Upcoming conference: New Media, New Audience?

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I’m excited to be taking part in an upcoming conference sponsored by the Arts Council, on the subject of how new media may be utilised by practising artists and arts organisations. With keynote speakers Andrew Keen and Charles Leadbeater offering contrasting views on the concept of web 2.0 and its cultural effects, as well as a host of other interesting sessions, this one day conference looks most promising! Registration is FREE, though limited at the moment to one individual per organisation:

New Media, New Audience? A one day working seminar on the arts, new media and broadcasting

Dublin Castle, 25 November 2008

We live in interesting times. Web technologies such as YouTube, blogging, podcasting and social media have unleashed a wealth of creative material online. The Arts Council is pleased to bring together national and international experts from the arts, social media and broadcasting in this one day working seminar to explore the ways in which artists and the public are adapting and adopting new ways of producing, presenting and promoting the arts.

This seminar is open to artists, organisations and policy makers interested in the potential that new media has for the way in which they work, and in the way it can attract and broaden audiences.

Conference website: http://artscouncilnewmediaconference.com/wordpress/

I especially like the ‘Your Space‘ element on offer– derived, I assume, from the concept of Open Space conferencing– an aspect I was very interested to have at our summer conference on arts management, but which we couldn’t accommodate in the end. I’m eager to see how this will work and what new ideas it may provoke.

‘Sculpture in the Parklands’ featured on RTE Nationwide

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In case you missed it this week, RTE’s Nationwide programme featured a great segment on ‘Sculpture in the Parklands‘, the Co. Offaly open-air sculpture park founded & managed by programme alumnus Kevin O’Dwyer. Click on the image above to watch the piece, and congrats to Kevin!

U.S. museums brace for the crunch

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The New York Times reported yesterday on the preparations of some major US museums for a possible dive in individual and corporate support of the arts– including donations of personal collections, rates of museum membership, and exhibition financing:

“There is bound to be belt-tightening across the board,” said Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I imagine a lot of donors who are leveraged will probably be postponing decisions until the first of the year. A lot of people are waiting to see what happens, which means things will be put on hold.”

Mr. Govan said that he also wondered how the economic crisis would affect memberships, a crucial revenue stream for all museums. “We’re competing with buying gas and going out to dinner,” he said.

The Los Angeles museum’s memberships, which bring in about $8 million a year, range from $25 at the student level to $50,000 for members of the Director’s Circle (a status that affords what the museum terms “intimate dinners with artists and the director”).

In New York, meanwhile, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office has asked the department of cultural affairs, which decides how much city money each museum receives, along with other city agencies, to reduce its spending by 2.5 percent in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and make an additional 5 percent cut in the next one.

(read the rest of the article)

Will you still need me, who will succeed me…

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A few weeks ago the Los Angeles Times carried an interesting story on the ‘graying’ of perfoming arts audiences, seeking to refute the perception that interest classical music is dying out:

[…] representatives of such organizations also offer compelling reasons why seeing gray hair — or, at least, gray roots — in the audience is (a) nothing new and (b) not necessarily a cause for panic, because, at least so far, there has always been “new gray” waiting in the wings to replace the old.

“A colleague of mine says the audience isn’t graying — it’s always been gray,” says Teresa Eyring, executive director of Theatre Communications Group, a national service organization for American nonprofit theaters.

Perhaps nothing earth-shattering here, but it is refreshing to hear the reactions of folks on the ground in response to this perennial whinge…

(read the rest of the article)

Speaking out on the budget

In Saturday’s Irish Times Deirdre Falvey had more to report on reactions to and analysis of the budget’s anticipated impact on the arts:

Reactions varied to the arts- budget cuts. Olivia Mitchell of Fine Gael was appalled at the cuts in capital spending for the national cultural institutions, an issue she has consistently drawn attention to, particularly the condition of the national archives, which are “a disgrace . . . They are run on a shoestring anyway, and they badly need investment. Now the Celtic tiger is gone. It’s a tragedy.” She was dismayed at the Arts Council cuts, and at how “jobs will go in that industry, as jobs in many organisations are barely viable. It’s a bad policy because to get value for money for all the facilities that have been built, you need to have the arts programmes to put in them.”

Labour’s Mary Upton criticised the decision to “slash the funding [to the department] by 22 per cent as a myopic soft option”. The ability of the Arts Council and the Sports Council to support the wider arts and sports community in every village and town has been damaged, she said.

click to read on…