One of the benefits of Axis membership is that the website gets looked at by many organisations who are interested in working with and promoting artists.
Another benefit is that if these views turn into contacts, we provide the mechanism for those people to get in touch with artists. Each month I send hundreds of enquiries on to artists, often with my fingers crossed and a big smile, hoping that a great opportunity for one of our members is the outcome.
Two items in the media over the weekend got me thinking about the perennially contentious subject of what the arts are for and whether or not they should be subsidised.
I found myself listening to a programme on Radio 4 about the folk singer Ewan MacColl, whose pioneering role in the revival of British folk music in the 1960s was closely informed by his Marxist beliefs.
MacColl was famously abrasive, dogmatic and hostile to the ‘élitism’ of the arts establishment. But like many of us perhaps, he was also inconsistent in the application of his principles.
Here at Axis we’re thinking hard about our new visual identity, which we’ll be launching alongside our new web platform in the early part of next year. One of the things we’re also pondering is what we call ourselves.
In general, we’re somewhat dubious about the wisdom of re-brands. Remember Consignia, the disastrous re-branding of our much-loved Royal Mail? We certainly don’t want to go down that route. So, whatever happens, we won’t be calling ourselves something completely different.
There were many interesting talks at the recent TEDxYork event held at the Ron Cooke Hub but one in particular caught my interest by Hannah Nicklin
Hannah is interested in the city and how technology is changing our public, private and personal relationships within it. She talked about the following themes, how CCTV watches our every move. Mobile Phone data can be extracted by the police without permission. Interactive billboards film crowds and feed their images back to them with adverts. Secret cameras monitor who is paying attention and for how long. Interactive vending machines measuring your height, weight and gender. She wonders what are we to think of this non-consensual data? Personalisation is the pay off, it’s convenient, but should it make us nervous?