THE ARTIST’S LIFE
In the Arts, Repeating Our Actions and Expecting a Different Result Defines Insanity
by Diane Ragsdale | Jumper
About a month ago I read an article in the Atlantic on the phenomenal success of Finland’s primary and secondary education public school system—a success which, the article suggests, the US has failed to understand.
There are some notable differences between the US system and Finland’s:
1. Teachers in Finland are given prestige, decent More...
Sports Expendables
by Jerry Kavanagh
In The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko compiles his little list of “society offenders” who, if executed, “would not be missed.” Among other expendables, he notes, “There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs [and] all people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs.” I once asked several notable sports figur More...
The Value of “No”
by Garner Simmons
In March of 1982, Warren Beatty, along with his co-writer Trevor Griffths, won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Reds. In accepting the award, Beatty did a remarkable thing. He began by thanking all those who had had the courage to tell him “no.” While the line got a laugh, Beatty was serious. More...
Donor Dollar Do’s and Don’ts
by Diane Ragsdale | Jumper
The other day I received an email alert from the Philanthropy News Digest, which mentioned that a theater company had announced a $7 million endowment challenge grant. When matched, the 3:1 challenge grant (which requires the theater to raise $2.5 million) will boost its endowment from $500,000 to $10 million. Putting aside for a moment debates ove More...
944 Things Creative People Can Learn From Spotify
by Adam Leipzig
When you’re a creative person or an entrepreneur, sometimes it feels like you’re working in the salt mines. Grinding work, day after day, pushing out songs or words or business plans.
Let’s do a thought experiment, and pretend that today, instead of being, say, a musician, you actually are making salt.
You dig your salt, package it for More...
The View from London
by Tim Sullivan
London was never the plan. I was going to be a big Hollywood star, or perhaps star in my own sitcom, and I knew I was destined to live a glamorous lifestyle in sunny southern California. So after being born and raised in Boston, I packed up all my belongings in two huge duffel bags and flew 3000 miles to Los Angeles to study at USC, where I was sur More...
Of Hard Work and Privileged People
by Rosa Maria Pegueros
My daddy had one necktie: It was permanently knotted, so on the rare occasions when he needed to wear it, he would just pull it over his head and tighten it. I could probably count on both hands how often I saw him wear it over the course of my life. He was a little guy, barely 5’3”, heavyset, with powerful hands. When I made brownies, he would More...
MLK: ‘Education without morals is like a ship without a compass’
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
This week the news media flooded us with 15-second video bites of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech. There was so much more to him than that, and the content of his character surfaced far earlier. In 1946, as a 17-year-old junior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, King wrote this brief essay exploring the dual function of More...
Can You Spot the 13 Things That Changed?
by Adam Leipzig
One of the biggest mistakes creative people and entrepreneurs make is that they want everything to be perfect. We generally don’t want to reveal our work to the world until it is finished.
Here, we take a different approach. We know Cultural Weekly will never be finished, because we’re always in dialogue with you. So we keep changing.
How More...
