#cultural-funding

#cultural-funding

The UK government's plans to give English mayors new powers to levy tourist taxes have been cautiously welcomed by culture sector professionals, who say that revenue raised from the new tax should go towards supporting arts and culture. Under the plans, which were announced yesterday, any new levy would apply to visitors at accommodation providers including hotels, holiday lets, bed and breakfasts, and guesthouses, says a statement from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Germany's young creative talents find themselves in a chokehold of diminishing government funding to educational and outreach programmes, threatening to undermine long-standing institutions as well as the renewed international interest in its fashion industry. The mood is decidedly depressed at University of the Arts ( ) in Berlin, one of Germany's leading arts universities. Funding cuts across all of the city's publicly financed cultural and arts programmes have left the school depleted in staff and its facilities' opening hours.

A field of blazing flowers bloomed in front of Durham cathedral, a net of pulsing green light arched over the market place, and the traffic control signs were warning of global warming and mass extinctions. Farewell to Arctic ice and the Queenwood shrub frog, they read, and they might have read farewell to Lumiere. For three nights and one last time, the much admired-and imitated-Lumiere festival is bringing joy, crowds and international light artists to the dark winter streets.

For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word

Well, I'm very concerned. I think that [(501(c)3) status] is the magic wand that allowed this country to develop one of the most robust cultural programmes in the world...I think we are looking at a federal government that is prepared to exert a great deal of power, or authority, in order to achieve a set of ambitions.

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts has announced $573,300 in grants to 39 organizations worldwide. Chosen from more than 200 submissions, the 2025 awards support a broad range of initiatives, including exhibitions, installations, publications, podcasts, student-led journals, international architecture events, and public programs that contribute to advancing architectural discourse and design experimentation. Over nearly seven decades, the Graham Foundation has provided more than $45 million in direct support to over 5,200 projects.

Brent Council is proposing a mandatory visitor levy on hotel and short-stay accommodations to generate funding for improvements in the borough, particularly in response to the cultural success of Wembley Stadium.