This Week: Maybe we need a new strategy to make arts audiences more diverse (the old ways haven’t worked)… An arts funder changes criteria to judge whether the artists “make change”… The cult of the American “Outsider”… Your cell phone is designed so you can’t not pay attention to it… Do books have to be on pages to be books? (not what the data say)
- We’ve Been Working On Diversity In The Arts Forever And It Hasn’t Worked. So… So maybe subsidizing tickets (or productions) is the wrong approach? A UK report puts it in stark terms. “The uncanny similarities between this year’s Culture White Paper and its 1965 ancestor show that this hasn’t really produced an arts sector that enfranchises everyone, despite the best intentions of policymakers. Countless initiatives (and millions of pounds) have been spent trying to shift the demographic profile of arts audiences and workers in the sector. They have remained stubbornly white and well-off.” But what if we flipped the subsidy, like Italy just did, and give audiences money to buy culture? What would that look like?
- A Cleveland-Area Arts Funder Changes Its Criteria, And Artists Ask Why: Cuyahoga Arts & Culture switched its criteria for funding from mainly considering the quality of an artist’s work to whether or not an artist “makes change” in his or her community. This is a fundamental shift in what the funder is expecting as an outcome for artists. Does the change force artists to attach themselves tighter to their communities or is it dictating an outcome or goal that artists are forced to share? Does this help build community or audience or does it impose a funder’s will on art?
- This Is Arguably The Year Of The Outsider. But Hasn’t Pop Culture Been Teaching Outsiderism All Along? So much of our popular culture glorifies the lone outsider against the system, the little guy fighting The Man, the David versus Goliath. How about all those car ads that extoll rugged individualism? So are we surprised that there is huge appeal for political candidates who decide to wear the mythology? So a contradiction – when we try to convince audiences that they are lone wolves (and if we’re successful, they all believe they are) then haven’t we sold them all on the idea of being like everyone else? Thus the flawed mythology of American individualism…
- Trying To Moderate Your Screen Time But Finding It Hard? There’s A Reason For That! It’s called design. You might just think it’s your failure of attention. But that itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible. The attention economy, which showers profits on companies that seize our focus, has kicked off what Tristan Harris calls a “race to the bottom of the brain stem.”
- Books Are Words, Right? On A Page? Well Maybe Not… Let’s not too stuck on definitions. What, really is the essential definition of a book? Maybe the future of books is not words on pages or pixels on screen, but sound in ears? “The number of audiobook titles increased by nearly 400 percent between 2011 and 2015. E-books, by comparison, are down in 2016, as are adult hardcovers (i.e., printed books from commercial publishers, not including religious or university press titles). Which prompts the question: Do these statistics herald audio as the preferred reading format of the future?”
Leave a Reply