I will soon be teaching a new course called Arts Entrepreneurship here at Drexel. I've been preparing for this on and off since last summer. In addition to reviewing literature and current thinking on the topic I have been looking at offerings in various higher education locations, especially those with a music focus.

There appears to be some confusion regarding just what arts entrepreneurship means. Some researchers have been able to identify 2 distinct tracks, or types of entrepreneurship. One relates to enhanced student preparation for careers or potential careers after graduation. The other mirrors "true" entrepreneurship, the creation of new ventures and enterprises. It appears to me that too much emphasis is being placed on the former definition here, not the latter.

The Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC) released a toolkit on public art today. The Public Art Toolkit was developed to assist local governments, arts, cultural and heritage organizations with the management of public art. The Toolkit is intended as a how-to guide when planning a public art program or evaluating an existing one, and contains resources for the management of public art projects.

The conference will be organized on June 24 and 25, 2010 in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and held in Old Arena - a club for culture and information 2015.

The Ministry of Culture held a teleconference with representatives of government, financial institutions and major creative enterprises on April 14 to encourage financial support for Chinas emerging cultural industry.

The Ministry, along with the CPC Publicity Department, Peoples Bank of China, Ministry of Finance, State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), General Administration of Press and Publication, China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) and China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), were following up a March 19 instruction to the financial sector to provide financial support to the cultural industry.

The objective of this consultation is to gather views on various issues impacting the cultural and creative industries in Europe, from business environment to the need to open up a common European space for culture, from capacity building to skills development and promotion of European creators on the world stage. The responses to the consultation will inform the Commission and help it ensure that EU programmes and policies involving cultural and creative industries are "fit for purpose".

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Culture Minister Margaret Hodge today announced a two-year grants programme to provide at least 40 internships with established arts companies for graduates from low-income backgrounds. The initial £600,000 programme will begin in September and be managed by the Jerwood Foundation.

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.

Cities innovate when people mix and mingle, sharing and combining ideas from different vantage points and traditions. That mixing takes place on and in shared infrastructures and spaces that bring people together.

This research was made in summer 2008. Since 2008 a lot of changes occurred including the global crunch. But all these changes didnt made this research out of date, Quite the reverse, the theme of new cultural spaces and their role in city regeneration became more actual in these new conditions. Some initiatives appeared and some of mentioned initiatives were developed since that time. We would follow up our monitoring of the new cultural spaces and creative clusters in future.

As from the 14th to 19th September 2009 twenty six cultural entrepreneurs drawn from the Central African region (Cameroon, Chad, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa Republic, Burundi) and Mali (West Africa) attended a training seminar on Cultural policies and development of creative and cultural industries for Central African countries" met in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The seminar was jointly organized by the Observatory of Cultural Policies in Africa (OCPA), Mozambique; Centre Régional de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Traditions Orales et pour le Développement des Langues Africaines (CERDOTOLA), Cameroon; the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID); and the ACP Cultural Observatory - ACP Cultures programme of the ACP Secretariat.

The conference on November 12-13 in Leipzig, Germany, examines the formation of the creative knowledge economy in different European metropolitan regions. The focus will be on understanding the diversity of regulatory mechanisms and governance forms directed at fostering the different segments of these conomies on various spatial scales. The conference aims at linking academics, practitioners and urban planners as well as cultural entrepreneurs and artists to discuss appropriate instruments and governance formats. The conference will explore various particularities of reative industries that can be taken into account in order to establish knowledge on suitable and context specific strategies for public or private interventions in this field.

Cultural Indicators for New Zealand, 2009 is one report in a series produced by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, as part of the Cultural Statistics Programme. The aim of the programme is to improve the range and quality of statistical information about the cultural sector - for the development of cultural policy by both central and local government, for monitoring the sectors progress and performance, and for future planning.

The Cultural Statistics programme is based on the New Zealand Framework for Cultural Statistics Te Anga Tatauranga Tikanga--iwi Aotearoa 1995, which provides a framework for the systematic collection, analysis and presentation of data related to the cultural sector.

As in more or less every country and especially every big city between Finland and India, the Creative Industries are, at the moment, a big issue in Austrian cultural and economic policy.

The Nordic Innovation Centre presents a Creative Economy Green Paper for the Nordic region

April 28 - May 1, 2008, Fairmont Château Laurier, Ottawa, Canada

The international symposium Creative Construct: Building for Culture and Creativity, organized by the Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities at Simon Fraser University and the City of Ottawa, brought together noted speakers, experts and artists from across Canada and around to world to examine the role and value of cultural infrastructure in furthering culture and the creative economy in cities and communities.