Addressing the launch of Future Arcola at City Hall London from Copenhagen, Matt Black, one half of acclaimed DJ duo Coldcut and co-counder of record label Ninja Tune, speaks of his hopes for a productive outcome from the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference…
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoKHyfRMq88
PRESS RELEASE:
At London’s City Tuesday, representatives from Arcola Theatre and sustainable design innovators Arup present plans for the creation of a new eco-theatre in Dalston, East London.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, said, “As world leaders gather in Copenhagen, Arcola Theatre is at the forefront of how London’s arts organisations can champion the environment. We have to take robust yet practical steps to make our city more energy efficient. This has the added benefit of playing a pivotal role in the wider redevelopment of this part of the city, making the urban realm more pleasant. Three cheers for Arcola for raising the bar.â€
Developed though a feasibility study funded by London Development Agency, the project will be the UK’s first major arts venue to place environmental sustainability at the core of construction, programme and operations.
Mehmet Egen, Artistic Director and founder of Arcola Theatre said: “Our new building will include an exquisite 350 seat theatre allowing us to create an even greater and more diverse programme, building on our past nine years of success.â€
Dr Ben Todd, Executive Director of Arcola Theatre, said: “Wrapped around the main stage will be dynamic spaces to accommodate our ever-growing environmental sustainability and community engagement programmes. Our aim is to create a place Da Vinci might call home where creative people across multiple disciplines drive innovation for a sustainable and equitable future.â€
Global engineering and design consultancy Arup has been appointed to provide theatre and acoustical consultancy services; whilst Arup Associates, Arup’s multidisciplinary design studio, will provide an integrated architecture and engineering design. Arup’s iconic projects include the Sydney Opera House, and the Birds Nest and Water Cube stadiums for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
Neill Woodger, director of Arup’s theatre consulting and acoustics business said: “Our task is to conceive a theatre that exemplifies sustainability. It must provide the highest levels of artistic experience, whilst being affordable to build and economical to operate. It must contribute positively to the environment and local community and lead the way in promoting the shift to more ecological lifestyles. This is the first public venue to use a sustainability framework to define the brief and conceptual design, and it will set a new level of performance in theatre design.â€
The expanded Arcola Theatre will include:
The new Arcola Theatre will be located at the heart of Dalston close to the new Dalston Square development and a new East London Line station. The project is part of a wider London Development Agency (LDA) funded project Making Space in Dalston. This exemplary project, led by the LDA’s Design for London team, is bringing together diverse stakeholders to choose and deliver strategic improvements in public realm resources across Dalston.
Cllr Guy Nicholson, Hackney Council Cabinet Member for Regeneration and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, said: “Hackney Council is committed to supporting Arcola’s ambition to create an innovative new eco-theatre; ensuring that Arcola continues to contribute to the cultural excitement that is Dalston.â€
Project partners include:
Project Director, Dr Ben Todd of Arcola Theatre is one of the 2009 London Leaders for sustainability and the launch event is supported by the London Sustainable Development Commission.
PRESS RELEASE ENDS
More details and hi-resolution images: www.futurearcola.com/press
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Arcola Theatre was founded in 2000 by its present Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen and Executive Producer Leyla Nazli. From humble origins Arcola has grown to become an important London and UK venue serving both as receiving house and producer of its own critically acclaimed work. Arcola has strong links with the local community, delivering an extensive programme of participatory arts for all ages. Since 2007 Arcola has been working with local and international partners across arts, science and engineering to drive mass adoption of sustainable lifestyles. Arcola Theatre is a Regularly Funded Organisation of Arts Council England. www.arcolatheatre.com
Arup is the creative force behind many of the world’s prominent building, infrastructure and industrial projects. Founded in 1946 with an enduring set of values, Arup’s unique trust ownership fosters a distinctive culture, an intellectual independence and encourages truly collaborative working. www.arup.com
Arup Associates is the integrated design studio of the multinational consulting engineering group Arup. Started by Sir Ove Arup more than four decades ago to develop his concept of total architecture, Arup Associates offer a radical alternative to conventional architectural practice, creating pioneering holistic design that is focused on people. The studio practices multidisciplinary design where engineers and architects work side by side in embedded teams in a single practice. Teamwork is at the core of our structure. www.arupassociates.com
Mouchel is a consulting and business services group that builds great relationships with clients in the public sector and regulated industry to make a difference to customers and communities. Operations include highways, water, rail, property, housing, education, energy, management consultancy and ‘business process outsourcing’ in a wide range of disciplines. Mouchel has more than 11,000 employees, 123 offices in the UK and an audited turnover of £740.6 million. Mouchel was awarded ‘Top 20 Best Big Companies to Work For’ status in March 2008 in the annual Sunday Times rankings. In March 2008 it also achieved Two Star accreditation from awarding body Best Companies for an outstanding level of employee engagement across the company. www.mouchel.com
Juhi Shareef Associates (JSA) is a consultancy specialising in sustainability for events and the creative industries. JSA has a particular focus on the role of cultural institutions in sustainable development and has recently returned from the COP 15- related Culture Futures event, working on engaging the cultural sector in moving towards an ecological age by 2050. www.juhishareef.com
Ignite Hospitality Consultants is a pioneering Hackney-based agency, providing marketing, strategy, branding, design and concept development for hotels, restaurants and bars in the UK and internationally. A collective of consultants under one roof provide support to Start-Up or Grown-Up hospitality operators in driving sales, growth and improving efficiency. www.ignitehospitality.com
William G Dick Partnership LLP is an Chartered Quantity Surveying practice. Established for over 25 years, the practice prides itself in providing clients with an enthusiastic and pro-active service. www.williamgdick.co.uk
London Borough of Hackney is working with Transport for London, the London Development Agency and local partners in the regeneration of Dalston. Work is centred on Dalston Square – a new public square bordered by a new East London Line Overground station, new shops, new homes and a new library and public archive. Across Dalston a programme of public realm improvements will integrate new developments with the existing town centre, and enhance the cultural mix. www.hackney.gov.uk
London Development Agency (LDA) works to improve the quality of life for all Londoners – investing in jobs, skills and growth. In Dalston, the LDA has worked with the London Borough of Hackney, Transport for London, architects and developers to capitalise on the East London Line extension. The new housing developments around Dalston Junction will create a new public square and other facilities. The London Development Agency – through the Making Space in Dalston project led by its Design for London team – will invest a further £750,000 in improving the wider public realm in Dalston; this includes the feasibility study for Arcola’s future theatre. www.lda.gov.uk
London Sustainable Development Commission was established in 2002 to advise the Mayor of London on making London a benchmark for sustainable cities. The Commission is made up of a individual experts from the economic, social, environmental and London governance sectors. The Commission’s London Leaders programme brings together London’s leading lights in sustainability, to deliver change, and inspire others to do the same. www.londonsdc.org
Arts Council England works to get great art to everyone by championing, developing and investing in artistic experiences that enrich people’s lives. As the national development agency for the arts, we support a range of artistic activities from theatre to music, literature to dance, photography to digital art, and carnival to crafts. Great art inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves, and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2008 and 2011, we will invest £1.3 billion of public money from government and a further £0.3 billion from the National Lottery to create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk
For Immediate Release: December 16, 2009
Contact: Aviva Rahmani 646 403 7130
Asger Jorn Room, Bella Center, Copenhagen
ghostnets@ghostnets.com www.ghostnets.com
Art can help build the capacity and facilitate adaptation needed at COP15;
SOS Gulf to Gulf is a virtual model for the role of art in creating resilience
Protestors world wide see COP15 as a conflict between money and legalisms. This press conference asserts that is why art needs to be at the table, “ [supporting] [assisting] [enabling] all developing country Parties, particularly the most vulnerable, in undertaking adaptation measures.†Art is how people express their experiences. Millions of artists have another approach to environmental issues.
Artists can help COP15 communicate between parties
SOS Gulf to Gulf is an example of how an ecological art practice can help
If COP15 and the UNFCCC desire just allocation of resources to deal with climate change. Why then, has art, which has so much to contribute to that goal, been absent from all discussions of adaptability?
Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention on its seventh session, held in Bangkok from 28 September to 9 October 2009, and Barcelona from 2 to 6 November 2009; chosen because it bears equally on human needs for ethics and culture.
build capacity and facilitate adaptation, Ecological art, adaptation and mitigation, aspirational goals, technology transfer and development, Resilience, Vulnerability, “[the level of adaptation][adaptation needs]â€, “[framework] [programme]â€
(b) Strengthening, consolidating and enhancing the sharing of information, knowledge, experience and good practices, at local, national, regional and international levels, consistent with relevant international agreements, through creating forums where different public and private stakeholders can discuss concrete challenges;â€
Films by Aviva Rahmani with discussion afterwards will be viewed at 5: PM December 16: Farumgade 4-6, 2200 Kbh N (Nørrebro) http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=203108274870#/pages/FIT-freie-internationale-tankstelle/60219692736?ref=ts (via shareaholic)
There’s a lot of discussion about the role of dystopian art in creating new stories about climate and the environment. I have to say, if I was a kid, Mark Coreth’s sculpture of a melting polar bear would scare the bejayzus out of me.
Ice Bear is in London’s Trafalgar Square from today.
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology
We’ve arrive back in the apartment after our second day in Copenhagen. I will refrain from saying we’re here for Cop15, because, while I’m interested in what’s going on in there, I’m really here to see the creative responses collected in this place at this time. That isn’t to say we didn’t go to the Bella Center, we did, but it’s not our primary goal.
I had the opportunity to check in with Martin Rosengaard of Wooloo.org while Miranda was delayed in London, as well as get a very helpful and personal tour of the city on bike by our host (and sterling scenographer)Â Sara Vilslev, a friend from the 2007 Prague Quadrennial.
On Sunday we headed to the Bright Green Expo at the Forum. It is the concurrent trade show for green tech during COP15. There was a promise of the inclusion of cultural programming, so it seemed like a good place to start. The Cultural programming really consisted of a DJ/VJ set for about an hour by CPH:DOX remixing Cities on Speed. We moved on pretty quickly: green-tech (good or green-washing) is green-tech. We’re into it, but it’s better covered elsewhere.
We then continued on to view the CO2 Cube floating by the Tycho Brahe Planetarium. After the artist renderings  was surprised to see it’s construction was of shipping containers and that it had media on 2 of 4 sides. They were recalibrating the video, but we got some footage you can see from posts yesterday. We only strayed away for a little while so that we could wander towards the Downtown Hopenhagen Live area until we spoke with Deanne LeRue of the Meridian Health Foundation and Millennium Art and Steve Mason of Obscrua Digital.
Afterwards we returned for some quality time with the work at Hopenhagen Live. This green glowing cluster of portable exhibition rooms showcased policy, the integration of sustainable solutions into the city scape and some creative interpretations highlighting everyday relationships to the environment. A favorite was The Apartment, seen in a quick video here:
We wandered to the Polar Ice Bear to check it’s melt status, slowed by the freezing temperatures we’ve dipped into. After dinner we headed over to the CO2 Cube Reception, which was a high class affair, no pictures, but we did catch some night footage of the cube.
We did miss the demonstrations going south, which you’ll likely know resulted in hundreds of arrests. We did hear the helicopters and sirens as Police sprung into action, preemptively arresting people after a group of anarchists started egging them on. Tensions are a little high now, though the majority of all demonstrations have been peaceful.
With everything going on, we felt it was important to offer some guidance around town. So, to help others better find the arts activities occurring in Copenhagen, I spent the rest of the night trying to get everything onto our events calendar and created a google map for those who want to find their way around, guided by Eco-Arts.
Monday is now wrapping up and the center of the city, all the way to the Bella Center is policed to within an inch of it’s life. However, we both leave (though I return just 24 hours later) on Tuesday, so Monday became about trying to see everything that was open (like many cities, cultural institutions in Copenhagen are closed on Mondays).
We began by heading to the wrong address for the Poulsen Gallery. But, once we found our mistake, we were able to make it to the installation of Ghost Forest in Thorvaldsens Plads, right around the corner from the real Poulsen Gallery. It’s quite breath-taking, especially with a proper background in the process of getting these stumps here. But, even as we seemed to be some of a few onlookers, there was a constant police presence here and along the canal.
LED at 7 meters high, where the sea will rise here if Greenland's ice sheet melts.
The Poulsen Gallery has been turned over to The Colonel (said phonetically and not as one who serves fried chicken or in the military), the identity of french artist Thierry Geoffroy, as his HQ for a number of evolving projects during COP15. This is serving as the headquarters for the Yes Men and their SurvivaBalls (registered trademark), a series of Critical Runs, Facebook projects, and whatever else they come up with while here. It’s advised to check in with them regularly. Upon my return, I’ll likely head back over to try and talk to some of them about what they are doing. We were lucky to be invited to a semi-junket event, which we’ll get to in a moment.
With the short daylight moments dwindling, we walked to the Bella Center, hoping to find the path set by Glowing Climate, which we were able to find some of as we got closer.
It should be remarked that the Bella Center is not in the center of Copenhagen. It is, from our lodgings, 8.4km or 5.2 miles. From the center of town it is 5.9km or 3.7 miles.
While we didn’t see much until right up to the Bella Center, as the lights from 7m began to appear overhead. Â Once we were there the walk was worth it. The Pulse of the Earth is a fantastically creepy piece and really lends to the night time, what I’d venture to call semi-apocalyptic scene that is the entrance to the barricaded center. This is entirely appropriate, COP15 itself is semi-apocalyptic. Between the pulsing red lights of the installation, the cold an huddled hopeful observers lined up at the fences, scores of police, Avaaz.org‘s and Climate Action Network‘s Jumbotron showing the award for fossil of the day, press, vegans dressed in animal costumes pass out bags for converts and the ground littered with pamphlets (really now), it was all a bit amazing to see.
As the talks let out, we hopped the metro back into town. We had diner and made it to the Poulsen Gallery event, were we saw a demonstration of the SurviaBall (still a registered trademark), were treated to a song from the Red Suited Climate Debt Agents (accompanied by the green suited Mr. Green from Oxfam), and milled about the gallery while that day’s talks were remixed for ambiance.
We made out way home, finding that it too was lined with the flashing red markers from 7m, just as the reports of clashes between activists and police in Christiania started to make it into our news feed. I had planned to visit Christiania upon returning from the sojourn to London, but that’s now differently colored. Word on the street was that the police had left the area, to some great extent, alone, as to focus on the Bella Center and downtown. As I write, it is being evacuated and those in cafés are being told to leave or be arrested.
It’s getting colder here in Copenhagen, but tensions are starting to boil over.
Tomorrow we both head to London. Miranda will continue to head on home, but I will be there for the Future Arcola launch event at City Hall. I will also , finally, meet William Shaw of the RSA in person, after missing him by hours in Copenhagen.
More recap soon. When I return the museums and exhibition halls will be open, while parts of town are shut down. And I’m curious as to see how we move around the city when Obama arrives on Friday.
This is reposted from the Hollywood Fringe Blog. It originally posted on December 8th by Ben Hill, Director of the Hollywood Fringe.
http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/learn/article/157
Modern business has gone very far leveraging technology to market, promote, and produce their firms and products. It stands to reason that the arts could easily do the same, even with comparatively fractional technology budgets .
Several organizers of your first Hollywood Fringe Festival happen to hail from technical backgrounds. It’s been fun applying these skills to our first love (the arts). Key to our strategy is this thing called “cloud computingâ€. Without getting too technical, all applications supporting the festival – accounting, project management, email, etc – are provided through a number of small, web-based services.
Making our strategy a reality took a lot of time, thought, and trials – so to save those of you seeking technical solutions some time, we have provided this little post with the hope it will help you streamline and modernize your arts organizations.
Enjoy!
Ben
_
THE WEBSITE
the website at www.HollywoodFringe.org that we use to book shows, match venues and projects, collect volunteers, and promote the festival is a custom-built system using Ruby on Rails, a popular website development framework. We have big plans to export this technology to other festivals as well as provide a year-round service for venues seeking interesting projects to book. The website took two full years to develop and a lot of love, thought, and time. We have a many plans for it so keep your eyes on coming developments. In the next few months alone, you can expect
…ideas are always welcome, so feel free to email us with your thoughts.
TICKETING
We made the decision early that we would not reinvent the wheel in the area of ticketing – instead we partnered with the good people at OvationTix. Plans are afoot to develop a few customized integration features between the OvationTix and Fringe systems. Ideally, you will be able to run pre-sale reports without any hassle whatsoever.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
We would be nowhere today without collaboration tools. As this is the first year, ideas come at a lightning speed. Plans require buy-in and assistance from our staff, advisers, board, and core company members. There are millions of to-do’s, deadlines, musings, and digital assets. Where to keep track of them?
This is the job of a project management tool, and ours is one of the best available. Meet Basecamp. This little program has been the key to the organizational success of many a project. Working collaboratively with others online, you can post messages, mark and organize tasks, collaborate on documents/lists, track milestones/dates, and keep track of files.
And most importantly: It reduces your meeting/conference call overhead. I personally hate big, regular meetings and basecamp renders them mostly unneeded; if you keep on top of basecamp and the emails it generates, everyone is in-the-know. Easy.
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)
CRM is a big, ugly term. In a nutshell, it is a way of keeping track of everyone you know and meet that could help you. To do anything of worth, generally you need more than just you and your ideas, you need to leverage the many stake holders in your community interested in your cause. You want to keep track of conversations, email addresses, phone numbers, job titles – and ideally you want to share that information with your whole organization. So if the director of the NEA needs to talk to someone in your organization and you are on a beach in Nice, France – someone local can come up-to-speed quickly by researching the history of that relationship in your CRM system.
There are tons of solutions to fulfill this problem – many of them are expensive and clunky.
We went with Batchbook.com – about which I can’t say enough nice things. This is a very flexible and open system, and they have been known to give discounts to nonprofits. Using batchbook, you can keep track of contact information for humans and organizations, log communications, and create lists of contacts that have something in common. For example, we maintain our press list in batchbook. Thanks to its handy integration with other popular applications, when we want to send a press release, it is as simple as exporting our list of press to our email newsletter application. It take 3 minutes and the moving target of press contacts becomes much easier to manage.
EMAIL
If you are starting company ABC Theatre, and you are still sending emails from Myname@hotmail.com – you may want to consider using your own domain name instead. Not using a custom domain name in your email address is an instant signifier of a non-professional organization. Good news is that it is free and relatively simple to create custom domain emails…so you can send emails from MyName@ABCTheatre.org, for example.
The solution is Gmail – in our humble opinion, still the greatest online email client on the market. Our friends at Google have provided a service (no charge) to use their popular Gmail interface for any non-gmail domain to which you have the rights. Check out this link for more information, I think you will like it.
CALENDAR
Along with email, users of Google’s service also have access to branded, dedicated, organizational calendars using the popular Gcal application. When you sign up for your email account (above) you will also be able to pass around a calendar you all can share. For those of you who work in the business world, you might be used to creating an event and sending invitations to members of your organization. Google’s calendar solution provides this service (free!).
DOCUMENTS
And yes, we also use Google’s document service. For those users signing up for the above service – good news is that you, too, can have a custom space for your organization’s documents. For example, if I needed that press release we sent a few weeks back, it is sitting in docs.ABCTheatre.org waiting for me. Our budget worksheet is handles thought Google’s online spreadsheet application. As a personal hater of MS Office and its significant limitations when it comes to collaboration, this is a godsend.
WIKI
We don’t host a “public wiki†– like wikipedia, but you’d be surprised how useful a private, organizational wiki can be. For example, say you are working on a big proposal to close down Wilshire Blvd. for your huge arts event. You want a lot of people involved in that proposal – your Exec Director, your Dev Director, your outreach guy, your Producing and Artistic Directors. How awful is passing around a word document for everyone to edit? I shudder at the thought. Changes are lost so very easily.
Your private wiki can help. Have your principal owner for the project create a new wiki page and take a stab at a first draft. They can then post on your project site (basecamp, for example) that they need all-hands to help bring the proposal home. Everyone can make their changes and additions on your wiki page. If your wiki tool is any good, all changes will be tracked…so you can see who changed what, and easily revert any unwanted amendments.
There are millions of wiki solutions out there, here’s our favorite: WikiSpaces.
NEWSLETTER
Still sending your organizational emails to a bunch of contacts in your email program? You may want to check out some of the many email newsletter solutions out there waiting for you. Our favorite is Mailchimp. Using this program, you can manage lists, expose sign-up forms for your website, create beautiful, graphical emails, handle unsubscribes, and keep ahead of spam laws. You can even get a list of who has opened your newsletter and how many times they read it. There are about 10,000 features in this program, 9,986 you will never need. Still, it is very affordable, easy to use, and designed to give you a professional edge.
SUPPORT DESK
We take support very, very seriously at the Fringe. Key to grassroots community building is making sure people know where to go when they have a problem and ensuring they receive prompt guidance when they need it. There are scads of solutions out there, here’s our hands-down favorite:ZenDesk.
Using ZenDesk, you have a beautiful solution to email support. Support seekers can go to a url and fill our a form with their query, or simply send an email to an email address you specify (Zendesk will suck up that email and create a support ticket for them). You can run a myriad of reports and develop zillions of business rules if you want to get complex. At its simplest, it shows you what tickets are open, and gives you a chance to respond and close them.
As a fun aside, both Mailchimp and Zendesk talk to Batchbook. That’s something we call “convergence†in the tech world, and it’s a very good thing.
ACCOUNTING
Quickbooks (a non-cloud application running on your computer) is the default tool for small business accounting. It’s good, don’t get me wrong – but sharing data with others in your organization and your accountant can be a pain.
Enter Xero. It’s all online (“in the cloudâ€) and very simple…even fun to use. Who thought accounting could be fun? It is simple enough for a layperson to use, but provides the business-class accounting framework your CPA needs to do your taxes. The folks behind Xero are just getting their act together for US service – we have been using it for a bit and loving it!
So there it is. There’s much more, for sure; this is a great start. Almost all of the services listed here are free or have free trials so give them a spin!
Finally got to see some of RETHINK; it’s a wonderful exhibition. The Saraceno is gigantic, but the human biosphere, suspended high in the air, was closed for repair today so I wan’t able to go in it, which saved my vertigo.
Allora & Calzadilla’s A Man Screaming Is Not A Dancing Bear (2008) is stunning. Filmed in New Orleans, post-Katrina, it’s strange and elegaic. Repeating through the film are moments in which a barely-glimpsed man drums on some abandonded Venetian blinds. It lends an angry, jumpy soundtrack to the slow pans across water-stained walls.
Kerstin Eregenzinger’s Study for Longing/Seeing (2008) was unsettling in a very different way. Sheets of dark, lifeless rubber suddenly twitch unexpectedly, driven by strange spider-arms beneath them. It feels like a landscape that’s coming alive, animated by some strange pulse. “The work,†says the catalogue, “Is a reactive installation using data from seismographs and sensor-based structures to simulate a landscape and its changes. The installation responds partly to movements in the earth outside the exhibition building, and partly to audience movements in the exhibition room itself…â€
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology
For those in or interested in the Arts Events in Copenhagen, here is a map we’ve compiled and our events list, so you can make you plans or just follow along!
Let us know if you know of something that is missing!
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EDIT: I see Paul Kingsnorth has just blogged this photo at the Dark Mountain Project with the caption: “Which is obviously a relief…â€
… though the sign on the door says “Closed.â€
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology
On Nov. 25, Arcola proudly accepted the award of Most Innovative Project at the Green Communities conference in Liverpool. Green Communities is an intiative from the Energy Saving Trust that supports, facilitates and promotes community based energy projects. They are a great resource for any group interested in pursuing sustainability.
For more information on the awards click here .
If you have a community group and would like to join Green Communities, sign up here.
Arcola Theatre was awarded Best Environmental Business of the Year (Small to Medium) at this year’s Archant London Environmental awards. The awards ceremony, held on 20th November, was hosted by TV presenter, Penney Poyzer (of BBC’s “No Waste like Homeâ€).  Boris Johnson, Mayor of London praised the awards in a statement read in his absence, saying “We have to take bold steps to improve our environment and combat climate change, so I urge you all to continue with your exceptional endeavours so we can really make a difference.â€
Click here to find out more about the awards and the other winners.
You can also read the Hackney Gazette article here.