Four weeks after hearing the presentations of the candidate cities, the panel set up to assess the European Capitals of Culture 2010 application packages is today publishing its report. This recommends that Essen, Pécs and Istanbul be designated as "European Capitals". The decision will be taken by the Culture Council in the second half of 2006, under the Finnish presidency.

Ján Figel, the Education and Culture Commissioner, welcomed the competitive spirit shown by the candidate cities and added that the quality of the dossiers submitted by Essen, Görlitz, Pécs, Istanbul and Kiev augured well for the Commission's wish to make the process of designating the European Capitals more open.

A Band-Formatted Art Project

Danius is an Australian artist carrying out a residency program in Yogyakarta in cooperation between Asialink Australia and Cemeti Art Foundation (CAF) Yogyakarta and also supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Indonesia Institute. He has fulfilled his residency from December 1, 2005 until March 27, 2006. Although his basis is sculpture but he works more on site specific installation during his art career. Along with some colleagues in several occasions of residencies in other countries, he created bands namely Lion Grion, Slave Piano, and Histrionics by performing definitely different kinds of music one another; Lion Grion in ska music, Slave Piano with orchestra concept, and Histrionics parodying famous songs and inserting lyrics in visual arts theme.

As governments around the world begin to recognise the contribution of creative industries to economic growth and employment, there has been a growth in statistics and mapping exercises in order to give public officials the information they need to create targeted public policies to support the sector. This article explores the importance of cultural statistics and UNESCO's role in developing standard methodologies that countries can adopt and adapt.

The Performing Arts Network of South Africa (PANSA) entered a new phase in its growth and development as an organisation, with a highly successful annual AGM on March 18 in Johannesburg. The meeting was well-attended with representatives from every province in the country in attendance.

On the Document Searching

My first impression, the office of CAF was quiet. There was not much attraction to be infected to the society. I was blocked in a room enthroned with white walls and acceleration shortage. Subsequently, it was reasonable for the management to put me in charge of pioneering the emergence of visual art documentation thoroughly. It felt like walking through a dense forest unknown by others of different institutions.

In January 13, 2006, Cemeti Art Foundation (CAF) held a small discussion to find out the review of visual arts development beginning from the observation in the area of Yogyakarta in particular and Indonesia in general during the year of 2005.

The importance of an education in Arts Management is widely recognized in Portugal nowadays. Nevertheless, there are few academic degrees in Arts Management and they have all been created quite recently. There are no Masters or PhDs in strict Arts or Cultural Management in Portugal; there are only post-graduate courses and a Master in Management of Cultural Heritage.

This is a systematic analysis of the existing cultural infrastructure in Istanbul its problems, key issues and prospects.
The author Dragan Klaic, a cultural analyst based in Amsterdam, spent a month in Istanbul in the autumn of 2005, immediately after the beginning of EU accession negotiations with Turkey.
The purpose of his trip was to explore potential connections between Istanbuls cultural resources and structures and those elsewhere in Europe.

The Interarts Foundation in Barcelona has recently published the final report of the international conference Culture in the Euro-Mediterranean Space, which was held in Barcelona on 22-23 November 2005 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

The public consultancy KEA European Affairs was recently selected by the European Commission (EC) to undertake an unprecedented Study on the Economy of Culture in Europe.

This exclusive Study is designed to help fill the gaps in availbale data, refine the definition of the cultural sector, and provide the EC with a better understanding of the economic dimension of "traditional" artistic activities and cultural industries, as well as assessing how the cultural sector can contribute to achieve the Lisbon strategy, in particular in terms of economic growth, employment and social cohesion. The Study is being completed in collaboration with Media Group and MKW GmbH.

In the early sixties the Swedish philanthropists Olof and Siri Aschberg donated a mansion located in Ile-de-France to UNESCO. The mansion was sold in 1992, and in memory of the donors and in conformity with the spirit of the couples gift, UNESCO decided to invest the sum resulting from the sale and to allocate the totality of the interest received to the creation of the UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for Artists, a flagship programme of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture (IFPC).

Because of the current Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, we'd like to publish an article by Raymond T. Grant, former artistic director of the 2002 Olympic Arts Festival in Salt Lake City.

The creative and cultural industries are now a recognised focus for policy development and investment across the UK...but what of the European experience?

The conference on March 20th, 2006 at Tate Modern in London (UK) will bring together experts from across Europe to present their analysis and practical experiences, for both information and debate.

The conference which focuses on cultural marketing opportunities and problems was part of the conference series "What is attractive culture", organized by the Tartu City Government.
The general aim of the cultural conference series was to study the problems related to cultural management, marketing and funding (both on the Estonian and world level) and to find answers to the questions that have emerged.

The two-year Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of the Aegean on cultural informatics is for young researchers, ideally MA or MSc graduates (up to 4 years since their graduation), maybe PhD candidates at any stage of their research, but NOT PhD degree holders, who are from any EU country (except Greece, as this is funded by a grant which promotes the mobility of researchers).

President Bush's 2007 budget request includes some bad news for community arts, says Americans for the Arts. It requests level funding for the NEA at $124.4 million and for the NEH at $141 million.

A. Introduction
KUNCI cultural studies center, Kedai Kebun Forum, Cemeti Art Foundation, and the Graduate Program in Religious and Cultural Studies (IRB) Sanata Dharma University are going to hold a public lecture and a discussion series entitled The Possibilities of Cultural Movement Today. The speakers of the public lecture and discussion series are Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Kuan-Hsing Chen and Hilmar Farid.

art-e-conomy (transitional economics and art theory and practice of contemporary global production) is an international collaborative research and educational project, initiated with an attempt to re-think the ideas behind the economy of art and the status of art market in the post-socialist Eastern European situation.

Turkey is now set to participate in the Culture 2000 programme. This follows the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding on Turkey's participation in the Culture 2000 programme in 2006 by Mr van der Pas, Director General of the Directorate General for Education and Culture, and His Excellency, Oguz Demilralp, Turkish Ambassador to the European Union. The Memorandum should enter into force by the end of 2005.