Our society has changeddramaticallyover the past few decades. We talk about it all the time in the context of business (flattening), government and politics (opening), and community (connecting). But what about arts, humanities, and culture?

LOS ANGELESNovember 23, 2009MySpace Music, the premier online music community and leading independent music agency Merlin today announced a comprehensive global agreement for Merlins member labels to participate in MySpace Music.

The addition of the Merlin repertoire, representing 10% of the global music market, to MySpace Musics existing catalogue will create one of the largest independent music offerings on the web.

It`s the third time, the Institute für Kulturkonzepte, based in Vienna and Hamburg, publish "An Anatomy of Ars Management" in their range of specialist books on arts management including articles in English and German. This year the articles are much influenced by the development of arts management and relate to important trends in even this area.The motivation therefore are the anniversaries of both institutes: The Institut für Kulturkonzepte in Vienna is celebrating its 15th year since its founding, whilst the Institut für Kulturkonzepte in Hamburg has reached the five-year milestone.

This major event...involving the collaboration between artists and poets... is consistent with UNESCOs principle objective as regards the promotion of intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity. It will no doubt contribute to emphasizing the unique role of the arts as a means of dialogue, communication and understanding... giving its aim of promoting ethical values through artistic expression and creativity...

Cities innovate when people mix and mingle, sharing and combining ideas from different vantage points and traditions. That mixing takes place on and in shared infrastructures and spaces that bring people together.

UKIP Media & Events has just published its latest Auditoria Magazine, which has been switched into an annual publication. Auditoria annual is circulated to 12,000 readers worldwide, bringing together the views and ideas of leading experts in the area of entertainment-venue design, operations and technologies. Auditoria caters to those in the business of operating theatres and performing arts centres, concert halls, convention centres, and cinemas, covering subject areas ranging from security, ticketing, seating to lighting.

This research was made in summer 2008. Since 2008 a lot of changes occurred including the global crunch. But all these changes didnt made this research out of date, Quite the reverse, the theme of new cultural spaces and their role in city regeneration became more actual in these new conditions. Some initiatives appeared and some of mentioned initiatives were developed since that time. We would follow up our monitoring of the new cultural spaces and creative clusters in future.

The Cultural Data Project (CDP) is a powerful, online management tool designed to strengthen arts and cultural organizations, advance learning and exchange throughout the cultural sector, and help funders more effectively plan for and evaluate their individual and collective grantmaking activities. The CDP allows users to track their institutions financial and programmatic performance over time and to benchmark themselves against comparable organizations.

The african organisation CREATE has just released the first Directory of Arts and Culture Organizations & Festivals. The directory is comprised of two sections. The first part lists organizations which are based within the CEMAC region while the second part lists pan-African and global organizations by area of activity.

The Culturelink Network celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. To mark this occasion, we are organizing the Third World Culturelink Conference under the title "Networks The Evolving Aspects of Culture in the 21st Century", to be held from 13 to 15 November 2009 in Zagreb, Croatia.

16th International Conference on Cultural Economics by the ACEI

Copenhagen, 10-12 June 2010

Call for Papers

The Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI) invites you to attend its 16th international conference on cultural economics in Copenhagen on June 10-12, 2010.

As from the 14th to 19th September 2009 twenty six cultural entrepreneurs drawn from the Central African region (Cameroon, Chad, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa Republic, Burundi) and Mali (West Africa) attended a training seminar on Cultural policies and development of creative and cultural industries for Central African countries" met in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The seminar was jointly organized by the Observatory of Cultural Policies in Africa (OCPA), Mozambique; Centre Régional de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Traditions Orales et pour le Développement des Langues Africaines (CERDOTOLA), Cameroon; the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID); and the ACP Cultural Observatory - ACP Cultures programme of the ACP Secretariat.

China Book Publishing: The Official Industry Report is a revised and expanded edition of China Book Publishing: The First Official Industry Report published in 2007. In addition to new chapters analyzing publishers and their products, the book also provides a more detailed investigation of the human resources in Chinas publishing industry. It aims to present a general picture of the industry, covering industrial environment, press-based performance, book exports, copyright trade, and so on. It will definitely serve as a comprehensive and authoritative reference book for media authorities, researchers, publishing professionals, and anyone who is interested in Chinas book publishing industry.

Auerbach Glasow French, Architectural Lighting Design and Consulting, has won two international lighting design awards for the newly renovated and reinstalled Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. The International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) Award of Excellence, among the highest honor given by that program, was awarded to the design team and presented on May 6, 2009. Additionally, the Award of Merit of the International Illumination Design Awards was awarded to the designers by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). The IESNA Award was announced on May 12, 2009, and will be presented on November 15, 2009, at the IES Annual Conference.

Following on from LabforCulture's past successes of blogging and videoing from European cultural events, the platform is bringing you more from the European Culture Forum in Brussels, 28th-30 September. LabforCulture teamed up with Culture Action Europe and the resulting commentary is new and interesting from some key people working in culture, across Europe.

Firstly, Odile Quintin, DG Education, Culture and Youth, European Commission who gave the nod to the purpose of the Forum gathering and laid out her thinking on an open approach for future cultural development into 2013. Steve Green, EUNIC, described his role as a rapporteur of the event, EUNIC's global reach, and gave congratulations to the Commission in the engagement of their development, international and external departments at the Forum. Michael Wimmer, EDUCULT, highlighted three positive developments he experienced during the Forum, one being this new openness, and lateral involvement of other sectors and actors by the Commission.

A survey of more than 60 major art museums in the US shows that the directors of more than one third have recently taken pay cuts, many of them substantial, and senior staff at most of those institutions have also had their compensation trimmed. The cuts range from salary reductions and forfeiture of bonuses to unpaid leave.

Even where there have not been massive layoffs, hiring freezes leave posts vacant and incentives induce early retirement. In the past year, New Yorks Museum of Modern Art has cut its staff from around 850 to 741 through a hiring freeze and natural attrition.

The conference on November 12-13 in Leipzig, Germany, examines the formation of the creative knowledge economy in different European metropolitan regions. The focus will be on understanding the diversity of regulatory mechanisms and governance forms directed at fostering the different segments of these conomies on various spatial scales. The conference aims at linking academics, practitioners and urban planners as well as cultural entrepreneurs and artists to discuss appropriate instruments and governance formats. The conference will explore various particularities of reative industries that can be taken into account in order to establish knowledge on suitable and context specific strategies for public or private interventions in this field.

The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) and the Rhode Island Foundation are collaborating to provide scholarship grants to Rhode Island individual artists and organizations to attend the Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) Conference in Providence, RI, October 30November 2, 2009.

Novato, CA -- Hundreds of top arts marketing and development professionals will gather on October 8-11, 2009 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles for the Arts Reach National Arts Marketing and Development Conference 2009. Are You Ready for the Wave of Change? Breakthrough Strategies for Growing Audiences, Donors, and Boards in the Coming Decade is the theme of the event.

In light of the economic downturn, this conference is designed to help organizations focus their precious resources in the most effective ways to maximize the achievement of their organizations mission. The faculty includes leaders from such organizations as the Los Angeles Opera, the Arizona Theatre Company, the California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and many others.