Little for the arts in the Budget, pro-Palestinian politics at the Queensland Music Awards, Trump charges Vance with removing improper ideology at the Smithsonian, and more.
Hello from a hotel room in Berlin! This week’s round-up is a little later than usual because I am still in Europe where it is still Sunday!
The Budget 2025–26 just came out and it as left many arts peak bodies wonder WTF now?! because there is little new funding for arts and culture. APRA AMCOS, BlakDance, NAVA and TNA all made statements on the Budget.
The winner of the Jazz award at this year’s Queensland Music Awards, Kelle Green, has been critisised for her views on Palestine jepodising QMA funding and her job at an all girls private school in Brisbane’s west. Green joins Khaled Sabsabi and others who have had their reputations and professional opportunities put at stake for speaking out about their beliefs.
Trump’s attack on the arts continues with a decree that Vice President JD Vance stamp out “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian. Trump has also gutted the museums and libraries funding body, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Also, there was pleny of talk about AI, including Australian literary industry push back on Meta’s use of LibGen to train their AI models, criticisms of OpenAI’s image generator update that has everyone rendering images in the style of Studio Ghibli and Wikimedia warns AI developers that without support Wikipedia may not be available as a source of AI training data forever.
Also: Dua Lipa has been cleared of copyright infringement, Indigenous placenames are coming to Apple Maps and a new computer on the Apple Store is actually an ad for Apple TV.
And: a special thank you to a recent contributor to my Buy me a coffee . It all helps me keep producing free arts marketing content so a very heartfelt thank you!
What's been going on?
Here’s WTF happened this week:
Where is the arts in the Budget 2025–26?
The short answer is there is little new specific arts funding in this Budget.
