Category: issues

“Many fear the country’s rich folklore and storytelling tradition is disappearing forever. Over the past six months, a group of students and professors has begun to record and transcribe folklore and oral histories told by Qatari elders. Eventually, they will be compiled into the country’s first-ever combined English and Arabic folklore anthology.”

“Already half the houses in Venice are empty, owned by foreigners and absentee landlords. True Venetians hate the Disneyfication of their city – the kitsch of the carnival that has now become a commodified mass spectacle, the endless tourists. There is talk of constructing a London Eye-type ferris wheel to dwarf the surroundings. Venetians such as Germano and Marina almost despair of regaining their city.”

“Nearly 1 million tickets are expected to be sold in the next three years; the show is expected to create, at least indirectly, 2,200 jobs each year.”

“Surely we should abolish funding being doled out by one body altogether and instead create an open market for arts funding that is decided upon by the taxpayer (by way of tax credits) direct.”

“Culture has been on the front lines of rebuilding Detroit since the ’90s, when the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Michigan Opera Theatre and Detroit Institute of Arts began investing what would eventually total more than $300 million into cultural palaces and neighborhood projects. But now action has shifted to individual artists.”

“The project to create a cultural quarter with a public sqaure, a symphony hall and a skating rink has cost close to $1 billion in public and private money . The two sq. km. area also will be home to new luxury condos and office towers. But at a public meeting Thursday, the audience was divided on whether the project was worth waiting for.”

One consequence of the massive social changes wrought by the oil boom is the rapid disappearance of Qatar’s rich storytelling tradition. Recently, “a group of students and professors has begun to record and transcribe folklore and oral histories told by Qatari elders.”

“After years of rumors about a Great American Art Trip in the works, the painter Eric Fischl has announced a privately financed program in which a truck-based roving museum and performance space will tour the country for two years to address what he sees as an identity crisis in American culture.”

“The arts need to prepare for the fightback now. The cuts have been so long heralded that they have taken on a patina of inevitability. In fact much can change, even during this parliament. Many councils will change colour, returning power to the party which imaginatively transformed declining post-industrial cities through cultural development in the last hard times. Meanwhile any potential post-2015 government will need to be pressed to see this retrenchment as reversible.”

“If I look back over the 60 or so films I have made so far – let’s say I started all over again – there is not a single one would I would do in 3D.”