Are financial dividends the ‘great prize’ in the cultural sector?
Catherine Bennett comments on the emphasis placed on financial returns for cities of culture.
Nothing, we can be certain, will stop the culture minister, Maria Miller, from visiting Derry before the imminent expiration of its current title, City of Culture 2013. Probably, she has been trying to make the detour all year. Only last week, she praised Derry's tenure for "encouraging economic growth, inspiring social change and bringing communities together". So, with Christmas coming, is it worth the culture minister putting something in the diary, before Derry stops being a City of Culture and reverts to normal Derry?
The Turner prize exhibition is still on, for example, although with at least one of the artists (David Shrigley) concerned about "massive inequality", Ms Miller might be happier at the theatre, seeing A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations), the new play by Sam Shepard. Perhaps, since Ms Miller is rarely seen at the theatre, even in London, she might prefer an evening with Edna O'Brien.
If that potentially wordy event is signally unappealing for a minister whose administration can't, really, be doing with literature, whether teaching it or the dismal business of lending it out to the public, how about a concluding concert by the Ulster Orchestra? Unless an orchestra is unlikely to tempt a minister now witnessing the collapse of state-funded music education under her colleague, Michael Gove. Hmm. What else is on? She likes mummies, apparently. Disney's Frozen, tonight, at the Brunswick Moviebowl – in line with her boss, David Cameron's preference for "commercially successful pictures"?
Nothing, we can be certain, will stop the culture minister, Maria Miller, from visiting Derry before the imminent expiration of its current title, City of Culture 2013. Probably, she has been trying to make the detour all year. Only last week, she praised Derry's tenure for "encouraging economic growth, inspiring social change and bringing communities together". So, with Christmas coming, is it worth the culture minister putting something in the diary, before Derry stops being a City of Culture and reverts to normal Derry?
The Turner prize exhibition is still on, for example, although with at least one of the artists (David Shrigley) concerned about "massive inequality", Ms Miller might be happier at the theatre, seeing A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations), the new play by Sam Shepard. Perhaps, since Ms Miller is rarely seen at the theatre, even in London, she might prefer an evening with Edna O'Brien.
If that potentially wordy event is signally unappealing for a minister whose administration can't, really, be doing with literature, whether teaching it or the dismal business of lending it out to the public, how about a concluding concert by the Ulster Orchestra? Unless an orchestra is unlikely to tempt a minister now witnessing the collapse of state-funded music education under her colleague, Michael Gove. Hmm. What else is on? She likes mummies, apparently. Disney's Frozen, tonight, at the Brunswick Moviebowl – in line with her boss, David Cameron's preference for "commercially successful pictures"?