Category: issues

A collective called Culture Declares Emergency argues that the new funding strategy proposed by Arts Council England “neither addresses the urgency of the climate and ecological emergency nor grasps the chance to trumpet boldly the pivotal role arts and culture play in bringing about societal changes needed to avert disaster.” – Arts Professional

The president’s project, called 1000 Cafés and run by a nonprofit called Groupe SOS, will receive up to €200 million from the French government to open new cafés, or prop up struggling ones, in villages with fewer than 3,500 residents. Nearly a third of France’s population still lives in such villages, and more than half of those no longer have a commercial establishment of any kind. – Slate

There was a time when we judged people, labelled them, loved them or hated them because of their taste in literature, art and even pop music. – The Spectator

From 2010 to 2018, approximately 882,000 new jobs were created in the Bay Area, but only around 100,000 new housing units were built throughout the region. The resulting white-hot competition for living space has forced anyone at a structural disadvantage — communities of color, artists, creatives — further toward the margins. – Hyperallergic

The answer is yes. Yes, they sure are. And it’s not just Harry Potter or And Tango Makes Three. “Our government doesn’t actually ban books, does it? Sure it does! The federal government, and state and local governments, do it all the time. The New Jim Crow. The Color Purple. Excel for Dummies. In the incarceration capital of the world, books are often withheld from prisons because of their content, though sometimes for capricious and inexplicable reasons. When this kind of censorship becomes public prison officials often back down because it’s embarrassing. But still it happens.” – Inside Higher Ed

Kickstarter, where thousands of artists and writers and circus performers and musicians and etc. have gotten millions of dollars of funding, fired two union organizers a couple of weeks ago. Creators including Neil Gaiman, Molly Crabapple, and a bunch of comics and other magazines got together to ask Kickstarter to be better. The company’s response was not exactly warm to the creators. – Current Affairs

The original statistics were 5,799,000 for Tate Modern and 5,709,000 for the BM in the financial year 2018/19. But the BM’s original figures for October-December 2018 appeared too low, and a later investigation suggested that 316,000 visitors had been missed by the counting system. Adding these means that the BM’s revised number for the financial year should be 6,025,000, comfortably beating Tate Modern. – The Art Newspaper

In the cultural sphere, architects, graphic designers, grant writers, and fine artists are identified as exempt, as are photojournalists and journalists who contribute fewer than 35 times a year to a particular company or publication. But prolific freelance photographers and writers, and other art professionals not named in the law such as independent curators, catalogue researchers and art handlers, could be affected. – The Art Newspaper

“A new arts district opens next weekend in the Swiss city of Lausanne, on the site of the city’s former train sheds. After a decade of planning and development, Plateforme 10 includes the relocation of three of the Lausanne’s top museums to form a new cultural hub.” – The Guardian