Category: issues

“For more than two hours yesterday, 17 [of the area’s largest arts and cultural] groups made pitches to the RAD [Allegheny Regional Asset District] board for funding, mostly increases, to help stem the tide of red ink or to avoid further cuts in bare-bones budgets.”

The message Arts Council England is communicating via awards from its £40 million Sustain fund “is not encouraging: £700,000 to the Royal Opera House; £760,000 to the Philharmonia Orchestra; £750,000 to the English National Opera. These flagship organisations already get millions of pounds in public subsidy,” while “smaller organisations have been turned down even when they have been backed to the hilt by regional arts council offices.”

“The Fringe Society said more than 1.85m tickets were sold for this year’s event, an increase of 9% on the previous record, set in 2007, and 21% higher than for last year’s disastrous event, which was hit by problems with its box office. The scale of the improvement surprised fringe organisers.”

Ben Wheeler, TX – so small that it’s named after its first mailman – began fading away back in the 1930s. But now, retired businessman Brooks Wheeler has bought up nearly then entire place and is turning the old stores and buildings into ultra-low-rent gallery and studio space.

“Last week’s Community Foundation Challenge, an online fund-raising effort for the arts, funneled $4.8 million to 75 local groups, according to figures released Friday. That’s nearly $2 million more than the original $3 million goal of the Aug. 18 matching-grant initiative spearheaded by the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan.”

“India as a creative arts, fashion, film and technology force has not arrived fully formed. But since its economic reforms and liberalisation of trade and investment in the early 1990s, the country has put out the welcome mat and accommodated the resulting rush.”

“Actors and artists are part of the real economy. They have real jobs, like working in a steel mill or an auto plant, and they have medical bills and rent to pay and kids to send to college. The arts are tough work. But it’s real work, and it counts.”

“It’s a problem that plagues American culture: the porous line between entertainment that is a corporate product and owned by someone or something, and entertainment that is a genuine product of authentic traditions and freely available to everyone.”

“Once infamous — and in many places illegal — the reselling of tickets for profit has gone mainstream. Accelerated by the Internet and changes in state laws across the country, it is now a multibillion-dollar business serving consumers who want that last-minute ticket to Taylor Swift or Wicked.”

“In an earlier period, we thought that in the free market of ideas and language, the best and most truthful expression would win out and the rest would be forgotten. Now I’m not so sure.”