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amateurs and professionals
Somehow I missed this fascinating discussion on the differences between amateur and professional in the arts over at Andrew's blog. It's not a new conversation but the nuances are different in a community where there is less state support for the arts than we are accustomed to in Ireland. The dividing line between amateur and professional tends to be the award of Arts Council funding for many and the capacity to earn a living for others. Andrew's piece ...
What’s love got to do with it?
Quite a lot if this Newsweek article is to be believed. In September 2008 English singer Billy Bragg performed at something called the Big Busk. After posting the chords of the songs he would play on the Internet, he invited all comers to bring their guitars. Some 3,000 did, strumming while a crew behind Bragg hoisted signs showing which chord to play. Now Southbank is hosting a nine-month Leonard Bernstein festival, which will culminate in a gala presentation of Bernstein's Mass ...
Living well in 2010
It's that time of the year again when newspapers do their end of year round up and we review the past year and hope for a better one next year. I've never been one for making new year resolutions preferring to look at every day as the beginning of a new year and therefore an opportunity to do things a little differently. Mark Vernon from the School of Life however offers a different perspective on living well in ...
The democratisation of intimacy
Stefana Broadbent's research suggests that the internet and technology is increasing our capacity for emotional intimacy. We may have 100 people on our 'buddy lists' or Facebook pages but we in fact only talk in detail with a handful of people. New technologies enable us to keep in touch across distance and time zones. Broadbent tells a number of touching stories of couples (romantic and family) who keep in touch using phone, Skype and webcams - a baker ...
Therapy to get back to work
Jobless Britons are to be offered therapy to help them get back into work, under a "talking treatment" programme to be announced by the government over the next few weeks. On Monday the Department for Work and Pensions will announce that mental health co-ordinators will be based in Jobcentres. The plans, which will make mental health treatment and particularly cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) central to the fight to get Britain back to work after the recession, will eventually see centres providing ...
On the real work of leaders..
Too many leadership scholars and executives are obsessed by a pointless question: Are leaders born, or are they made?....Leadership might be learnable. But instead of taking comfort in the idea that you can develop, wake up to the sobering realization of how difficult it will be to manage novel situations continuously and under often-extreme circumstances. Thought provoking article from the Wall Street Journal inviting people to think about the reality of leading as distinct from the abstract prospect of it. ...
A Dickens of a Christmas
Charles Dickens left behind one, and only one, manuscript for "A Christmas Carol,'' the tale he wrote in 1843 of an unfeeling rich man and the boy who pricked his conscience. Kept under lock-and-key for much of the year at the Morgan Library and Museum, the manuscript is not widely available, one reason, perhaps, why it has been all but impossible to track the many revisions Dickens made to the manuscript as he struggled to get his story right. A ...
Thanksgiving
Today is Thanksgiving here in the US - my first time to be in the country at this time of the year. Many of my friends describe it as their favourite holiday - no gifts, just a day at home with family over a nice dinner and then back to work on Friday (or Monday if you've taken a long weekend). I am taking the opportunity to feel grateful for what has come my direction this year. ...
It appears that Americans are happy
Americans are more optimistic now than a year ago about their well-being (88% vs. 84%); health, finances, relationships and odds of finding love (70% vs. 61%). Meanwhile, the Secret Society of Happy People (which "encourages the expression of happiness and discourages parade-raining") reports traffic to its not-so-secret website has increased since the downturn.....So while optimism is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound to take its toll. All this and a recession too? Nancy Gibbs' article ...
Jane McAdam Freud on art and psychoanalysis
Situated among the countless arts organizations in New York City are enclaves of passionate culture hounds who gather under the auspices of psychoanalytic training institutes. "There are approximately 38 (such institutes) in Manhattan alone," notes Alan Grossman, LCSW, director of the NY Counseling Center's Training Institute. Joan Erdheim, PhD, President of the Psychoanalytic Society of the Training Institute for Mental Health (TIMH) noted that along with their primary purpose of educating mental-health professionals in the techniques of psychoanalysis, "Ten to ...