Arts

For historians of medieval Iberian art and architecture, María Rosa Menocal’s most important legacy lies in her work’s normalization of a culturally decentralized, multidisciplinary frame through which medieval visual objects became part of a broadly shared network of cultural production that was unrestricted by firm boundaries between particular polities or “faith groups.” While Menocal was not the first to advance such an approach, her persuasive promotion of it in works such as The Ornament of the World and the co-authored The Arts of Intimacy dovetailed closely with concurrent trends within the discipline of art history: new attentiveness to the variability of the Iberian cultural economy; a renewed concern with questions of reception and meaning; revived emphasis on close, contextual readings; and an openness to extra-disciplinary methodologies. The conceptual and disciplinary flexibility that Menocal’s work encouraged now lies at the very heart of current work on Iberian visual culture

Practices of Remembrance: The Experiences of Artists and Curators in the Centenary Commemoration of World War I

The centenary of World War One was marked in the UK by an unprecedented national investment in the creative arts as a vehicle for remembrance. This scale of funding for commemorative arts, not least under a government whose mantra had been economic “austerity”, demonstrates the importance that the nation-state placed on remembrance and on engaging the public in acts of memory through the arts. In the aftermath of the centenary, funding bodies have commissioned evaluations of this programming. These evaluations have focused on audiences reached, organisations benefitted, and social transformation. What remain occluded by the reports are the experiences of the artists themselves and the curators with whom they worked. In this article I explore the personal and affective experiences of several artists and curators whose work contributed to this national programme of remembrance. I ask: to what extent did artists and curators consciously engage with prior artistic responses to World War One? How did the context of collective commemoration and memory-making inform their practice and the works produced? What did their involvement in this programme of national remembrance make them feel? What were the narratives of the war they wanted to tell? To begin to answer these questions, I draw on a series of one-to-one interviews conducted with a number of artists and curators who were involved in commemorative projects in the UK and overseas

Introduction: Layered Landscapes

This Special Issue of Arts investigates a series of creative projects focused upon and sited within certain peripheral landscapes of northern Britain ..

We Are in This Together: A Survey of Community Arts Partners in LA County Public Schools

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission surveyed teaching artists and arts organizations to find out who provided arts education services to LA County's 2,198 public schools in 2012. This survey found 139 arts organizations and 46 teaching artists providing arts education during the school day in 98 percent of all school districts and 53 percent of all schools in the County. While this is certainly an undercount of the total number of such arts organizations and teaching artists serving local public schools, it is a first step toward establishing a comprehensive list, and is the best data we have to date about this group of providers. Among the high level findings: 57 percent of all arts education provided by community arts partners was in visual art (32 percent) and music/opera (25 percent).More than 77 percent of arts education provided by community arts partners occured in elementary (K-8) grades. Arts education from community arts partners peaked in grades 3 through 5, and peak years varied by arts discipline.The four community arts pertners providing the greatest amount of arts educatio in LA County were the Autry Museum, Broad Stage, Music Center and Skirball Cultural Center.Nearly half of all community arts partners charge schools for their services at least some of the time

Different routes, common directions? Activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK

This article analyses and compares the development of activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK from the mid-1990s. Despite their diverse welfare traditions and important differences in the organisation and delivery of benefits and services for the unemployed, both countries have recently introduced large-scale compulsory activation programmes for young people. These programmes share a number of common features, especially a combination of strong compulsion and an apparently contradictory emphasis on client-centred training and support for participants. The suggested transition from the ‘Keynesian welfare state’ to the ‘Schumpeterian workfare regime’ is used as a framework to discuss the two countries’ recent moves towards activation. It is argued that while this framework is useful in explaining the general shift towards active labour-market policies in Europe, it alone cannot account for the particular convergence of the Danish and British policies in the specific area of youth activation. Rather, a number of specific political factors explaining the development of policies in the mid-1990s are suggested. The article concludes that concerns about mass youth unemployment, the influence of the ‘dependency culture’ debate in various forms, cross-national policy diffusion and, crucially, the progressive re-engineering of compulsory activation by strong centre-left governments have all contributed to the emergence of policies that mix compulsion and a commitment to the centrality of work with a ‘client-centred approach’ that seeks to balance more effective job seeking with human resource development. However, attempts to combine the apparently contradictory concepts of ‘client-centredness’ and compulsion are likely to prove politically fragile, and both countries risk lurching towards an increasingly workfarist approach

2008 Arts Education Performance Indicators Report

The 2008 Arts Education Performance Indicators Report shows an increase in the number of school districts that are building infrastructure in this area, demonstrating a long-term commitment to improving arts education. The report is issued periodically by the Arts Commission as part of the county's regional Arts for All initiative to return quality, sequential arts education to the county's 81 school districts. Overall progress includes: 64 percent of districts report having an arts education policy, compared to 37 percent in 2005. 61 percent of districts report a board-adopted arts education plan or indicated they are developing one, compared to 35 percent in 2005. 39 percent of districts report having an arts coordinator, compared to 12 percent in 2005. 16 percent report having a 400 to 1 ratio of students to credentialed arts teachers, compared to 10 percent reporting that ratio in 2005. 98 percent of districts report using general fund budgets to support arts education programs (sources of arts ed budgets were not included in previous surveys). The 2008 AEPI Report is based on self-reported data from superintendents, assistant superintendents, directors of curriculum and/or district arts coordinators. Of the 81 school districts, 72 responded

KAPTUR: exploring the nature of visual arts research data and its effective management.

KAPTUR (2011-2013), funded by JISC and led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), is a highly collaborative project involving four institutional partners: the Glasgow School of Arts; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and the University of the Arts London. The preservation and publication of research data is seen as positive and all UK Research Councils now require it as a condition of funding (RCUK 2012). As a result a network of data repositories are emerging (DataCite 2012a), some funded by Research Councils, others by institutions themselves. However, research data management practice within the visual arts appears ad hoc. None of the specialist arts institutions within the UK has implemented research data management policies (DCC 2011a), nor established research data management systems. KAPTUR seeks to investigate the nature of visual arts research data, making recommendations for its effective management; develop a model of best practice applicable to both specialist arts institutions and arts departments in multidisciplinary institutions; and apply, test and refine the model with the four institutional partners. This paper will explore the nature of visual arts research data and how effective data management can ensure its long term usage, curation and preservation

Arts and Non-arts Partnerships: Opportunities, Challenges, and Strategies

Provides lessons learned from the Wallace Foundation's Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation initiative. Includes assessing the benefits to both parties in arts/non-arts partnerships, and developing strategies to maximize chances of success

Habitual intake of flavonoid subclasses and risk of colorectal cancer in two large prospective cohorts

Background: Flavonoids inhibit the growth of colon cancer cells in vitro. In a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial, the Polyp Prevention Trial, a higher intake of one sub-class, flavonols, was significantly associated with reduced risk of recurrent advanced adenoma. Most previous prospective studies on colorectal cancer evaluated only a limited number of flavonoid sub-classes and intake ranges, yielding inconsistent results.  Objective: To examine whether higher habitual dietary intakes of flavonoid subclasses (flavonols, flavones, flavanones, flavan-3-ols and anthocyanins) are associated with lower risk of colorectal cancer.  Design: Using data from validated food frequency questionnaires administered every four years and an updated flavonoid food composition database flavonoid intakes were calculated for 42,478 male participants from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and for 76,364 female participants from the Nurses’ Health Study.  Results: During up to 26 years of follow-up, 2,519 colorectal cancer cases (1,061 in men, 1,458 in women) were documented. Intakes of flavonoid subclasses were not associated with risk of colorectal cancer in either cohort. Pooled multivariable adjusted relative risks (95% confidence interval) comparing the highest with the lowest quintile were 1.04 (0.91, 1.18) for flavonols; 1.01 (0.89, 1.15) for flavones; 0.96 (0.84, 1.10) for flavanones; 1.07 (0.95, 1.21) for flavan-3-ols; and 0.98 (0.81, 1.19) for anthocyanins (all p-values for heterogeneity by sex >0.19). In subsite analyses, flavonoid intake was also not associated with colon or rectal cancer risk.  Conclusion: Our findings do not support the hypothesis that a higher habitual intake of any flavonoid sub-class decreases the risk of colorectal cancer