by Valerie Beaman, Private Sector Initiatives Coordinator, Americans for the Arts

Securing private funding is more competitive than ever given this current recession. So, how do we make the case for supporting the arts and how do we maintain a vital relationship with the private sector in spite of the funding downturn? How do we define the relevance of the arts to business in the face of urgent and basic social needs?

This one day symposium brings together fundraising and development professionals working in the arts and cultural sectors to explore this changing landscape, learn practical survival strategies, seek out opportunities and generate new ideas to stay financially healthy.

The Brazilian Ministry of Culture established in 2003 the edict for Cultural Points. This action aims to enhance cultural initiatives and projects already developed by communities, groups and networks of collaboration through arrangements with federal entities.

Websites and internet platforms for the exchange of information and dialogue already exist on the web and have been established by different cultural organisations and projects. The European Commission thinks the time is ripe to map the existing online spaces for debate on cultural issues and on the European project. Little is known on how cross-border and cross-sector debate on European culture can be stimulated online in order to help the further development of a common European cultural area for those interested in European culture.

It can be expected that this virtual space and the debates taking place in it could contribute to citizens' awareness and understanding about Europe's culture, its rich cultural diversity and common cultural heritage and help to stimulate intercultural dialogue and develop mutual understanding. It is expected that it could also promote European art, artists, cultural organisations and those working in them.

The European Museum Forum is inviting European museums to take part in the competition for the European Museum of the Year Award 2011 (EMYA 2011). The Award was established in 1977 and is the most prestigious of its kind in Europe. It will be presented for 34th time in 2011. Throughout these years, EMYA has been a dynamic tool for the recognition of innovation, excellence and public quality in museums. It helped to explore the changes in the European museum field and it served as an instrument of international networking, bringing together the most advanced projects and people in the museum profession.

Contrary to the common belief, museums are changing and every year brings an array of new, unexpected ideas, new answers to the question how a museum can serve the community and society. The European Museum Forum ensures that EMYA reflects and keeps pace with these changes, and this year sees the addition of new Judges and Trustee Board Members, covering wider areas of professional interest, with wider international representation.

Government action in the modern world

The age of the command economy has passed. Govern- ments across the continent increasingly recognise the limits to their ability to make things happen. The complexity of contemporary society and the interdependency of local and national economies mean that Governments must influence rather than direct change. They must work with and through a vast range of public, private and independent sector part- ners. Nowhere is this more true than in the fluid, changeable world of culture, where the states efforts in one direction will often produce unexpected, perhaps unwanted, results elsewhere. In the cultural sector, individual vision can have a huge and unforeseen impact, where substantial public resources can appear to produce no change at all.The culture minister deals with a field which is inherently changeable and often seen as marginal to the governments central objectives. While health and education ministers have thousands of hospitals and schools, and millions of public employees under their control, the culture minister typically has few directly managed resources. The development and management of cultural policy is therefore one of the most complex areas of modern government, a kind of a balancing act, not so much between competing priorities as in other areas of policy, but between competing visions of the role of culture in society.

The former artistic director of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Arts Festival and correspondent of Arts Management Network, Raymond T. Grant, is deeply concerned about a clause that appears in the contracts for artists engaged by VANOC for its Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver, Canada. Arts Management Network publish the open letter of Mr. Grant to the CEO of VANOC, Mr. Furlong, at its website.

From 1 to 7 July the Management Department of the University of Antwerp is organising a Summer School on Cultural Management. This year the Summer School will focus on Museums and Cultural Diversity. It will be open for students and professionals. The Summer School on Cultural Management is a new initiative of the Management Department of the University of Antwerp (UA).

2010 marks the 25 year anniversary of the European Capitals of Culture, which were launched in 1985. On 23-24 March 2010 the European Commission will be hosting a celebratory event and strategic conference to mark the occasion , to look back at the achievements of the past 25 years, and to reflect strategically on its legacy and impact. The conference will be opened by President Barroso and Jack Lang, who was the founder of the idea along with the late Melina Mercouri, former Minister of Culture for Greece.

Encouraged by the huge success of the first symposium "The Art of Music Education" in 2008 the Körber Foundation in cooperation with the Elbphilharmonie, has invited well- known experts from all over Europe, the USA and Asia to an international symposium to take place in Hamburg from 24 to 26 February 2010 in the KörberForum. This year the theme is »Creating a mindset for music among young people aged between 15 and 25«

What are we hoping to achieve by offering music education programmes to young people? How do they need to be designed to motivate a younger audience to go to a classical music performance? What sort of a world do our potential listeners live in? These and other questions will be discussed by a panel of concert hall managers, directors of education programmes and dramaturges, to exchange ideas about the opportunities and limits of their work with young people..

Britain was the last major economy officially to come out of the recession although commentators predict that it will take years for the economy to recover its strength. Public sector funding and support for the cultural sector from businesses and foundations will be tight.

Former Prime Minster, Tony Blair, claimed that his New Labour government presided over a Golden Age in the arts in the UK. Cultural Trends, the journal that champions the need for better evidence-based analyses of the cultural sector, is delighted to provide a major opportunity for researchers to consider whether that Golden Age actually existed; if it is now over; what it achieved; what the effects of the recession on the cultural sector might be in terms of changes in audiences and audience profiles, the economics of the sector and its financial impacts, and how government policy, and the sector itself albeit in the UK, Europe and elsewhere might assess its legacy and learn the lessons that should inform a post-recession economy. All of this will be discussed at the Cultural Trends third one-day international conference, A "Golden Age"? planned for November 2010.

The Centre for Local Government of the Laurentian University has published its first issue of Culture and Local Governance/Culture et gouvernance locale (CLG), a bilingual peer-reviewed online journal. The issue focuses on the role of culture in the new context of local planning, where the sustainability factor is becoming a priority.

We just had a planning retreat with some of our board members, and they asked us questions about our audience that we couldnt answer. So we realized we need to do a survey...

As a researcher who works with arts organizations and museums, I get that call or email frequently. The marketing director of a theater, classical ensemble, dance company, or art museum will get in touch, often passing along a detailed request-for-proposal for audience research, and sometimes already armed with a list of survey questions that she and her executive director brainstormed together.

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.

In the face of growing environmental and economic urgencies, issues of sustainability and resiliency are moving to the forefront of planning, policy, and programs in cities and communities of all sizes. City planning paradigms are mutating from a focus on building creative cities to that of achieving sustainable cities. Internationally, this shift is evident among local governments adopting sustainability goals for towns, cities, and regions; creating sustainable community plans; and implementing community projects related to sustainable development. Yet cultural considerations, while recognized in urban and community planning contexts, are not integrated into sustainability planning in a widespread way.

The National Arts Index is a highly distilled annual measure of the health and vitality of arts in the United States by using 76 equal weighted, national-level indicators of arts activity. This report covers an 11-year period, from 1998 to 2008.