This Week’s Insights: Libraries that create experiences attract millennials… Sequels are what happens when fans rule… Trial balloon pay-to-review scheme… What if we made classical music less like classical music?
- Who Says Young People Don’t Read? Millennials are more likely than Gen-X and Boomers – and way more likely than the Silent Generation – to visit the library. But it might not be just for the books. Maybe this is why? “Due in large part to libraries’ egalitarian nature, their events, teach-ins, and classes are free and open, making them natural hubs for underemployed millennials seeking skills to break out of their parents’ homes.” Also, of course, the books are free. A classic example of making the experience attractive to encourage behavior.
- Why Are There So Many Movie Sequels? Because these movies have a built in relationship with fans. And the fans are demanding about the franchises they follow. Used to be, you could go to a movie without having to rifle back through books, check out Wikipedia entries, and maybe do a rewatch of the whole canon so far. Not so now. “Sequels and remakes have been around for more than a century, but the past decade has seen their takeover of the multiplex (in most of America, the only kind of theater around) — and a corresponding rise in the exclusionary nature of mainstream film culture.”
- Who Possibly Thinks It’s A Good Idea For Theatres To Pay For Reviews? Yet a website in Edinburgh proposed to charge companies £50 for a review during the fringe under the slogan ‘It is not about the reviewer it is about your show’. The site, which does not have any reviews on display, now says that the concept is ‘more complicated than we thought’, and that it will introduce the scheme in 2018. And we thought that people didn’t read reviews anymore… And with that in mind, “if readers are no longer paying for criticism by buying newspapers or paywall subscriptions, the Bitter Lemons and Edinburgh initiatives were an attempt to find someone else to pay for the review, namely the recipient of the opinion.”
- In Other News About Critics And Criticism: Much discussion about whether playwrights Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel and others are treated poorly by the East Coast theatre establishment. “We know that the tension between minority playwrights and critics is not a new problem. It’s a very old problem, one made newly urgent by biased reviews of productions by women and playmakers of color this season.”Meanwhile, the heated debates about Hedy Weiss reviews in Chicago could be the result of “a new generation of artists in the social-media age who believe criticism should be a back-and-forth conversation with many voices participating.” Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins weighs in: “There’s a thing where just because you’re an arts journalist, you’re automatically assumed to be quote ‘woke’. But that’s actually part of what this moment is about, it’s about not being so complacent with your own perceived tolerance.”
- What If We Tied Ourselves Up Like Pretzels And Tried To Be Something Else? Would You Love Us Then? Concert producer Meurig Bowen made a list of reasons people say they don’t like classical music concerts and set out to bust them. “As someone who has had the privilege of creating concerts and festival programmes for over 20 years, I’m forever trying to work out what it is that people don’t get about classical. What is it that they find intimidating or alienating, that fails to move them emotionally (if not intellectually), or perhaps simply bores them?”
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