Sadler’s Wells launched their 2011 season this morning with a warning that the front-loading of arts cuts to the next two years will cut a swathe through the British arts landscape.

It began with a review of 100 Years of German Song. Roused by a comment to a reader (see Igor's comment below), Fisun was moved to email Igor in support of his trenchant views on arts funding. It wasn't long before other writers at theartsdesk got involved and an eruption of lively and passionate emails followed.

Ari Up, frontwoman of The Slits from the age of 14, died yesterday aged 48 after a long illness, it was announced by her stepfather, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols. The brilliant and confrontational female-fronted Slits were one of the finest examples of the punk era's DIY creativity, and also one of punk's most successful engagements with reggae. Ari Up never stopped being a fervent supporter of reggae culture in all its forms: after The Slits she formed New Age Steppers with legendary British producer Adrian Sherwood, and for many years she lived in Kingston, Jamaica where she was a keen participant in the local dancehall scene under the name Medusa.

Frontline public funding for arts will be cut by some 15 per cent over the next four years, said the Chancellor George Osborne today, as he announced a cut of almost half in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport budget, from £1.9 billion to £1.1 billion. Arts Council England's funding will be cut by almost 30 per cent over that period, starting with a 14 per cent reduction for next year.

Some days I feel like I've woken up on the other side of some wormhole in the spacetime continuum, and the world is a subtly but definitely different place to yesterday. So it was last week when I got a slightly drunken email from a music producer in Rotterdam, with some remixes of his work, saying, “There was this dude called DJ Orion and this dude was working in his lab on his freak creation. Mixing moombahton with  footwork and guarachero at 140 bpm. He named it: boombahchero.”

Three days after its closure, and just a few days after opening, Tate Modern is still to make an announcement over the future of Ai Weiwei's interactive Turbine Hall installation. Will the closure of the dust-emitting artwork be permanent? Or are the Tate perhaps thinking of issuing dust masks to the public, which may, in fact, add a thrilling "danger zone" dimension to the experience?

It may be remembered that Tate Modern faced similar fears when it opened a decade ago. With the high number of visitors, it was suggested that the untreated wooden floors were creating enough dust to cause long-term damage to the paintings. But health and safety fears have also dogged previous Turbine Hall commissions:  in 2006, injuries were reported from visitors hurtling down Carsten Höller's slide (see below) and the following year people were tripping over Doris Salcedo's 167-metre floor crack.

Contemporary art lovers may like their art to be edgy and dangerous. But just how dangerous?

One is so used to encountering spectacle in the Turbine Hall that visitors may feel distinctly underwhelmed by Ai Weiwei's minimal installation, the 11th Unilever Commission at Tate Modern. There appears at first to be nothing at all to see: the work, which resembles a huge blanket of ash by the time you reach the stairs to the bridge, is the same colour as the surrounding pale grey walls.

Talking to Jude Kelly at the Royal Festival Hall last night, Stephen Sondheim gave a glimpse into his own theory of lyrical composition by contrasting Noël Coward (whom "I intensely dislike") and Cole Porter.

On 10 October, 2010 Harold Pinter would have turned 80. To celebrate, a group of actors gathered in a room to read The Room, his first play, to an invited audience. Among those present was his widow Antonia Fraser.

The play was introduced by Matthew Lloyd, artistic director of the Actors Centre and its in-house performance space, the Tristan Bates Theatre. Given that The Room was written when Pinter was still making his living as an actor it felt appropriate, he explained, that the celebration was being hosted by a venue where actors are able to hone their craft.