News

The arts and culture sector added £10.8bn to the economy in 2016 – an increase of £390m on the year before, and a larger contribution than agriculture, a new report from Arts Council England claims.

Opera North is leading a consortium of arts and community teams in Leeds to build 'Arts Together', the city’s first skills sharing project to boost arts engagement. 

Germany has returned indigenous artefacts to their aboriginal heirs in the country’s largest repatriation of ancestral remains to date. The move comes amidst growing protest and debate about the role and rights of museums to hold objects of cultural significance acquired from other nations. 

Responding to a public letter from a long-time opera lover who said he was being priced out of attending the opera, Dame Esther Rantzen, TV presenter and journalist, said it was “extraordinary” that the media focuses on 16-24 year olds yet “completely disregards” the over 65s.

Lucy Noble, the venue’s artistic and commercial director, says young people should have the chance to learn about female and ethnic minority composers as well as the “white male titans” of the classical music canon. A survey by the Royal Albert Hall found that while around two thirds of people were aware of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, female composers had less than half this level of recognition.

Theatre companies Terra Nova and Bruiser are among the five arts organisations dropped from Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s annual portfolio for 2019/20. More than half of the entire portfolio will see cuts averaging 5%.