The Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, CA (Photo by Jim Heaphy, via Creative Commons)

A deadly warehouse fire taking the lives of 36 people during a concert in Oakland, CA has ignited a series of legal and political flames throughout the country. Known as Ghost Ship, the warehouse flew under the radar operating as a music venue and DIY live/work space for the city’s artists without proper permits. The tragic events have brought forward conversations about the crushing cost of rent in American cities, the primary hubs of artistic activity. In the wake of the fire, underground spaces like Ghost Ship are facing increased pressure to get their buildings up to code, spurring forced closures in Nashville, Denver, Los Angeles and Baltimore so far. A group of right-wing whistleblowers mobilizing on the 4chan message board, calling themselves the “Safety Squad,” is using the Ghost Ship tragedy as an opportunity to crowdsource permit and fire code violations in these “hotbeds of liberal radicalism and degeneracy.” The call to action may have resulted in as many as 16 closures nationwide in a push that recalls the alt-right’s attacks against artists associated with #Pizzagate and attempt to take over science fiction’s Hugo awards.

On the bright side, Ghost Ship has brought the dire need for affordable artist housing to the attention of public officials and foundations. Just days after the fire, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced a previously-planned $1.7 million grant initiative involving her office and three Bay Area nonprofits establishing a capital fund to acquire affordable spaces for artists. Elsewhere, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced a new task force to create “safe art spaces” following a shuttering of the Bell Foundry warehouse, and the Austin Creative Alliance debuted an $100,000 program to aid displaced arts and music venues.

Will Rocky “Make Art Great Again?” Wide-ranging cabinet picks have been appearing in the news nearly every day, which means that it’s likewise time for the incoming Trump administration to select a new head honcho for the National Endowment for the Arts. Donald Trump has reportedly floated Sylvester Stallone as a potential pick, causing many an arts administrator’s head to explode over the past few weeks. On the other hand, Stallone’s recognizability, deep connections, and career-long love affair with big-budget box office hits could bode well for shoring up political support for the perpetually beleaguered agency. Though the actor (and sometimes painter) has praised Trump’s “bigger than life” persona, Stallone stopped short of endorsing his run for President. Stallone, reportedly flattered by the idea, doesn’t appear wholly interested, feeling he’s better suited to a job in veterans affairs. Regardless of who gets the job, the new Chairman of the NEA could well push a conservative agenda, with implications unclear for the Endowment’s otherwise promising, newly announced five-year research agenda and new research projects.

Diversity, coming soon to a theater near you (if you live in the UK). Beginning in 2019, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will no longer give prominent awards to films or television shows lacking diversity onstage or backstage. According to Slate, projects will need to meet diversity standards in at least two of the following categories in order to be considered: “on-screen characters and themes, senior roles and crew, industry training and career progression, and audience access and appeal to underrepresented audiences.” The UK equivalent of the Oscars is perhaps hoping to avoid a controversy similar to the #OscarsSoWhite (and subsequent #OscarsStillSoWhite) blowups of the past two years after consecutive years of all-white contenders in the Academy Award acting categories.  Further policy changes at BAFTA include a new rule about voting members, in which candidates no longer require an endorsement by two existing members, echoing a similar move by the Academy Awards on this side of the pond. Britain has likewise been criticized for a lack of diversity in live theater, noted by playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber in a new research report that calls the industry “hideously white.” A report from the Arts Council of England, however, cites a significant uptick in representation for people of color working on the staffs of Council-funded theaters.

A new law could help you get Hamilton tickets. Despite the unprecedented success of Hamilton, it should be making even more money. Approximately $30,000 per performance is going to third-party vendors, who buy up huge swaths of seats and resell them at astronomical prices. Unlike ticket reselling services like Ticketmaster, which has a contract with concert venues, it has been estimated that third-party sales via ticket brokers are bringing in $12.5 million annually on Hamilton alone. In a report by New York’s Attorney General, less than 50% of all tickets to the city’s highest grossing concerts are made available to the general public, many of which are purchased en masse by automated ticket “bots” and resold far above market price. The controversy has gained some attention in Congress, and the bipartisan Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, aimed at curbing online scalping by banning such bots, was passed into law December 14. Beyond the direct impact of this piece of legislation, its quick emergence out of a bitterly divided Congress is a very pleasant surprise.

Christmas tragedy in the Black Sea. A plane carrying the Alexandrov Russian Army Song and Dance Ensemble to Syria crashed in the Black Sea on December 25, killing all 92 passengers. Among the dead are 64 members of the Russian Army’s music and dance ensemble, known for promoting Soviet nationalism with military songs and traditional Russian instruments, which was on its way to Syria to perform for troops stationed at the Khmeimim Airbase in Latakia. Only three of the group’s singers survived, having stayed behind in Moscow for personal reasons. Though Russian officials have discredited accounts of the crash as an act of war or terrorist attack, the news has nevertheless sent shockwaves of sorrow across Russia with the loss of a beloved performing arts group. Perhaps the last transportation accident this disastrous for the arts was the 1962 crash of Air France Flight 007 that killed 106 Atlantans, many of whom were prominent figures in the city’s arts and culture sector.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS:

• Grantmakers in the Arts president and CEO Janet Brown announced plans for her departure from the Seattle-based service organization at the end of 2017.
• Robert Rauschenberg Foundation chief Christy MacLear is moving to Sotheby’s, where she will expand the auction house’s capacity to advise living artists and foundations. Meanwhile, Guillaume Cerutti takes the top spot at Christie’s, as Patricia Barbizet steps down.
• Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Isaac Luria have been announced as the new joint directors of the Voice, Creativity & Culture program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
• Ballet B.C. Executive Director Branislav Henselmann will move into the public sector to lead cultural services in the City of Vancouver.
• Mark Sebba is the appointed chair of the newly formed MutualArt Group, a merger between the Artist Pension Trust and MutualArt.com. Both organizations were formerly led by Moti Shniberg.
• Arts criticism continued its slow decline at newspapers this month, with the Austin American-Statesman laying off Jeanne Claire van Ryzin after 17 years without announcing a replacement. Meanwhile, arts reporter and critic Mark Stryker posted a public statement to Facebook announcing his departure from the Detroit Free Press after 21 years.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• Despite some progress, a group of actors set out to collect data on diversity in Broadway shows. The results of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition study indicate that nearly 80% of roles on Broadway are played by white actors, and audience demographics match those of the cast.
• The National Endowment for the Arts’s guide on community-engaged arts and health research is now available for free online. The guide is the latest of a series of resources produced by the NEA’s Federal Interagency Task Force on the Arts & Human Development. And a new book from the NEA includes essays and case studies illuminating the practice of creative placemaking.
• The US Bureau of Labor (BLS) has planned a new survey in 2017 that will make it easier to measure the economic impact of freelance workers. Known as the most reliable source of labor statistics in the country, the BLS has previously failed to provide an accurate picture of the “gig economy,” yielding mixed results about the size and impact of independent contractors.
• A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research is the first to produce concrete evidence suggesting that increased investment in schools really does result in better education.
• A study out of West Chester University suggests that arts education among low-income preschoolers may reduce stress and improve psychological functioning.
• New research investigates how musicians’ brains work while playing instruments. A study from Hong Kong suggests that MP3 compression of recorded music elicits a different emotional response than that of live instruments.
• “Don’t underestimate the effects of consistently communing with Hugh Grant,” says Pacific Standard’s Tom Jacobs in his piece synthesizing new research on the relationship between watching romantic comedies and moral sensitivity.
• Results of a Pew Research Center study indicate that the incidence of “information overload” is down, although the group’s findings suggest that anxiety produced by too much information depend on the situation.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy gathered insights from more than 200 foundation CEOs captured in a new report titled “The Future of Foundation Philanthropy: The CEO Perspective.” Interview and survey data indicated that CEOs believe foundations make significant contributions to society, but are not fully exploiting opportunities to do so.
• A report by the Global Impact Investing Network shows solid growth for impact investments between 2013 and 2015.
• An Arts Council of England report shows promising growth of private investment in the UK, with arts and culture organizations drawing 18% of their total income from individual donations in 2014-15. The impact was higher for small budget organizations, with private investments comprising 29% of total income for those grossing less than £100,000.
• Defined as a physical or virtual space for creative individuals to gather, a new British Council report finds that creative hubs are “still largely misunderstood and undervalued” and provide professional and artistic opportunities beyond that of working alone.

“Artificial Intelligence” by Flickr user GLAS-8

Each year since 2009, Createquity has offered a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past twelve months. And let’s be frank: some of those years are a little…what’s a polite way to put this? Boring. (Looking at you, 2013.)

2016 was not one of those. When the fifth-largest nation in Europe decides to give the equivalent of a year’s allowance to every 18-year-old in the country to spend on culture, and that only barely cracks #10 on the list, you know it’s been a consequential year. (To be fair, it also reflects the global perspective we take in our methodology for ranking stories, described more fully last year.) Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is for sure: 2017 is going to tell us a lot about our collective future.

As has been the case for the past few years, creation of this list is distributed amongst our editorial team. Authorship of individual items is noted at the end of each story.

10. The Italians launch a cultural voucher program

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who resigned this month after a bruising referendum, may not have achieved everything he had set out to accomplish, but his government did leave one cultural legacy for the country’s young people. Beginning this year, Italian teens will receive a €500 “cultural bonus” from the Italian government along with their right to vote on their 18th birthday. The money will be available for a full year, and, yes, keeping to its millennial audience, is administered entirely through an app. In its first year, a total of €290 million in government money will be apportioned out to some 574,000 teens–both Italian natives and foreign-born residents. The program is intended to foster affinity between the country’s youth and its arts sector by providing Italy’s youngest adults with incentive to consume culture on their own terms, and is part of a larger package of programs aimed at “fighting terrorism through culture” that was initially announced in November 2015. Though vouchers are viewed as efficient ways to provide social benefits (Brazil implemented a cultural voucher program in 2014; Canada and Finland are experimenting with broader programs), critics of Italy’s program question the wisdom of its launch in a struggling economy and its ultimate ability to empower workers in arts and culture. It’s unclear what will happen to the program under the new administration, though Paolo Gentili, tapped to succeed Renzi, seems, for now, to be following in Renzi’s center-left footsteps. –Michael Feldman

9. The era of Peak TV is upon us

2015 was the year that the number of original scripted television series available in the US surpassed the 400 mark–coming in at 409 shows, up almost 9% from 2014 and nearly double that of 2009. FX Networks CEO John Landgraf dubbed it the year of “Peak TV,” and assured us the decline was nigh (a welcome thought for many). He was, by his own admission, wrong. By his new accounting, the peak will hit in 2017, and possibly carry through to 2019, with the tally soon to cross 500. Netflix is primarily to be blamed (or congratulated) for the push; the streaming video industry as a whole is projected to earn nearly $7 billion this year. The business of too much TV is a complex one, with numerous winners and losers: short-term boosts in salaries and profits don’t necessarily translate to long-term profits; more scripted shows means more room for voices in the writers room but also fierce competition for crew and equipment. And the irony is it’s more expensive than ever to produce a TV show: according to Landgraf, the price for making and marketing an hour of television has gone up about 20% in the past 5 years, to $4-$5 million an hour. Beyond the benjamins (and the fear the good times will come crashing down around us), there’s another side to consider: with the explosion of scripted shows from small producers aimed at niche audiences, it’s becoming increasingly easy to create our own television bubbles, creating a narrative space populated with characters who look and think exactly as we want them to. As we look towards a Trump presidency, fake news, and filter bubbles, it will be imperative to keep an eye on the role of television. We watch as much as five hours a day, after all. –Clara Inés Schuhmacher

8. Ghost Ship brings underground artist spaces into the light of day

Described as one of the worst U.S. structure fires in over a decade, the tragic Ghost Ship warehouse fire took at least 36 lives in Oakland, CA on December 3. The warehouse, whose owner had an industrial permit (but not a residential or event permit), served as the illegal residence of some 25 artists, and was the site of an electronic dance party the night of the fire. The tragedy has pulled back the curtain regarding the crushing cost of rent and inavailability of safe spaces in which artists can afford to live and work, in Oakland and beyond. It has also triggered a flurry of investigations into code and permit violations across the country that has resulted in heavy scrutiny of similar spaces, and the subsequent closings of DIY event venues and live/work spaces in Nashville, Denver, Los Angeles and Baltimore, with more likely to come. Sadly, the issue has become politicized: as of December 24, the East Bay Times reported that the so-called Right Wing Safety Squad, an extremist group on the anonymous message board 4chan, was claiming at least partial responsibility for 16 closures after a call to action December 7 to “Make America Safe Again” by alerting authorities to potential code and permit violations in DIY artist spaces. A counteractive push from foundations is aimed at recognizing that urban artist communities operating in spaces like Ghost Ship are in desperate need of affordable real estate, and artists from marginalized communities are especially affected. Three days after the fire, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf issued a statement regarding a coordinated response to the Bay Area’s real estate problem, involving three local foundations in a $1.7 million grant initiative aimed at “preventing displacement, growing the capacity of the city’s artists and cultural organizations, and enhancing municipal resources for the cultural sector over the long haul.” –Lauren Warnecke

7. Impact investing and equity crowdfunding gain ground

Interest in impact investing–taking a financial stake in ventures designed to create social, economic, cultural or environmental impact–is growing: the 2016 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy and the First National Benchmark Survey of Family Foundations found that fully one third of those surveyed are interested in impact investing. The arts have been latecomers to this game, largely because it’s tricky to create a competitive return on investment in many areas of the arts sector. Despite $2.4 billion annually in corporate impact investing, the arts’ best chance may be with individuals, and many are working on making the arts appealing to folks with deep pockets. Upstart Co-Lab, a startup nonprofit headed by former NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Laura Callanan, has forged an agreement with the Calvert Foundation to create a Community Investment Note for impact investment opportunities like low-income artist housing developments. Another way for corporations and foundations to “make an impact” with their investing, of course, is to choose who they don’t invest in. Such divestment movements have been floating around for some time now, but the Brooklyn Community Foundation has taken it further than most, committing to divest all its interests in corporations or initiatives that, in its judgment, harm communities of color. Upstart and Calvert’s Community Investment Note, however, is primarily aimed at individual investors, who now have even more options than before thanks to 2012’s Jumpstart our Startups (JOBS) Act. The JOBS Act lifted regulations on capital investments that kept average Americans from seeking a financial stake in new companies, and this November, the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced a new partnership with Microventures to provide vehicles for regular folks who want to invest in new companies. –MF

6. Turkey continues its crackdown on artists and intellectuals

We first wrote about Turkey’s alarming trend towards artistic censorship in 2014 (the story made our Top Ten), and–unfortunately–the news continues to worsen. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was first elected as prime minister in 2003, was once considered a relatively moderate leader. Over the past decade he has gradually manipulated the political system to remain in power, increasingly targeting journalists, artists and intellectuals in his continued drift toward authoritarianism. A “culture war” that began in 2012 when Erdoğan felt his daughter was disrespected during a theater performance has since spurred attempts to exercise control over the state arts funding apparatus, attacks on public art and television, and going after satirists and museums. Erdoğan used an unsuccessful coup attempt earlier this year as an excuse to crack down even more on free speech, shutting down and seizing the assets of 29 publishing houses accused of aiding the enemy, imprisoning more than 120 journalists, blocking social media networks, silencing writers, closing universities, shutting down TV and radio stations, charging the editors of a Turkish daily with espionage, jailing academics on charges of promoting terrorist propaganda, and forcibly overtaking Zaman, Turkey’s largest-circulation newspaper. Freemuse claims that Turkey, along with Russia, China, Iran, and Syria, belongs to “a special league of countries that systematically repress freedom of expression,” with more than half of the recorded violations against artists worldwide originating in those nations. As Ian noted in his recent article on the Trump presidency, artists and media are often among the first to be singled out when an authoritarian government seeks to impose itself on the people. We can only hope that Turkey’s creative class continues to resist. –CIS

5. Audiobooks and podcasts break records

Books and radio, whose death has alternately been heralded and bemoaned for years, are making a comeback–in scrappy start-up form. No longer just the stuff of road trips and bad jokes, audiobooks are the fastest-growing format in the book business today. Fueled by the ubiquitous smartphone, revenue from downloaded audiobooks grew 32.3% in the first half of 2016 compared to last year. By comparison, hardcovers and paperbacks grew by 0.9% and 8.8%, respectively, and e-books revenue declined 20% in that same period. Some 35,574 titles were published as audio in 2015, up from 7,000 in 2011. Edison Research found that 43% of Americans over the age of 12 have listened to an audiobook, and some audiobooks are even outselling their print counterparts. Everyone is looking to get in on the action: publishers are hiring high profile actors, and testing out original dramas; authors, such as Stephen King and Fred Armisen, are writing new work specifically for audio. Meanwhile, the conditions and format advantages that are propelling audiobooks forward are likewise helping podcasts, which are finally breaking into the mainstream after first debuting more than a decade ago. By a recent iTunes count (which does not host all the podcasts out there), there are some 200,000 podcasts in the iTunes library, 40% of which are active, and one-fifth of which are not in English. Edison Research estimates that 36% of the US population over the age of 12 has listened to at least one podcast–21% in a given month. Legacy media organizations including the New York Times, WNYC, the Wall Street Journal and the Des Moines Register have all announced podcasting investments, and media startups are getting in on the frenzy, including Slate, Buzzfeed and Gimlet Media. As with audiobooks, podcasts are still a small sliver of the pie, representing but 2% of the total time Americans spend listening to audio, and some say we’re approaching a glut. Still, the field shows no signs of slowing down yet. Even Createquity has jumped on board–we launched a podcast in collaboration with Fractured Atlas in March. –CIS

4. Virtual reality and augmented reality establish themselves as new art forms

By most accounts, we are living in the future. You can now teleport to a helicopter flying over the Swiss Alps, then back in your living room just by strapping a cardboard box holding your phone in front of your eyes. You can sit on stage, smack in the middle of a live performance by an orchestra, ballet or play, without ever entering a hall. You can experience the Tate Britain’s iconic collection alongside real-time news cycle without traveling to London. You can even walk down your own street and battle it out with your favorite Pokémon characters via Pokémon Go, downloaded to your smartphone. It’s the era of augmented and virtual reality, and, in reality, we’re just scratching the surface of possibility. Interest in virtual reality rose exponentially this year, while the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go broke through to the mainstream with 100 million downloads worldwide, 30 million daily users, and extensive media coverage. The medium’s potential impact on the arts is far-reaching: arts organizations are putting audience members in the middle of the action, radically challenging notions of interactivity, narrative and site-specificity. Visual artists are pushing the boundaries of their work (see here, here, here), and VR experiences are making their way into film, making a splash this year at Sundance. VR is even changing how news stories are told, with the New York Times leading the charge. It’s changing the world of gaming, too: in South Africa, you can book a spot to play video games in virtual reality at the VRCade, and fend off zombies approaching you from your periphery. With Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard putting VR in the hands of the masses, it will be interesting to see how the medium continues to evolve. The Onion may just turn out to be right–on some counts, anyway. –Benzamin Yi

3. China expands holdings in (and censorship of) arts and entertainment

As Clara predicted, China dominated the news again this year, finding itself on this Top Ten two years running. The country’s economy continues to grow at a breakneck pace, and is predicted to overtake the United States as the world’s largest by 2018. China can thank the entertainment industry for much of this growth, including plans for a new $2 billion film studio in Chongqing, homegrown worldwide blockbusters, and buying up big players such as Dick Clark Productions, Legendary Entertainment, and Dalian Wanda (the Chinese conglomerate that now owns AMC Theatres.) This rapid entertainment biz expansion has raised some concerns in Congress about the potential of Chinese nationalism and socialist propaganda infusing American arts and entertainment. Those concerns are not without merit. China ranks 176 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index–a report by Reporters Without Borders which calls President Xi Jinping a “predator of press freedom”–and the government’s grip on content continues to tighten. Its airtight Great Firewall includes bans on most social media networks and news sites that report a negative image of the country (notably including the New York Times and Bloomberg); this censoring led Google to pull out of the market in 2010. This year, the government passed a law promoting Chinese nationalism in films, updated restrictions on television content, and scaled down relationships with Apple and Disney (despite these companies’ unbridled popularity in the country). It has also continued its intimidation of neighboring Hong Kong: the disappearance of five prominent booksellers in 2015 has virtually everyone in Hong Kong’s publishing industry scared they will be China’s next target. Still, it appears the lure of an enormous untapped global market is hard to turn down. American filmmakers have started producing films that obey the country’s strict regulations regarding content, thus dodging its quota on the release of foreign films, and gaming console manufacturers like Sony and Nintendo are getting back in on the game after a fourteen year ban was lifted last year. Corporations and media companies are adopting an “if we can’t beat them, join them” approach too–even Google is preparing for its return to China and is prepared to follow the government’s rules. Of course, it’s anyone’s guess how things will change once the Trump administration is in the White House, and we find ourselves once again with a case of wait and see on the China front. –LW

2. The United States elects Donald Trump

No top ten list for 2016 would be complete without mention of the election and the now certain inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. As the entire nonprofit sector holds its breath waiting for the effects of a Trump presidency on its business and constituents, predictions about what will come to pass in the coming years run the gamut from apocalyptic to status quo. There are few clues as to how Trump and his Republican majority in Congress might address the arts sector. His responses to Alyssa Rosenberg’s questionnaire about arts policy in March suggest a free market approach, similar to other policy areas like healthcare and education. The delegation of major decisions to Congress, and the recent proposed appointment of Sylvester Stallone to the top arts position in the administration, underscore Trump’s habit of relying on others (often supportive friends with little government experience) to figure out policy details, especially when they fall outside of the core issues that defined his campaign. While tensions between Congress and the National Endowment of the Arts have eased significantly since the culture wars of the 1990s, there is nevertheless a risk that the Republican Congress may revive attempts to defund the NEA in the context of a larger effort to rein in government spending. Meanwhile, the GOP and Trump administration’s promised policy adjustments to the Affordable Care Act (which provides insurance for many independent artists), and planned tax reforms (including the possibility of a rollback of the tax incentive for charitable giving) could both have immediate effects on the financial security of individual artists and small to mid-sized arts organizations. Most concerning of all is Trump’s threats to freedom of the press and his authoritarian impulses, which could expand constrictions on freedom of expression in a country that has prided itself on being one of the safest places for speech in the world. While the likelihood of overturning a mountain of legal precedent protecting the first amendment is relatively slim, Trump’s attempts at intimidation (like lashing out about flag burning or lecturing Mike Pence at a Hamilton curtain call), not to mention the ease with which his supporters can be goaded into threats of violence against vulnerable individuals and populations, are worrying to say the least. The bizarre and uncharted landscape we’ve found ourselves in has inspired much reflection, from calls to action and lessons learned from the campaign, to the role of the arts in promoting fantasy over fact. One thing is clear–artists will play a role in public discourse over the next four years, and we’ll be right there with them. –Rebecca Ratzkin

1. Artificial intelligence comes into its own

Wait, what?! Donald Trump in the Oval Office is not the top story of the year? Amazing as it may seem, events of 2016 make clear that the march of technology promises greater long-term disruption for our society than even our Tweeter-in-chief can muster. Chief among these developments was the March tournament victory of AlphaGo, a computer application developed by Google’s DeepMind team, over Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol. While it was expected that an artificial intelligence would eventually topple a human in the ancient Chinese game, the milestone was achieved nearly a decade earlier than anticipated when AlphaGo bested Lee in four out of five matches. To understand how consequential this is, consider that the number of potential positions in Go is exponentially greater than the number of atoms in the universe, putting the game beyond the power of the brute-force computational approach that has enabled computers to defeat humans at games like chess. Instead, the DeepMind team trained AlphaGo to learn from past games in order to develop new strategies for itself in real time–not unlike what a human would do. Google has used similar techniques, more recently, to have its Translate product churn out translations of literature that are almost indistinguishable from human efforts.

The implications for the arts are at least twofold, both enormous. First, the accomplishments of machine learning are directly tied to the accelerating trend of automation pervading all aspects of society, manifesting most recently in self-driving vehicles and fast-casual spots that replace cashiers with iPads. As more people’s jobs become redundant with what machines can do, unemployment rates could rise substantially, creating far more collective leisure time–and far more opportunity for creative expression. (How exactly that leisure time is spent will, clearly, depend a lot on what we decide to do about our social safety net, which is why many people in the tech community favor a universal basic income.) That could be amazing for the cause of art, though perhaps not so great for professional artists, who are already facing competition from the likes of Jukedeck and Google Brain itself. A grimmer view of artificial intelligence’s advances points to the specter of AI as, essentially, a new life form that could compete with humans for dominance of the earth. Given the rate at which machine learning applications are developing, a lot of smart people have begun to conclude that this isn’t just science fiction–to the point that increasing resources are flowing toward the cause of ensuring that the development of an artificial superintelligence, if and when it happens, won’t destroy the human race. Lest you get too freaked out, be reassured that this worst-case scenario is still considered a low-probability outcome by most observers…but perhaps now you can understand why we think this outranks The Donald. –Ian David Moss

Honorable Mention:

• The Pulse nightclub shooting targets social dancers
• Brexit shakes up the landscape for UK artists and organizations
• Google Books ruled to be fair use (and Stairway to Heaven is not plagiarized)
• Artistic quality metrics controversy at Arts Council England
• Canada Council holds grantees accountable for diversity (and other changes)
• Black Lives Matter and US Department of Arts and Culture release policy platforms

Best wishes for 2017 to all!

The Internet — photo by flickr user HD Zimmermann

The protracted battle over net neutrality (covered by Createquity this last month, and in November, May, April, March, February, and January of last year) came to a provisional end on February 26 when the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of classifying broadband Internet as a public utility. The reclassification applies to both wired lines and smartphone and tablet service, and effectively bans “paid prioritization” and the throttling of lawful content. The ruling also includes provisions to protect consumer privacy and to ensure that Internet service is available to people with disabilities and in remote areas. Importantly, the F.C.C. also approved an order to preempt state laws that unfairly restrict municipal competition with cable and telecommunications broadband. (Currently this order focuses on North Carolina and Tennessee, but as many as twenty states may fall under its scope.) The vote — though hailed as historic by advocates of “a fair, fast and open Internet” — has its share of naysayers, so best to hold the bubbly: major telecom companies are expected to sue, Congress still has a say, and, of course, the 2016 Presidential elections loom large over the whole thing. In the meantime, F.C.C. Chairman Wheeler has taken to the road to convince concerned parties that the new rules won’t hinder how the web works.

New York Looks to House its Artists: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had some welcome news for the city’s artists this month: as part of his administration’s broader affordable housing agenda, he announced that the city will build 1,500 new affordable live-work spaces for artists and 500 below-market work-spaces. New York’s rising rents are taking a toll on artists, and for decades the city’s creative types have threatened to decamp to the Big Apple’s sunny rival to the west, or if not there then perhaps Philadelphia or Berlin. Given that it’s been forty-five years since dedicated artist housing was built in the city, de Blasio’s announcement will be seen as long overdue. (Perhaps New Yorkers have Lena Dunham and David Byrne to thank for the renewed attention to the matter.) And yet, although affordable housing is de Blasio’s top priority for 2015, these 1,500 units won’t be completed until 2025. Instead, the administration plans to build 150 units each year for the next decade. With more than 140,00 artists purportedly living in the city — a whopping 53,000 of them applied for 89 spots at El Barrio’s Artspace PS109 last summer — is it too little too late?

The Unexpected Casualties of Jon Stewart’s Departure: Jon Stewart broke the Internet on February 10 when he announced, while taping that night’s episode of the Daily Show, that he would be stepping down after sixteen years as its anchor. Stewart, who joined the show three years into its run, is credited with re-imaging late night television, launching careers, and making cable better. When he goes, he will be missed, by The White House, Elizabeth Warren, Comedy Central (presumably), the media, humanists, Piers Morgan, the 16% of Americans who consider the show a trusted news source, maybe even by you, reading this. But no one, arguably, will miss Jon Stewart as much as book publicists. In these last sixteen years, landing an interview on the Daily Show, and thus getting in front of Stewart’s highly educated, and disproportionately wealthy and liberal audience, was a holy grail for publishers and authors alike, giving authors a very public voice, and (usually) boosting their sales. Stewart leaves behind big shoes to fill, but for now, all book publicists — and the rest of us — can do is hope that whoever replaces him looks on them as kindly as he did.

Los Angeles Arts Education Gets a Funding Boost: This month, Rory Pullens, LAUSD’s executive director of arts education, made good on the promise he made in the summer of 2014, when he was hired: to secure the funding necessary to ensure increased arts opportunities for students. A memo released by Pullens, along with Deputy Superintendent Ruth Perez and Karen Ryback, executive director of Federal and State Education Programs, confirms the arts as a core subject, and allows schools with high percentages of low-income students to use Title I funds for the arts. Title I funding was developed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to “improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged.” Historically, these funds — which this year total $14 billion nationally — have been used to increase student success in reading and math, not the arts. The district did vote to make arts a core subject in 2012, but the perception has been either that arts education isn’t permissible under the guidelines of Title I goals, or that it’s best to keep that practice below the radar to avoid the scrutiny and possible revocation of funds. Pullens’s memo should finally set the record straight for the country’s second-largest school district.

Statisticians Question Statistical Significance: In extra-arts news with implications for our research-backed investigation here at Createquity, this month the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology announced that it has banned testing for statistical significance and related procedures from papers published in the journal. To anyone who remembers basic stats from college or grad school, that sentence might sound a bit shocking, as these so-called inferential statistics are nearly ubiquitous in quantitatively-focused research studies published since the middle of the 20th century. As surprising as it may seem, however, the backlash against this approach, often referred to as frequentist analysis, has been growing in recent years, with such prominent figures as Nate Silver coming out as skeptics. For the non-statisticians among us, in the frequentist approach, a p-value (which denotes the probability of the “null hypothesis” for a given set of observations, or the hypothesis that the observations are simply the result of random noise) of less than 5% is generally considered to be statistically significant. The problem many statisticians have with frequentist analysis is that the p-value is often misunderstood to be the probability of the hypothesis given the data, when it’s actually the probability of the data given (the opposite of) the hypothesis. This misinterpretation, along with related issues, means that an over-reliance on the p-value makes for unreliable results. If the journal’s ban marks the beginning of a trend, it could mean turning decades’ worth of statistics pedagogy and practice on its head.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Felicia Shaw, longtime director of arts and the creative economy at the San Diego Foundation, has left her position after a significant restructuring at the foundation.
• Kristen Madsen, senior vice president of the GRAMMY Foundation and MusiCares Foundation, has been appointed the new director of arts at the Sonoma County Economic Development Board.
• Dithny Joan Raton, former director of Haiti’s Ministry of Tourism and Creative Industry, assumed the position of the country’s Minister of Culture in late January.
• The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation seeks a Deputy Director of Programs. Posted February 1, no closing date.
• New America seeks a Future Tense Research Associate for a six-month contract. Posted February 4, no closing date.
• The New Media Advocacy Project seeks a Project Manager. Posted February 13, no closing date.
• Slover Linett Audience Research Inc. seeks an Associate/Senior Associate. Posted February 14, no closing date.
• The National Endowment for the Arts is looking to fill several more positions. The opening for a Supervisory Program Analyst in the Office of Research and Analysis (posted February 22) has an application deadline of March 17. The positions of Folk & Traditional Arts Director (posted February 21) and Program Analyst (posted February 22) have an application deadline of March 18.
• The Ford Foundation seeks a Program Officer, Technology. Posted February 23, no closing date.
• The Brooklyn Arts Council is undertaking a search for a new Executive Director. Posted February 25, no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Philadelphia’s William Penn Foundation, released a report, “Capitalization, Scale, and Investment: Does Growth Equal Gain?“, which looks at the health and Philadelphia’s arts ecosystem from 2007-2011, and concludes that organizational growth should not be viewed as a one-size-fits all remedy.
• SMU’s National Center for Arts Research released its first annual arts vibrancy index. The index, which looks at 900 communities across the United States, measures “vibrancy” as the level of supply, demand, and government support for arts and culture on a per capita basis.
• The World Bank Group published a policy research working paper which suggests options for fostering the performing arts as an engine for economic development.
• A report from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and consulting firm Marts & Lundy predicts total charitable giving in US will increase by 4.8% in 2015.
• “Lessons Learned about Change Capital in the Arts,” a new report from the Nonprofit Finance Fund, provides a four-year evaluation of the Doris Duke Foundation’s innovative initiative to support artistic excellence.
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services launched data.imls.gov, its open data catalog site, which makes available all IMLS data, including grants administration and data about museums, libraries, and related organizations.
• Turnaround Arts Initiative has published the final evaluation report of its pilot school cohort, which shows positive program impact over its first two years.
• Art came in dead last in a new study from the Pew Research Center, which looked at the skills American adults thought were most important for kids to succeed in life. However, others have pointed out that skills associated with the arts scored much higher.
• Findings released by the New Jersey State Department of Education show positive growth in student participation in the arts during the 2013/2014 school year, including the statistic that 94% of schools offered arts ed programs.
• In Britain, a new report commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project looks at the UK’s “cultural ecology” and examines the interdependencies of publicly funded culture, commercial culture and homemade culture. Another report, this one from Warwick University, brings up questions about the relevance and accessibility of subsidized arts, while a third, from the BBC, shows an increase in the number of general productions, and specifically new works, being produced by UK’s most-subsidized theater companies.
• Several surveys released this month look at arts attendance in the British Isles. A Scottish household survey looked at engagement across twelve cultural activities, revealing that theater-going is the second more popular activity in Scotland after going to the cinema. In Ireland, a survey conducted by the Arts Council shows robust increase in arts attendance, with a notable increase among lower-income respondents.
• The 2014 “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” report by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film reveals that Hollywood’s gender gap persists, with female characters making up just 12% of protagonists in the top 100 domestic-grossing films of 2014.
• Research published in Frontiers in Psychology suggests listeners prefer performances recorded in front of live audiences, which may contradict research around performance anxiety, and a paper published in NeuroImage shows that the act of studying visual art physically improves a brain’s capacity for creativity, suggesting creativity is not just something we’re born with.
• A report from FreeMuse identifies 237 violations against artistic freedom worldwide in 2014, up 19% from 2013.
• And finally, the Center for the Future of Museums has released its Trends Watch for 2015. The trends include open data, the rise of ethical consumerism, personalization of products, the changing seascape of museum risk with respect to climate change, wearable technology, and slow culture.