culture
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“Good art stops being art — it becomes a way of being happy, of receiving something beautiful and human from stranger, of confirming one’s identity, of being not alone.” AL Kennedy in The Guardian books blog today arguing with typical intelligence, wit and accessiblity that it’s not unreasonable to defend arts funding when all the
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I’ve just discovered that Michael Russell, the Scottish minister with responsibility for culture, held a meeting with artists yesterday at the Traverse Theatre. This is important stuff for anyone involved or interested in Scotland’s cultural life. There’s a short video about the event here; it includes reactions to the meeting from Ron Butlin and Margaret
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The Sunday Herald reports that the SNP Scottish Government is abandoning its manifesto pledge to provide Irish-style tax breaks for artists, musicians and writers and, instead, conducting a substantial review of arts funding in Scotland. It’s hardly a surprise that it should ditch the tax plans: the Scottish Parliament doesn’t have the powers to implement
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Salty ruminations on bad news from Bloodaxe. * Which come after Mark Ravenhill writes on arts funding vs sport funding in The Guardian. * Meanwhile, here’s a new poetry podcasting project. * And something else that could set poetry alight.
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It’s getting a bit close to the Scottish Parliament elections to be posting a link like this one, but a Scottish voter (or anyone, for that matter) interested in culture could do worse than look at the Scots Language Centre‘s election pages. They contain details of not only the parties’* policies on the Scots language,
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The Scottish Executive has finally announced a little more about the Scottish cultural academy that the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport promised us months and months ago in the Executive’s response to the Cultural Commission‘s report. There has been some muttering about the fact that the academy, which is based somewhat on the Irish
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The Scottish Executive has published its draft Culture (Scotland) Bill for consultation. This marks an important juncture for arts and culture policy in Scotland, but The Scotsman reports that James Boyle, the head of the Cultural Commission, which the Executive set up to draw up a vision for Scotland’s cultural policy, is not at all
Amy Jo Philip 