thu 05/12/2024

Arts Council England

Empirical’s Pop-Up Jazz Lounge, Old Street Underground

“I can’t believe it. Free jazz in Old Street tube, how cool is that?” It’s a relief to hear this kind of thing from passersby, because Empirical’s attempt to bring jazz to the people, to reach new audiences and develop their music through an...

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'We have a duty to all children to share our rich artistic history'

Two hundred and 74 years ago today, on 14 September 1741, Georg Friedrich Handel completed the first edition of his legendary oratorio, Messiah. It is a work associated with children’s charity, and thanks to a royal charter granted to philanthropist...

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Opinion: Bazalgette is welcome at the Arts Council

So the chairman of Big Brother TV becomes chairman of the Arts Council. Is it good or bad that Sir Peter Bazalgette will now hold the purse-strings for our publicly supported arts, the most debated, the most fragile, the most ephemeral elements of...

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Our Country's Good: Director Max Stafford-Clark opens up

“Our Country’s Good, a play that proclaimed the power and enduring worth of theatre and that celebrated its centrality to our lives, was of importance in the third term of a government which deemed 'subsidy' a dirty word.” So wrote Max Stafford-...

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Q&A Special: Arts Patron Donatella Flick

Donatella Flick, one of Britain's most important arts patrons, is furious. "Madness!" she cries in her lush Italian voice. "This is a country that was fantastic, and now there's a demolition going on, bit by bit!" We're sitting in Sir Winston...

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Cash for arts: should it be bums-per-pound or pounds-per-bum?

The organisation that channels public money to generate today's new classical music has been resoundingly condemned this week by all of Britain's most important composers. In an open letter, signed by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Peter Maxwell...

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Liz Forgan steps down as head of ACE

The Secretary of State for Culture, Jeremy Hunt, announced today that he will not reappoint Dame Liz Forgan as Chair of Arts Council England when her term ends in January 2013. Liz Forgan was appointed Arts Council England's Chair in February...

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Summary of main Arts Council winners and losers

A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser...

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Dance landscape shrinks and shifts nationwide in Arts Council cuts

The Arts Council’s rearrangement of the dance world by its handling of its 15 per cent subsidy cut shows no change in its persistence in choosing to prefer bureaucratic structures to talent. The 15 per cent cut has been handed straight over to all...

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Come clean over cuts, arts chiefs challenge Cameron

The leaders of Britain’s leading arts establishments, from the Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company and Philharmonia Orchestra to  choreographers Akram Khan and Siobhan Davies, have written to the Prime Minister asking him to come clean...

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Subject: Re: Arts Cuts (Reply All)

It began with a review of 100 Years of German Song. Roused by a comment to a reader (see Igor's comment below), Fisun was moved to email Igor in support of his trenchant views on arts funding. It wasn't long before other writers at theartsdesk got...

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Arts Council spared - but UK Film Council is to go

The Arts Council of England has escaped the government axe - unlike the UK Film Council. Reports over the past week or two paint a grim picture of diminishing arts budgets in Scotland, Wales and England while the Conservative-Lib Dem Government...

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