Playwright Mark Ravenhill’s provocative opening speech at this year’s Edinburgh Festival outlined a doomsday scenario where public funding for the arts disappeared and Britain descended into a cultural…
Australia needs a cabinet-level portfolio dedicated to managing culture, one of the country’s leading cultural commentators, Julianne Schultz, said at a breakfast address in Sydney today. The Ministry…
The creative industries are an intriguing part of the UK economy - glitteringly successful, but difficult to pin down in terms of exact value and for some, maybe just too volatile to trust. Ever since…
In Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a group of our ape-like ancestors encounter a towering black rectangle somewhere in an African desert. Something in them changes. A seed is sown. Everything…
Liz Minchin, La Conversation Canada et Nancy Youssef, La Conversation Canada
Australia should work harder on its official and unofficial diplomacy to strengthen its ties to India, after a new survey revealed Indians had a mixed perception of the two countries’ relationship. The…
MATTERS OF THE MIND – a series which examines the clinician’s bible for diagnosing mental disorders, the DSM, and the controversy surrounding the forthcoming fifth edition. There’s an old saying that psychology…
Last week’s Freeplay Independent Games Festival in Melbourne served as a reminder that videogames – all videogames – are culturally significant. Freeplay, which gives people from Australia’s videogame…
On last night’s Q&A, feminist campaigner Germaine Greer suggested a comparison between practices of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa and female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS) in Western nations…
Female genital cutting (FGC) – also known as female genital mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision – is widely practised in Africa and has been described by UNICEF “one of the worst violations of the…
In 2012, public debate over the value of art and culture has reignited as conservative state governments in Victoria and Queensland cut arts funding from their budgets. Queensland Premier Campbell Newman’s…
Might the destiny of nations be controlled by the underlying shape of their geography? This is the subject of a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors…
The term “hipster” has become increasingly prominent in Australia’s urban lexicon this year. Even the Sydney Morning Herald has caught on, writing about “Hipster Housing”, featuring a young bespectacled…