Report: Arts Generate Billions For UK Economy

“Music, performing and visual arts, one of nine sectors included as part of the creative industries, showed a 19% increase on 2012, which is second only to product, graphic and fashion design. The new figures also show a 46% increase in the music and performing arts sector since 2008. Meanwhile, film, TV, video, radio and photography was worth £9.3 billion in 2013, a decrease of 5.2% on 2012. The sector as a whole however has increased by 13% since 2008.”

The Arts Are An Impressive Economic Driver. Should We Be Worried That Demand For The Arts Is Falling?

“For every dollar of increased spending on artworks, $1.98 of total economic output is created. In the case of museums, every new dollar of demand creates $1.76 of gains. On the jobs side, every new publishing job created (which includes arts management software) produces a whopping 3.5 additional jobs throughout the economy, while each additional professional artist produces an average 2.9 jobs.”

Your E-Book Is Tracking What You Read. Should You Care?

“For the time being, the data being gathered concerns general patterns of behavior rather than what happens between each of us and our personal E-readers. But we have come to live with the fact that anything can be found out. Today “the information” is anonymous; tomorrow it may well be just about us. Will readers who feel guilty when they fail to finish a book now feel doubly ashamed because abandoning a novel is no longer a private but a public act?”

Oxford Junior Dictionary Replaces Words About Nature With Words About Tech, Writers Kick Up A Storm

“The 28 authors, including [Margaret] Atwood, [Andrew] Motion, Michael Morpurgo and Robert Macfarlane, warn that the decision to cut around 50 words connected with nature and the countryside from the 10,000-entry [Oxford Junior Dictionary] is ‘shocking and poorly considered’ in the light of the decline in outdoor play for today’s children.”