Mark Ball and Aaron Wright are eager to recapture that past glory and make new connections with a programme in which established artists, rising stars and rebels rub shoulders, and different, hybrid modes of presentation are celebrated. - The Stage
"Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a budget trailer bill allocating an estimated $11.5 million to small performing arts organizations to help them recover from the pandemic and comply with AB5, the 2019 law requiring more workers to be paid as employees instead of independent contractors." - MSN (San Francisco Chronicle)
Mayor Eric Adams convened the inaugural meeting of the first-ever Live Performance Industry Council, which features a mix of leaders representing the theater, music and dance industries from the city’s arenas, cultural institutions, unions, nonprofit sector and city government. - The Hollywood Reporter
"D'Arcy Drollinger …, who was initially caught off guard by the nomination, has found herself at the forefront of a long-brewing culture war. With anti-trans legislation spreading across the US and bills banning drag performance being passed in various states, her first months in the role have been a whirlwind." - The Guardian
"(The conglomerate) says it has more than 1,000 acres of land for future development at its six existing theme park sites around the world. It … also plans to nearly double the capacity of its cruise line, adding two ships in fiscal 2025 and another in 2026." - Reuters
Among them, this year’s survey finds that while the same proportion of Australians attended events and festivals as in 2019 and 2022, they are now attending less frequently. Weekly attendance has dropped across all art forms, with Australians choosing only to attend every few months. - ArtsHub
The Flower Fairies' influence has endured: they continue to be popular around the world – big in Japan and in Italy, where Gucci released a children's range featuring Barker's prints in 2022. Billie Eilish recently had Flower Fairies tattooed on her hand, while their whimsical, floral aesthetic can be seen in the TikTok "fairycore" trend. - BBC
A long-term cultural programme in Thamesmead in south-east London has provided artists with low-rent studios and access to affordable housing. Since it began five years ago, it has also produced more than 1,000 job opportunities. - The Art Newspaper
The venue will house a proscenium theatre with a capacity of 600, as well as a 200-seat studio theatre, two rehearsal studios and function spaces. It also features a soundshell, designed for festivals and outdoor events. - Limelight
“The good modern city doesn’t exist in any dataset that will be sampled by AI. What AI will sample is Chinese cities and cities built with massive highway interchanges. It’ll take a bad city and try to make it less bad.” - Bloomberg
"A higher education expert once said that putting the words 'liberal' and 'arts' together was a 'branding disaster' – one so toxic that it was undermining public support for higher education. To break down the meaning and origin of the term, The Conversation reached out to Blaine Greteman." - The Conversation
"The iconic St. Sophia Cathedral in the capital, Kyiv, and the medieval center of the western city of Lviv, are UNESCO World Heritage Sites central to Ukraine's culture and history. The decision Friday to (list the sites as) 'in danger' has no enforcement mechanism, but could help deter Russian attacks." - AP
Jane Friedman, who writes a newsletter about the publishing industry and was a victim of AI-generated content: "There’s not a lot of critical thinking that goes on in that first step of customer service with Amazon." - Slate
But art historian Erika López Prater, fired for showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad in an online Hamline class, may keep her lawsuit against the university on the grounds of religious discrimination. - Sahan Journal
Of course, there's Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn in Everything Everywhere All at Once, but that's not the only zeitgeist change. Middle-aged women "have had enough of the bullshit." - LitHub
