Category: issues

The idea is simple: by showing the communities who manage the halls that live music is an option, a touring circuit will slowly be carved out, which, in turn, will help provide space for music across the country to flourish and grow. Critically, it will also show bigger acts that these rural areas are worth visiting and have the infrastructure to host them. – The Guardian

“How could we make more of a difference to the artists we work with? What if we put the same level of investment into their professional development as their show budget? What if we committed to supporting the artists over and above any show they make?” – Arts Professional

“The shock of the first modern, ‘industrial’ war extended far into the 20th century and even into the 21st, and changed how people saw the world and themselves. And that was reflected in the cultural responses to the war – which included a burgeoning obsession with beauty and body image, the birth of jazz, new thinking about the human psyche, the Harlem Renaissance, Surrealism, and more.” (audio) – WNYC (New York City)

Back in the 1990s, videographer Frederick Allen documented the salvage of the pirate Blackbeard’s 280-year-old wrecked ship on the North Carolina coast. Earlier this decade, a department of the NC state government used some images and video of Allen’s without permission or payment — and, when Allen sued, the state legislature passed “Blackbeard’s Law” to exempt the state government. Allen’s consequent federal lawsuit has now made it to the Supreme Court, and reporter Eriq Gardner lays out the somewhat tricky legal issues involved. – The Hollywood Reporter

The American Bible Society is building a $60 million museum, roughly halfway between Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center, that it’s calling the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, whose exhibits will focus on the role of the Bible in the history of the United States and its social and political movements. The ABS is billing the Center as for “people of all faiths and no faith.’ Alaina Johns asks just how sincere that billing is and wonders how welcome such a museum should be at the nation’s birthplace. – Broad Street Review (Philadelphia)

For the second time in five years, voters in North Carolina’s largest city and surrounding Mecklenburg County defeated a proposal to raise the sales tax locally by a one-fourth of a percentage point, to a total of 7.5%. The additional tax had been expected to raise roughly $50 million annually, to be shared between the city’s arts (45%), parks (34%), and education (16%), with 5% for arts and parks in the county’s other towns. – Qcitymetro (Charlotte)

“Alter the status of women and you have affected all the most intimate and significant nodes of life: the relation of wife to husband, mother to child, sister to sibling, daughter to parents, worker to coworkers, and employee to employer (or vice versa). This change in women’s standing that happened what seems like yesterday, and is still happening today at an accelerated rate, is the most profound revolution that can take place in a society.” – New York Review of Books

The “East Bank” cultural quarter project — to include Sadler’s Wells dance theatre, the BBC, the London College of Fashion, a new University College London campus, and both a public building and a Collections Centre for the Victoria & Albert Museum — is running £14 million over the £470 million budget, which doesn’t even include UCL or the V&A Collections Centre. – Arts Professional