A Big “W” for Arts Education.  As the Daily Telegraph puts it, “the combined fury of 134 music organisations, led by the Incorporated Society of Musicians has saved music education from the full force of the cuts being imposed by a cash-starved government.” The ISM’s petition had two victories over 17 million pounds and the British government has agreed to back down from its recommendation that local authorities stop funding music education. This is important because it is the first year in a very long time that funding will increase and not decrease. It also shows the importance of a united front for championing the arts. The ISM plans to keep fighting and focus its next campaign on achieving the same type of stable funding for the arts that sports receive.

National Medal of Arts.  President Obama will soon present the 2013 National Medal of Arts  which is the government’s highest award for artists and art patrons.  The recipients include: novelist, poet and playwright Julia Alvarez; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Joan Harris, an arts patron; the dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones; the music theater composer John Kander; Jeffrey Katzenberg, the director and CEO of DreamWorks; the novelist Maxine Hong Kingston; the documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles; the singer Linda Ronstadt; the architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams and the visual artist James Turrell.  Brava to all!

Architectural Dialysis.  Architect Cristian Ehrmantraut has developed a floating platform designed to perform dialysis on the ocean.  Today, there are six mega-vortexes of floating plastic practically the size of Brazil (8.5 million square kilometers).    This new platform would hopefully mitigate these vortexes by filtering the ocean and absorbing the plastic.   For more on the design, click here.

Catcerto.  The Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, led by conductor and composer Mindaugas Piecaitis included a cat in one their performances back in 2009 and the video is now making its rounds on the internet this week.  The cat was recorded and then projected during the performance via video.  Don’t worry, if you are skeptical, you aren’t alone.  Even one of the cat’s audience members (you guessed it – another cat) is very noticeably leaving the performance less than 30 seconds into the video.  I will say that the performance does pick up and is certainly entertaining.  I vote for “dogpera” next.

“More Than Human” Photographs.  Speaking of personification, British photographer Tim Flach released some incredible animal portraits.  The exhibit is meant to illuminate the similarities between animals and humans through poses, gestures, and gazes.  There is so much that Flach is able to communicate through his photographs and it’s hard to believe that these were all natural moments.