shown that the best demographic predictor of attendance to all performing arts disciplines is level of educational attainment. … For many people, attending a performance is equated with shelling out big bucks to feel stupid in a sea of strangers, to be thrown out of one’s cultural comfort zone. How do we fix that?” Duncan Webb has a few ideas.
U.S. Holocaust Museum Finds Itself Caught In Argument Over Syrian Civil War
The museum commissioned and published a study on whether any alternative approaches might have prevented more bloodshed than the one taken by the Obama administration. (The answer: probably not.) Then the museum withdrew the study after accusations that it was nothing but a whitewash of what critics called Obama’s inaction in Syria.
Thanks, Harvey: Home Base Of Houston Ballet And Grand Opera Will Be Closed Until At Least Next May
“The Wortham [Theater Center’s] two theaters, which sit near the banks of Buffalo Bayou, took on up to 12 feet of water during the storm, which flooded its basement and required the removal of the stage floor of the Alice and George Brown Theater.”
Poll: Americans Are Losing Faith In Value Of College Degrees
Overall, a slim plurality of Americans, 49%, believes earning a four-year degree will lead to a good job and higher lifetime earnings, compared with 47% who don’t, according to the poll of 1,200 people taken Aug. 5-9. That two-point margin narrowed from 13 points when the same question was asked four years earlier.
UK National Lottery Sales Have Plummeted. Lottery Officials Warn Of Big Cuts In Arts Funding
Sales of UK National Lottery tickets have declined, so less money can be channelled to HLF. The fund’s share of lottery income fell from £385m in 2015/16 to an estimated £300m in the current financial year.
Silicon Valley Companies Say They’re Building A Better World. But They Can’t Even Build A Better Silicon Valley
This failure to create places for people—our logical “target user,” in the region’s parlance—is, in part, to blame for the soul-crushing, NIMBY-inducing, place-agnostic sprawl we’ve idly cobbled together here. Planning-wise, the city that’s supposed to be inventing the future remains trapped in the 1950s, as Allison Arieff wrote recently in The New York Times. The Valley of Heart’s Delight’s once fine agricultural complexion is now forever marked with the suburban scars of endless tract homes, bland office parks, and a dogmatic adherence to California’s transportation motto—”Park Free or Die.”
Ottawa’s National Arts Centre CEO Steps Down
“Peter Herrndorf, who joined the CBC in the mid-1960s, rose to become vice-president of the CBC’s English radio and TV operations. He went on to become publisher of Toronto Life magazine from 1983 to 1992 and then served as CEO of TVOntario from 1992 to 1999 before taking the job of running the NAC.”
The Future Of Technology (And Culture) In Amish Country
“For people bound by a separation from much of the outside world, new tech devices have brought fears about the consequence of internet access. There are worries about pornography; about whether social networks will lead sons and daughters to date non-Amish friends; and about connecting to a world of seemingly limitless possibilities.”
The ‘Monkey-Selfie’ Copyright Case Is, At Long Last, Over
Six years after a macaque in Indonesia picked up photographer David Slater’s camera and took photos of herself, three years after the U.S. Copyright Office supposedly settled the matter, and two years after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claimed standing and filed a lawsuit, PETA and Slater have settled the case. Reporter Sudhin Thanawala explains the terms.