Archives for 2005

The ramp-up to a new cultural facility is an exceptionally complex dance, between project proponents, public officials, public opinion, and private donors. What will we build? Where will we build it? Who will pay for it? And when are those payments due? That dance just entered a very public phase in Richmond, Virginia, after the […]

A headline in yesterday’s Boston Globe offers a strange and compelling problem/solution set: Facing debt, Wang to produce its own shows In other words, in response to excess risk and exposure to losses from touring performances, Boston’s Wang Center for the Performing Arts has decided to increase its risk and exposure to loss as a […]

Tom Foremski poses an interesting question on the Silicon Valley Watcher, a site that tracks and analyzes business and business culture in Silicon Valley: …how large of a population is needed before a community starts exhibiting spontaneous, unpredictable, aggregate behaviors. Is it 500 people, 15,000? The question springs from the strange and emergent behavior that […]

Creative conundrum Brian Eno has some interesting things to say about art and culture and their role in modern life. In this short interview/overview for The Globe and Mail, he defines things this way: ”Culture is everything we don’t have to do,” he said. Eating is necessary, but cuisine is culture. Clothes must be worn, […]

I was just revisiting Chris Argyris’ classic (and strangely expensive) book from 1990 on Overcoming Organizational Defenses, and rediscovered his list of 12 budget games managers and politicians play when trying to get a project passed through the system. See how many look familiar to your organization or to yourself (be honest): Foot in the […]

Only time for a short link today, but one well worth your time. The UK’s Guardian put a fascinating question to 50 cultural and civic leaders regarding the purpose and function of government support for the arts. The question, in a nutshell, is ‘What would you do for culture if you were running the next […]

Have you received an earnest e-mail from a friend or colleague lately, with some impassioned call to action, and a request to sign the bottom and e-mail the e-petition on to all your other e-friends? Perhaps the message had to do with the impending destruction of the NEA, NPR, CPB, or other public cultural agency. […]

The design and construction of a new cultural facility is a unique moment in the life of an arts organization or arts community. It’s a chance to rethink how arts and audiences connect, how works are produced, how thriving ecologies of innovation and meaningful experience are structured and sustained. But there’s a fascinating tension in […]

MIT’s Technology Review recently reprinted an article from April 1995 describing the then-emerging World Wide Web, just to remind us all how new the phenomenon is to our hectic world. A mere decade ago, technology students were drafting their first home pages, a few companies were sticking a big toe into this new idea for […]

Eamonn Kelly, president and CEO of the Global Business Network (a futurist think tank of sorts), knows something about the future — or at least how individuals and groups can project dynamic trends into what might be someday. So, it’s interesting to hear his perspective on the next 500 years of civilization…especially when he can […]