Culture

‘The Nice Guys’ is a charmingly funny, buddy-comedy detective-thriller, written by Shane Black, of ‘Lethal Weapon’ fame. It stars Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger. The narrative is purposefully familiar: in 1977, Los Angeles, down-on-his-luck PI (Gosling’s pretty Holland March) and an enforcer for hire (Crowe’s grizzly Jackson Healy) find themselves working on opposing […]

When Andrius Mockus became mayor of Bogotá with its communities destroyed by drugs, crime and corruption he coined the phrase ‘citizen culture’, and called his strategy ‘subart’. The city’s cultural strategy was to encourage people to trust themselves, to take their lives into their own hands and to feel responsible as makers of the city […]

We need to address the future through a new lens, that of citizenship, if arts and culture are to play their necessary role in improving the quality of life for all. In looking forward we have, firstly, to understand that we are not just dealing with a recession and its aftershocks. There is a resetting […]

Season 4 of ‘House of Cards’ came out on Netflix earlier this year and was gobbled up in a matter of weeks by its fans. The opening sequence will be familiar to them, a series of shimmering images of Washington DC, first in morning light and ending with the channels of motor traffic pulsing through […]

The three Irish contestants for EU Capital of Culture 2020 are top-down and inadequately focus on culture as an agent for transforming people

Heraclitus and Plato, evolving objectivity and the moronic internet

The Arts Council and the County and City Management Association (CCMA), the local government management network, have just agreed ‘A Framework for Collaboration’. The Framework culminates thirty years of collaboration between the Arts Council and the local authorities. It is promoted as a new way for these partners to work together, maximise the impact of […]