Stefan Bauernschuster, Oliver Falck and Ludger Woessmann – three economists from the Ifo Institute in Munich – are the authors of a working paper called Surfing Alone? The Internet and Social Capital: Evidence from an Unforeseeable Technological Mistake (here’s the PDF). Referring to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, they say that:

A report called ‘Supporting growth in the arts economy‘ has just been released by Arts Council England. The cover looks a bit like this: The report brings together three papers and the second in particular, titled ‘Place infrastructure and digital‘, has some interesting observations. Here are a few of them

A few years ago I worked from my spare room. I don’t venture in there so much these days but, on a rare sortie recently, I noticed that the calendar on the wall was from 2008. Not wanting to miss the chance for some procrastination, I stopped to have

Last month I went over to Boston to go and see Cirque Eloize perform iD – a show that’s being brought over to the UK for a short tour later in the year. It’s a great show and definitely worth catching. I was sent over there by the theatres

Back in April (can you tell I just found this post in my drafts?) BookTwo sent me in the direction of Intelligence Squared for a video of a recent debate: “All that matters are authors and readers. Publishers will soon be irrelevant“. Cory Doctorow’s take seemed sensible enough and

I’ve been looking after Created in Birmingham for a while now. ‘Looking after’ being an odd but instinctive way of describing it. I didn’t set the site up, it wasn’t my idea in the first place and after my first stint I handed it on to someone

Last year I played my own little part in Tuning Out With Radio Z by Stan’s Cafe when I ‘slept’ on stage at the mac. On Friday, things stepped up a gear when I had a whole performance take place in my house. The Other Way Works‘s new

I just realised I never finished this series. Which is a shame, because the fourth week of the festival was as noteworthy as any other, so I’m going to see what I can remember. Wednesday 12 May Colin Dunne is the Birmingham-born Irish dancer who replaced Michael Flatley in

Local authority cuts to arts budgets are being announced around the country in dribs and drabs, meaning that there’s fresh bad news every few days. Fr’instance, we’ve just been told about the changes Birmingham City Council will be making. A few weeks ago all eyes were on

Try and make your own film. It is very easy now. It wasn’t in my time but these days home video is not all that expensive and you could start with home video and try and make a story about a sparrow or an earthworm or a hedgehog or