Category: issues

“When it comes to Vegas and Elvis, the prejudice toward stereotype and mockery and the expectations of banal schlock are so intense that anything even remotely elevated seemed to the out-of-towners like brilliance incarnate.”

“As the dust settles on the Premier’s announcement, which will come with increased funding of $11 million every two years, the state’s resident artists have begun questioning whether staging a festival that seeks to attract interstate visitors with big flashy international acts would make SA a better place for artists to live.”

“Those who play insist that board games never really went away, but they acknowledge the comeback in popularity and categorize play as “classically social” in a world consumed with faceless social networking.”

“Australians are increasingly embracing the arts, with fewer people regarding them as elitist compared with a decade ago, and about 17 million people engaging with forms from music and theatre to literature. But… people with disabilities and migrants from non-English-speaking countries are being left behind.”

“Since the 1960s, the national mean G.P.A. at the institutions from which he’s collected grades has risen by about 0.1 each decade – other than in the 1970s, when G.P.A.s stagnated or fell slightly. In the 1950s, according to Rojstaczer’s data, the mean G.P.A. at U.S. colleges and universities was 2.52. By 2006-07, it was 3.11.”

“Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer will defy the downed economy Monday and pitch a $69 million bond sale to city leaders that would allow construction to start on a new — albeit pared back — downtown performing-arts center.”

“The situation in Dublin highlights the scale of disarray. We know that around €200 million of taxpayers’ money is spent annually on mainstream cultural services and facilities, including arts, film, heritage, libraries, local authorities, national cultural institutions, and so on. There is, however, no strategic purpose behind this spending and it is hard to imagine how this way of working can contribute to Ireland’s recovery.”

Few artists, no matter how celebrated they may be, are strangers to fear and uncertainty. No less a giant than John Keats died sure that “I have left no immortal work behind me–nothing to make my friends proud of my memory,” and requested that the sentence “Here lies one whose name was writ in water” be engraved on his tombstone.

“Some forms of interactivity are obviously good for art, as they are good for society. The more democratically ideas and information are shared, the more accessible art will be. So democracy is great – except when it shapes the actual work of art. I do not believe a great work of art has ever been created by communal consensus, let alone by multiple editors.”

The latest British Columbia provincial budget restored about C$10 million of previously slashed arts subsidies – and established a new body to distribute the extra money, rather than channeling it through the independent BC Arts Council. Says one artist/advocate: “We are seeing a clear move away from arms-length funding and toward direct political funding of the arts.”