Hands down, one of the coolest things to happen to copyright in the past decade is the Creative Commons, a quick and simple way for content creators to share their creative works. Based on the premise that not all authors, artists, programmers, and other creative individuals want to lock-down what they create, the Creative Commons […]
Archives for September 2003
Brains from a Different Time
So many national conferences of nonprofit cultural professionals are consumed with ‘attracting younger audiences’. From multimedia additions to symphonic performances, to ‘singles night’ activities, to superimposed trendy amenities on the same old visual art exhibitions, these responses so often seem to miss a more basic point. Younger audiences think with different brains, and from a […]
From the Mouths of Mayors
As I mentioned, I was off early this week at Madison, Wisconsin’s ArtGrowth Summit, one of many such meetings of arts, business, and civic leaders taking place around the country. And yet, preparing myself for the Richard Florida-speak of luring creative workers with creative amenities, I was pleasantly surprised by a more balanced reaction to […]
Creative Cities
I’m off today at the ArtGrowth Summit, a Madison, Wisconsin, initiative to explore the place of the arts in creative cities. It’s one of countless such initiatives inspired by Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class. The mother ship of such conferences will be in Toronto in October, the Creative Spaces + Places conference.
It’s all ‘Times Roman’ to me
The New York Times has a whimsical article on MoMA’s refurbished logo and typeface. While winking throughout about how nobody will ever know the difference, the article also showed the depth of thinking and craft that goes into even the things we never notice. It turns out, for example, that the original Franklin typeface had […]
The lean get leaner…
A new report by the NEA shows a grim recent and future view of dance organizations in a down economy (also covered on backstage.com). Arts Endowment Chairman Dana Gioia puts on as positive a spin as he can on the findings, which predict as much as a 30% drop in earned income for nonprofit dance […]
Dancing with Systems
The late Donella Meadows was a wonderful mix of business theorist, social scientist, and world citizen. As an early student of Jay Forrester at MIT, she was part of a team of academics and practitioners exploring the principals of complex systems (social systems, business systems, ecological systems). I keep returning to two of her essays […]
Partnership
In spite or because of its vast popularity, the word ‘partnership’ has become one of the biggest blinders to clear and responsive management in nonprofit arts and culture.
Too many cooks?
For those who love the politics and intrigue of cultural facility construction (that’s everybody, right?), Miami-Dade is like “West Wing” and “American Idol” combined. The latest plot twist is the open conflict between officials overseeing the construction and the construction consortium doing the work. It seems that structural flaws might affect the final acoustics and […]
Free a Book Today
I’m not usually one to pass along e-mail blasts, but this one seemed a particularly elegant way of remembering the events of two years ago today. A “Poetical Happening” On Sept. 11th, join a “poetical happening” and free a book. Because a book is a symbol of freedom, sharing and tolerance. On Sept. 11th, 2003, […]