Economists all over the world agree that the UK’s coalition government is completely incompetent. Absolutely nothing they do works, their ideas are all bad ideas and no matter how terrible things get they stick to their guns and just make everything worse. So it continued last week with the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s “autumn statement” […]
As dance companies go the Ballet Boyz are a bit different, different in that they appear to be more focused on the physical appearance of their dancers (The Boyz) than they are on the work the company creates and tours. Don’t believe us? Just take a quick look at last years documentary, made by the […]
“In c.100 AD Gaius Plinius (Pliny the Younger), in a letter to his friend the historian Cornelius Tacitus…” You know when a report starts with a sentence like that we’re all in a lot of trouble. So begins a report called “Philanthropy Outside London” written by Peter S. Phillips for the Department of Culture Media […]
The arts world in the UK is getting its knickers in a collective knot, again, after somebody who doesn’t matter said something that isn’t true on a radio show people only pretend to listen to. Here in TheLab™ we didn’t hear what was actually said. First of all because it was on the radio and […]
Arts Council England (ACE) has announced the details of its government enforced restructuring plan to reduce operational costs by at least 50%. Part of that restructuring is the cutting of 117.5 jobs across the country from a number of ACE offices. We could speculate all day about just exactly who at the funding monolith is […]
Arts Council England (ACE) is usually very good at getting itself into trouble but the latest debacle, not necessarily of its own making, is a stark illustration of just how blundering the funding monolith really is. Particularly when it comes to dealing with problems. As the BBC tries to untangle itself from the 40 year […]
DanceXchange, fresh from creating a massively expensive film that could have been made for coppers and a free lunch for TheSpace, is at it again with another massively expensive website project. The “spec” for this online portal of doom, a remodelling of the website westmidlandsdance.com (snappy, Ed!), describes it as; “digital platform that will showcase […]
If an alien species were to visit this planet looking for information about arts and culture to take back to their own world then said alien would be forgiven for thinking that the arts, in the UK at least, are nothing but an unmitigated success 100% of the time. No project ever goes awry, no […]
Over the last few weeks the remaining dance elements of the Arts Council England/BBC online arts channel, The Space, have finally come online. ‘Come Dance With Me’ (stop laughing at the back) created by Dance East and ‘Spill’ created by DanceXchange, both National Dance Agencies, are now online for your viewing pleasure. The first video […]
After what seemed like 145 years of preparation and build up the Olympics kicked off this past Friday with the opening ceremony at the Olympic Park in East London. Debates will be had, probably for the next 145 years, about the relative artistic and creative merits of the show itself. Was it a “spectacular” illustration […]