Category: issues

“If you’re at a gig and haven’t shared a blurry Instagram picture of the lead singer on every social platform available, then that gig might as well not have happened. In the age of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, there are a multitude of ways to avoid actually watching the band you’ve paid good money to see and instead show off to your friends who aren’t there with you.”

“For the first four decades of competition, the Olympics awarded official medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions. From 1912 to 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavors.”

“Lately… it’s begun to seem as if more and more people expect the extraordinary whenever they plunk down money for a ticket to any live event, be it sport or art or music. Everything has to be a blockbuster or people feel as if they aren’t getting their money’s worth.”

“Why have elites failed the rest of us to such a degree? How could the experts not see and warn us about the military and financial disasters that seem so obvious in retrospect? And what does the “twilight of the elites” mean to the elite education institutions that produced so many of our failed leaders and clueless experts?”

“The $56-million Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles, the first phase of which will open this weekend, is an attempt to rewrite that civic story line, to create — perhaps for the first time since the heyday of Pershing Square in the years before World War II — a central gathering spot, in the heart of downtown, for all of dizzyingly diverse L.A. County.”

“The findings of several recent studies by psychologists, economists, and educators show that–despite many reformers’ claims to the contrary–it may be possible to make low-performing teachers better, instead of firing them.”

“Remember back when large public events were also the locus of large public protest? As we stare down the barrel of the Olympic Games and the two national political conventions this summer, it’s fair to say that free speech has been reduced to a mere wheeze, both in the United Kingdom and here in the USA. What are truly interesting are the differences between the two: The British are buying up free speech and the Americans are zoning it out.”

Subsidised arts organisations need to learn how to use the “language of the government” to secure future public funding, a leading culture researcher has warned.

“The Olympics and Paralympics are coming to the UK, along with the opportunity to showcase a wealth of disabled talent. … And the Cultural Olympiad’s Unlimited programme has pumped over a million pounds worth of National Lottery, Arts Council and British Council money into 35 commissions for deaf and disabled artists.”

“If half of the recommendations in the draft of the Chicago Cultural Plan — heck, even 5 percent of the recommendations — were implemented, Chicago would become an artistic nirvana without global peer.”