The Hague / Bergen 3 June 2005: The European Union and Europa Nostra the pan-European federation for heritage today announced the winners of the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Awards 2004 at a European Awards Ceremony at the Håkonshallen in Bergen, Norway.

After the conference an informal European network of civil servants working in the field of national cultural education policy was set up.

In June 2004, an appeal for a Europe founded on its culture was launched by the director of La Monnaie opera house in Brussels, supported by IETM, the European Writers Congress, Europa Nostra and EFAH. The appeal and list of signatories was presented to then EU president Romano Prodi, and stimulated a wide-ranging response from many European heads of state.

From April to November 2005 Audience and Market Development will present Leading Voices across Australia. The program brings some of the latest ideas and thinking about audience development and arts marketing to Australia's arts community in association with www.fuel4arts.com and the UK Arts Marketing Association.

This ArtsJournal Forum, funded by the Wallace Foundation (which also commissioned the RAND report), brings together 11 artists, arts administrators, advocates, researchers and critics to discuss the main contention of the RAND report: that a better case can be made for the arts by focussing on intrinsic effects.

Arts Extension Service (AES) at University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA) has new partners for the 26th Annual Summer Institute for Arts Management in June 20-22, 2005.

The City of Nantes, On The Move, IETM and Relais Culture Europe organize a colloquium in Nantes in collaboration with ERBAN on 23-24 June 2005, on the subject of Interactive Culture: Culture and Online Information

Two days of discussion will focus on the encounter between the cultural domain and digital culture and will question if the cultural operators and resource centers are lagging behind in the exploitation of new possibilities.

Within the Annual Conference 2005 of ENCATC, 60 students from all over Europe (and some from farther) will get together and will deal with this topic. On the weekend in the beginning of June, the students will meet approx. 250 teachers and professional from all over the world for an exchange and a process of mutual learning. The core of the students' meeting should be the exchange between students; exchange of experiences, of knowledge, of contacts, of projects and interests. The magic word for this weekend should be interaction. The students will not be recipients but participants; they take part and are involved in the process going on. The program with workshops and lectures will just give a frame that will be filled with the ideas and with the motivation of the participants. As the topic borders, boundaries, limits, is very wide spread, we do not expect to cover all aspects of it, we rather want to get closer to it with this, in a way experimental approach, and to become aware of the different aspects of it.

The fourth OZeCulture conference of culture, creative industries and ebusiness took place on 7 and 8 April 2005 at the Byron Community and Cultural Centre, 69 Jonson Street, Byron Bay, on the north coast of New South Wales.

The conference featured Australian and international keynote speakers on a broad range of topics related to the latest developments, opportunities and challenges for creative industry practitioners.

The RESEO Database was developed within the framework of the project "Why/How Opera Education in Europe Today?", which was carried out by 17 European Opera Houses and the Universities of Leeds (GB), Münster (G) and Oldenburg (G) from 1 September 2000 to 30 August 2003. The project, which was supported by the Culture 2000 framework programme of the European Commission, explored many aspect of current opera education practice including the roles of artists, teachers, and opera educations relation to the future of opera.

In Jerusalem Yad Ben Zvi is engaging in a gigantic effort to preserve the heritage of the Land of the City and the traditions of Oriental and Sephardic Jewish communities. Its work is immensely popular with the general public and earned it the prestigious Israel Prize but has irked some at the academic community which claim it is not up to par as far as academic standards are concerned.
Is it a path-finder or just a popular science institute?

The 2005 edition of The Directories of American Art Galleries are now available.

In brief, The Directories of American Art Galleries are catalogues listing thousands of American Fine Art Establishments and pertinent contact information per each Establishment. The Directories list ONLY Art Establishments throughout the USA. Art Establishments in more than 4,600 American cities and in every state are listed. Most entries list the E-mail address(es), Website Address(es), Street Address, Phone Numbers (includes Toll Free Numbers when available), Fax Number, and the name of the Contact Person (Curator, Manager, Owner, etc.). Thousands of Art Establishments are accompanied by a description of the sort of art represented or exhibited, the services offered, year established, and any information that might be useful or of interest to people involved in the art world.

From April 21 to June 10, 2005, we make a user survey to get a better imagination, what our readers and users expect from our internet services and products. We would be happy about your participation to have the widest range of opinions, answers and user statistics. The results will be published and used for our upcoming relaunch of both the newsletter and the online portal.

Sponsorship, which has a budget of million dollars in the developing world, is becoming a business act that benefits both sponsorship oriented organizations and the companies. Sponsor companies make the investment in order to reach their target market and meet their pre-specified goals in the long term, to contribute to institutionalization process or to motivate their employees.

One of the principles of Buddhism is the idea of detachment that we must consider the importance of detaching ourselves from both our problems and our successes. In other words, we can find balance in our lives and our work if we can maintain a broader perspective. Although I am not a Buddhist myself, I truly appreciate this principle, and find it applicable in my work both as an artist and as an arts manager.
Whether you are an arts manager, an artist, or an arts afficianado, you know that it easy to get caught in what I refer to as the artistic vacuum. This happens when we become so consumed by the creation of our art (or the promotion of it or the appreciation of it) that we find ourselves too narrowly focused, and we lose our perspective.

Sky and digital channel Artsworld have teamed with arts sponsorship partners English National Opera (ENO) and English National Ballet (ENB) in an extension of their continuing relationships to create a new initiative, 'Culture Connection'...

In this report, Barbara Soren explores the characteristics of educational and meaningful online experiences and evaluates a number of virtual museum exhibits based on their ability to engage online visitors.