Category: issues

“A proposed multi-million-dollar Perth Performing Arts Precinct will remain a pipe dream unless the State Government financially commits to the project. Perth City Council has spent $185,000 on creating a masterplan for the concept… But PCC cannot afford to go it alone and is waiting and hoping that a new minister for culture and the arts will offer an olive branch.”

“Struggling actors and other performers would get a break under federal tax legislation introduced Thursday that doubles the limit under which they can deduct business expenses.”

“Bill C-61 spells out consumers’ rights in how they are allowed to copy media and clears up some grey areas. Existing laws do not specifically allow consumers to copy books, newspapers, periodicals, photographs, videocassettes and music. The new bill would expressly allow them to make one copy of each item per device owned, such as a computer or MP3 player. The bill would also expressly allow consumers to record television and radio programs for later viewing.”

Nearly a million dollars from Cleveland’s new cigarette tax for the arts will be distributed to 54 area cultural groups this year, officials say. “Cigarette buyers in Cuyahoga County will help pay for a summer arts program for 1,000 young people in neighborhood parks as well as outdoor concerts in University Circle.”

“Arts supporters [in North Carolina’s Triangle region) won major victories Monday night when the Durham City Council restored funding that had been cut in its preliminary 2008-09 budget… Nonetheless, several venerable arts and culture organizations that the city has long funded [will] still suffer cuts. Most organizations will see a 30 percent drop in funding.”

“Concerned that Art Center College of Design is putting too much money and energy into expanding its campus and promoting itself to outsiders — and not enough into scholarships and instruction — hundreds of students and alumni of the elite private college in Pasadena are petitioning its trustees to suspend plans for a $50-million building by Frank Gehry.”

“U.S. women’s colleges have sometimes struggled to find a new role in the era of coeducation. As their numbers decline in the United States, women’s colleges are booming in much of the developing world _ places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East. They’ve become a trendy tool for jump-starting economic growth and political development, and for helping break down barriers in the same way their U.S. counterparts have been doing since the 19th century.”

“The North-South divide is the source of serious tensions in contemporary Italy, dramatized by the anti-Southern rhetoric of the Northern League. It has become a commonplace to say that Italians lack a well-defined sense of national identity. But is it true?”

The Ohio Arts Council is cutting seven positions from its staff of 35 and reducing unpaid grants by 7.7 percent to offset a $2.5 million, or 10 percent, reduction in state funding.

“Talk to enough successful women, and you start thinking that women are on an equal footing with men. And yet it’s difficult to reconcile that with the fact that fewer than 25% of British theatres have female artistic directors, that Kathryn McDowell is the only managing director of a British orchestra (the London Symphony), or that four of the 14 senior staff at Tate are women.”