“Adelaide festival management confirmed on Friday it will post a deficit, just a week after the unexpected departure of its artistic director.” The good part? They say the loss was due to free events - and the festival has enough in reserves to make it up. - The Guardian (UK)
And Paris isn’t trying to hide it. “'I haven’t seen anything quite like this,’ says Jules Boykoff, a professor and former professional soccer player who studies the impact of the Olympics on marginalized communities. ’Typically, hostile architecture is more subtle.’” - Wired
Collective action is the key: “A rural community may not necessarily receive the art it deserves, but it certainly gets the art it is collectively willing to work for. The majority of any given rural community must demonstrate a willingness to work towards arts vibrancy.” - SMU DataArts
This week, Martina Šimkovičová — who only just moved from across the border in Austria into Slovakia though she's been minister since last October — abruptly dismissed the directors of the Slovak National Theatre and Slovak National Gallery. She reportedly plans to sack others who protested these firings. - The Slovak Spectator
"Several locations across the capital, (Dhaka,) including Bangabandhu Memorial Museum and the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre, were set on fire as part of a wider uprising against prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been forced to resign after 15 years in power and has fled to India." - Artnet
Artists are “constantly engaging with these ideas around family, community and relationships, so I think that we look to artists, not necessarily on how to rebuild society, but to tell us what’s wrong with it. Where does it hurt?” - The Guardian (UK)
The Eisteddfod, Wales’ week-long “language cultural festival includes competitions in music, dance and literature. … No member of the Gorsedd has been expelled before due to being dishonoured,” but Huw Edwards’ admission of having child pornography did it. - BBC
"Blackbird’s new checkless exit gives me the creeps. It's just the latest in a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and human voice out of restaurants. Each of these changes was small, but together they’ve made going out to eat much less personal." - The New York Times
Mariko Silver, currently head of the Henry Luce Foundation, formerly president of Bennington College, and for several years an Obama administration official, will take up her new post in September. - AP
Even though revenues have grown by 2% since last year, operating profit declined by 3% — this just a year after Disney committed $60 billion to expanding its theme parks. Executives blamed higher operating costs and an unexpected drop in consumer demand. - Business Insider
Sasha Skochilenko, released in the multi-country, multi-person prisoner swap, was serving seven years for substituting price tags in a grocery store with messages like, “The Russian Army bombed an art school in Mariupol where about 400 people were seeking shelter.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
"Arts organizations across Miami-Dade County have been left to their own devices ... to deal with the cuts in funding, and in many cases, that means making cuts of their own. … Arts groups in the county are nevertheless discussing ways to collaborate and make their resources go further together." - The Miami Times
"For the new report, (the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council) analyzed more than 11,000 grants made to about 500 local organizations from 2018 to 2023. The more than $500 million in total funding came from nearly 200 organizations." - WESA (Pittsburgh)
“The Spellow Library and Community Hub library, a 'one stop shop for one of the most deprived', was set alight with flames visible inside the building within minutes. As firefighters arrived rioters attempted to stop them tackling the blaze, throwing a missile at the fire engine.” - Manchester Evening News (Yahoo)
The DOJ says that TikTok “knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts in the regular TikTok experience and collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent.” - Wired
