Category: issues

“Like many phrases and ideas in 2019, this one has been appropriated, bastardized, and misused to the point of not only betraying its original definition and its usefulness in checking the actual repercussions of reactionary censorship, but in fact has become almost meaningless.” – The Daily Beast

Equity describes the policy as one that aims to “promote sustainable, optimistic and fulfilling careers” for its members and other arts workers. To achieve this, it claims a “radical overhaul of UK arts and culture is needed”. – The Stage

“We look at cathedrals returning to being the cultural hubs that they once were. Each cathedral around the country is desperately looking for a cultural agenda for their own sustainability.” He added: “It’s okay; they’re not that religious these days,” noting that cathedrals now run “everything from art exhibitions to beer festivals”. – Arts Professional

“Much like the bubonic plague of 1347, silent disco is a blood-curdling infection that spreads across the city, carried on the back of headphone-wearing fleas! Fleas! Its biggest problem is the performed transgression of the whole experience, for which you pay a princely sum of £15. I’m not mad at the individuals taking part, for they know not what they do. I’m incensed that we live in a society where stumbling through the streets of Edinburgh half-yowling the words to YMCA (because nobody knows all the words) is someone’s idea of a good time and a rebellion. Whatever happened to imagination?” – The Guardian

The past few years have seen several of Dublin’s murals painted over, street markets canceled, and bars and cultural venues closed. Often, the things replacing them are facilities for tourists. With many fearing that the city’s vitality and character is being permanently stripped away, there’s a growing concern that Dublin risks being totally surrendered to pressures created by developers and the tourist industry. – CityLab

“Artists should not feel like salespeople. There’s a real danger around [perceptions of] Empire 2.0 as a consequence of Brexit. They [the British Council] need to be very careful that UK PLC is not running the show, otherwise what UK culture is considered as becomes very reductive, and the subtlety of soft power gets lost.” – Arts Professional

Investment includes plans to include a 1500-seat theatre, a 1000-seat performing arts venue, a four-screen cinema and a 670,000 square foot creative co-working space, as well as two hotels, shops, cafes and a “jazz-club style restaurant and venue”. When completed in 2023, the site is projected to attract up to £9m in consumer spending and 10 million visitors to the borough each year. – Arts Professional

“The accompanying political narrative was that the creative industries would champion the social utility of arts and culture as progressive realms to engage fractured communities, realise progressive values and create a more sustainable economic world. … Now it seems impossible to doubt the economic success story that is the creative industries,” at least in terms of the size of their contribution to the economy. “The trouble is that all this ‘success’ has come at the expense of any cultural, artistic or creative integrity that the sectors once had before they were herded into a single political concept.” – Prospect (UK)