The former artistic director of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Arts Festival and correspondent of Arts Management Network, Raymond T. Grant, is deeply concerned about a clause that appears in the contracts for artists engaged by VANOC for its Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver, Canada. Arts Management Network publish the open letter of Mr. Grant to the CEO of VANOC, Mr. Furlong, at its website.

From 1 to 7 July the Management Department of the University of Antwerp is organising a Summer School on Cultural Management. This year the Summer School will focus on Museums and Cultural Diversity. It will be open for students and professionals. The Summer School on Cultural Management is a new initiative of the Management Department of the University of Antwerp (UA).

2010 marks the 25 year anniversary of the European Capitals of Culture, which were launched in 1985. On 23-24 March 2010 the European Commission will be hosting a celebratory event and strategic conference to mark the occasion , to look back at the achievements of the past 25 years, and to reflect strategically on its legacy and impact. The conference will be opened by President Barroso and Jack Lang, who was the founder of the idea along with the late Melina Mercouri, former Minister of Culture for Greece.

Encouraged by the huge success of the first symposium "The Art of Music Education" in 2008 the Körber Foundation in cooperation with the Elbphilharmonie, has invited well- known experts from all over Europe, the USA and Asia to an international symposium to take place in Hamburg from 24 to 26 February 2010 in the KörberForum. This year the theme is »Creating a mindset for music among young people aged between 15 and 25«

What are we hoping to achieve by offering music education programmes to young people? How do they need to be designed to motivate a younger audience to go to a classical music performance? What sort of a world do our potential listeners live in? These and other questions will be discussed by a panel of concert hall managers, directors of education programmes and dramaturges, to exchange ideas about the opportunities and limits of their work with young people..

Britain was the last major economy officially to come out of the recession although commentators predict that it will take years for the economy to recover its strength. Public sector funding and support for the cultural sector from businesses and foundations will be tight.

Former Prime Minster, Tony Blair, claimed that his New Labour government presided over a Golden Age in the arts in the UK. Cultural Trends, the journal that champions the need for better evidence-based analyses of the cultural sector, is delighted to provide a major opportunity for researchers to consider whether that Golden Age actually existed; if it is now over; what it achieved; what the effects of the recession on the cultural sector might be in terms of changes in audiences and audience profiles, the economics of the sector and its financial impacts, and how government policy, and the sector itself albeit in the UK, Europe and elsewhere might assess its legacy and learn the lessons that should inform a post-recession economy. All of this will be discussed at the Cultural Trends third one-day international conference, A "Golden Age"? planned for November 2010.

The Centre for Local Government of the Laurentian University has published its first issue of Culture and Local Governance/Culture et gouvernance locale (CLG), a bilingual peer-reviewed online journal. The issue focuses on the role of culture in the new context of local planning, where the sustainability factor is becoming a priority.

We just had a planning retreat with some of our board members, and they asked us questions about our audience that we couldnt answer. So we realized we need to do a survey...

As a researcher who works with arts organizations and museums, I get that call or email frequently. The marketing director of a theater, classical ensemble, dance company, or art museum will get in touch, often passing along a detailed request-for-proposal for audience research, and sometimes already armed with a list of survey questions that she and her executive director brainstormed together.

The Conference Creative Entrepreneurship and Education in Cultural Life held in Chicago from July 15 to July 18, 2009 was a collaboration between ENCATC and the Arts, Entertainment and Media Management Department of Columbia College Chicago. The conference represented continued work of the ENCATC specialty group that explores policies and practices in creative entrepreneurship and was the first ENCATC event held in the United States. The event was attended by 53 participants. A diverse group included academics and independent consultants, business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs from such countries as France, the UK, Serbia, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Australia, Lithuania, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, and USA.

The cultural and creative sectors play an important economic and social role in Europe, contributing to European GDP, growth and employment. These industries and the creativity which they generate are therefore an essential asset for Europe's economy and competitiveness in the context of globalisation. While these industries are performing well, with cultural entrepreneurs being risk takers and innovators with long-term vision, there is still further scope fully to develop this potential. These enterprises -which are part of the cultural and creative industries- need to be able to take full advantage of the EU internal market and adapt to the rapidly changing environment characterised in particular by globalisation and a technology revolution (digital shift). These developments call for new skills within the industry as well as new European business and economic models.

In the face of growing environmental and economic urgencies, issues of sustainability and resiliency are moving to the forefront of planning, policy, and programs in cities and communities of all sizes. City planning paradigms are mutating from a focus on building creative cities to that of achieving sustainable cities. Internationally, this shift is evident among local governments adopting sustainability goals for towns, cities, and regions; creating sustainable community plans; and implementing community projects related to sustainable development. Yet cultural considerations, while recognized in urban and community planning contexts, are not integrated into sustainability planning in a widespread way.

The National Arts Index is a highly distilled annual measure of the health and vitality of arts in the United States by using 76 equal weighted, national-level indicators of arts activity. This report covers an 11-year period, from 1998 to 2008.

The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1995. Regional Spaces, National Stages: Performance beyond London 1945-2010. This symposium at the University of Reading at 17th Sept 2010 will analyse the role of performance outside London in Britain's theatrical ecology.

Theatre Management: Producing and Managing the Performing Arts delivers a broad, comprehensive, wide-angle view of theatre and performing arts management, based on the premise that all of the performing arts share the same core issues: producing or presenting artistically satisfying works in accord with their missions, finding and keeping an audience, providing for the financial and creative well-being of an organization or production, and maintaining good personnel and public relations.

In connection with her forthcoming book about the issue, consultant and researcher Dr Anne-Marie Quigg is seeking performing arts employees who have had experience of any aspect of workplace bullying.

Arts Management is anything but a mere amalgamation of the world of the arts and the world of business management; it is the confrontation of two opposing methodologies, one being a field of human creativity that produces something new that did not exist before, the other one diving into the existing world of business practices, in order to improve their efficiency.

Our current episode takes on a controversial questionhow important is a graduate degree in our field? Andrew Taylor of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at UW Madison shares his thoughts on this thorny issue. Panelists Ron Evans, Matt Campbell, and Maris Smith join the conversation on advantages and disadvantages to getting a graduate degree on the path to a career in the arts.

Arts Manager, the web platform for Russian arts managers, has made an interview with Marco Mancuso, the creator and director of the «Digicult» project, covering issues of digital culture on the internet and project management.