Response from Neil Pigot

On Monday, I pointed to Neil Pigot's recent Age op-ed as part of a global sweep of items of interest, making a couple of brief comments....

Dark ages?

Lifting my studious head from the bloody skirmishes of 5th century Denmark, I stumbled over a report which claimed that things appear scarce...

Getting heard: the realpolitik of arts advocacy

Robert Musil (1880-1942), the great German novelist and intellectual, observed once that if there was to be real social change of any kind, ...

Newsy bits

This year's winner of the VCA's George Fairfax Memorial Award is Simon Stone, actor-about-town and founder of The Hayloft Project, o...

Bits and bobs

It's often hard to run down the arts angle on Federal Budgets. But in today's Australian, Corrie Perkin chases up arts reaction to T...

Sustaining the arts

Currency House has published another must-have Platform Paper: a lucid and fascinating examination of the vexed question of arts funding. A ...

Phew, wot a scorcher

...as they used to say in the UK Sun when the temperature nudged over 25 degrees: a cue for white English people to throw off their shirts a...

La Mama funding

News just in: after some nervous waiting, La Mama Theatre tonight announced that it has had its funding confirmed for 2008. Not only that, t...

Make It New

David Williams over at Compromise Is Our Business passes on the news that the Australia Council is inviting responses to its latest planning...

Slightly bigger carrots

More on the Federal Budget in today's Age. The arts did unusually well this year, but there's some justice in Opposition spokesman P...

Small carrots

Anyone would think there was an election coming up. But hey, if Costello is distributing big carrots in his 2007 Budget, us arts rabbits ar...

Strong action

Signs of hope? James Strong, the new(ish) chair of the Australia Council, has put his weight behind yet another inquiry into the "troub...

Mad as a Coote

The Liberals have announced their arts policy and, by gum, I'm off to tell those demonstraters outside Bracksie's office (just down...

Arts funding: some further thoughts

Some notes arising out of the present discussion:1. The question of funding the arts is a no-brainer for artists. Not, as alleged by populis...

Speaking up for theatre

I just did something unprecedented, and closed off the comment thread to my post on the threat to La Mama's funding. TN had swum into th...

La Mama, funding and freedom of speech

Good things come to those who wait. The Age finally ran my opinion piece on La Mama Theatre being put "on notice" by the Australia...

The Williamson Syndrome

So, David Williamson has announced he's retiring: it's time, he tells us, that he made way for new blood. And naturally, the tribut...