Those who self-identify as lower or working class are more likely to attend events in order to “support the community” or “explore their cultural heritage;” upper classes often attend the arts “as a marker of their good taste, cultural capital and social identity.”
Category: issues
Four Ways Artists Have Figured Out “Premium” Funding For Their Work
“Artists themselves are realising that their most devoted fans can bankroll the rest of their careers. Not only are they able to cut out the middle man, but they can make their runs far more limited – the extreme being just one person purchasing their goods. Here are some of the creatives who have cracked 21st-century patronage.”
The Arts World’s Diversity Problem (In All Its Forms)
“There is a severe problem with diversity in the arts, and the media, right across the board. It’s so obvious that you don’t even need statistics to see it. And it’s getting worse, now that the cost of living in many large cities plus, for example, the falling revenues in the music industry – means that it is much, much harder to make it. Those who do make it will typically have somewhere to crash during those lean years, and those who do are disproportionately well-off.”
Two Things The Canada Council Needs To Do To Make Its Arts Funding More Relevant
“One is to start devoting as much energy to engaging Canadians in the arts as it does to helping art get made, a direction that is becoming politically important in a democratic culture where the barriers (and even the distinction) between consumer and producer are breaking down. The other is figuring out how to channel funding to younger artists without destroying the achievements of the previous generation.”
Engage With The Arts? So What’s The Problem?
“After two decades of declining audience numbers, is that decline an aberration or a new reality? Is the demand for the core arts now permanently smaller than it once was, or is it that the demand for the core arts in the way we deliver them is what has permanently changed?”
Now Here’s An Argument: Oil Lobby Says Building Keystone Pipeline Is Like Painting The Mona Lisa (No Kidding)
According to American Petroleum Institute, the pipeline is just like the Mona Lisa: “One of the world’s most recognized works of art was created by a painter who made his living on temporary jobs”
Revised SAT Test Revealed (Let The Uproar Begin)
“The College Board’s decision to eliminate the vocabulary component from the reading section and redesign the essay portion has garnered lots of attention. But it’s the revision of the math section that could have particularly egregious consequences.”
Why It’s Important For Canadians To Protect Their Own Culture
Canadian programming matters; that we should want it to exist. This isn’t about “telling Canadian stories to Canadians.” It isn’t about seeing pictures of beavers, Mounties and canoes on our screens. It’s about participating in a living culture, and recognizing that a living culture is often a local culture.
Dangerous Art? (Here’s Where It Gets Tricky)
“It speaks well of our own relatively flexible system that it can accommodate criticism and dissent without lopping anyone’s hands off. But this is also a backhanded testament to our society’s successful denaturing of satire, and the impotence of art in our own culture.”
Myth Of Meritocracy – How America’s Colleges Get It Wrong In Choosing Their Students
“How then did we get to a place where American higher education appears more concerned with applicants’ test scores and alumni financial contributions than with the education of current students and the contributions of alumni to our society as a whole? A review of America’s curious history of—and relationship with—an obsessive culture of testing may help answer these questions.”