Monthly Archives: August 2010

For the end of the Edinburgh Festivals – Scottish Researchers Turn Whiskey into Fuel

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Don’t drink and drive, but feel free to let your car party all it wants! After two years and $400,000, researchers at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland have successfully turned whiskey into fuel. The researchers were provided with the general products needed to make whiskey as well as the byproducts that typically result from production of the alcohol. They found they were able to make a form of biobutanol — which is 30% more efficient than ethanol — with two whiskey byproducts – pot ale and draff. Finally, a discovery worthy of a toast!

via Scottish Researchers Turn Whiskey into Fuel | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.

New opportunity to make green theatre

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I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer!

We’ve been planning things for the future of the Green Theatre Project and we are very excited to announce our next project and our new name!

We are excited to announce a new, small-scale project that will take place in September. We hope to announce an even bigger project for the autumn taking place around October to December time. So if you can’t participate in this project, hopefully you can be involved in our autumn one.

We’ve received a bit of funding from V volunteer organisation to do a small devised outdoor performance around principles of the Olympics, namely culture and environment. Unfortunately, the funding stimulates the participants must be volunteers between the ages for 16-25. (Sorry to all our more seasoned performers, but the autumn project should be open to everyone.)

The Project:

We will be devising a piece to be performed at King Henry’s Walk Garden (www.khwgarden.org.uk) in Islington for their Flower and Produce Show on September 25th. It will be an interactive piece, spread out in the garden and forest space. It will look at celebrating the work of KHWG and urban gardening in general as well as looking at issues of food production, localism, biodiversity, beekeeping and the history of green spaces in London. We are keen to take inspiration from a variety of places including songs, games, stories, history, literature and real life accounts. We will also be experimenting with unconventional forms of theatre for this piece to really play and have fun with the audience. King Henry’s Walk Garden is a really interesting and beautiful space with loads of potential. It is all run by volunteers and set up as a community green space where people can grow their own food or just enjoy nature. This is a unique opportunity to work on an intimate but exciting new piece and explore relevant issues in a fun way.

We are looking for 5 performers/devisers as well as 3 creatives (designers, dramaturgy, etc.).

We will be able to pay travel expenses (a travel card a day) and provide refreshments at rehearsals. We also have a small set/props/costume budget as well as marketing and rehearsal space budget.

The rehearsals will be the following:

  • Thursday, Sept. 2 6:30-9:30pm at KHWG
  • Saturday, Sept. 4 12-3
  • Tuesday, Sept. 7 6:30-9:30
  • Thursday, Sept. 9 6:30-9:30
  • Tuesday, Sept. 14 6:30-9:30
  • Thursday, Sept. 16 6:30-9:30
  • Tuesday, Sept. 21 6:30-9:30
  • Thursday, Sept 23 6:30-9:30
  • Performance 25th September, 11-6pm

Most of the rehearsals will take place in a meeting room at KHWG, or a location in the Islington/Hackney area.

If you are available and would like to be involved, please email us at greentheatreproject@gmail.com by FRIDAY, AUGUST 27 by 5:00pm.

In other news….

To match our new phase of development we have a new name: Green Stage! Look out for a website soon!

Thanks!

-Lisa and Rosie

Sustainable Production Award Announced for THE PANTRY SHELF at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) has awarded the first CSPA Fringe Award for Sustainable Production at the Edinburgh Fringe to The Pantry Shelf, a comedy produced by Team M & M at the Sweet Grassmarket venue. The award, which debuted earlier this year at the inaugural Hollywood Fringe Festival , was designed to reward sustainable practice in the production of a fringe performance, in addition to content that encourages audiences to incorporate sustainable changes into their own lives

The Pantry Shelf is a satirical comedy that takes place in any ordinary pantry shelf. Characters are food items most of us have readily available. The story follows the addition of a revolutionary new snack to the shelf: Queenie, a quinoa, date and bark bar.  Queenie discovers that her healthy branding doesn’t accurately represent what’s actually inside. The comedy explores branding, consumerism and the corporate control of our diets. It’s also a “love story between a quinoa bar, a bag of Scottish porridge and a sexy block of dark chocolate,” about staying true to yourself.

“We chose The Pantry Shelf as the award winner based on its comprehensiveness,” comments Ian Garrett, Executive Director of the CSPA.  “The show raised valid questions that are relevant to everyone’s daily lives, without being heavy handed. Team M&M took great care to ensure the production was produced as environmentally sustainable as possible, and the content of the play was both entertaining and informative.”

The CSPA Directors, Ian Garrett and Miranda Wright adjudicated the award, along with select CSPA affiliates. The recipient was chosen based on their submission of a questionnaire about how the show was produced along with audience response. For the Edinburgh Fringe, Mhora Samuel and Tim Atkinson from The Theatres Trust’s European Regional Development Fund-backed Ecovenue project have helped the CSPA adapt the criteria for a UK audience, providing guidance on UK equivalents to US name brands, as well as providing insight on measuring conventions and policy. The award simply would not have been complete with out their assistance.

“The CSPA is not just another ‘go green’ organization,” says Wright.  “We hope to gather and distribute information that aids in the sustainability of the earth, the sustainability of our communities, and the sustainability of our art.  And so, the purpose of this award is not to recognize the greenest production.  Our objective in offering this award is to ask questions of ourselves, as theater artists, about the greater impact of our work on the world around us.  The winner of this year’s award not only limited material waste in production, but asked audience members to consider sustainability in their lives.”

In addition to offering an award for Fringe performances, the CSPA also presented a panel on sustainability in theater at Fringe Central in Edinburgh on Monday Morning, August the 16th. Panelists included Garrett and Wright, Sam Goldblatt (author of Greener Meetings and Events), Dr. Wallace Heim of the Ashden Directory, Mhora Samuel of theTheatres Trust, and Bryan Raven of White Light. A full video of the session can be found on the CSPA website and at http://cspa.blip.tv.

Wright continues: “We’ve been working since we started the CSPA on how to provide resources and guidelines for sustainable production to the theatrical community. Both Ian and myself come from theatrical backgrounds and it is important to us. The fringe festival model provides an ideal platform to introduce these ideas and the award due to the expectations and scale of the shows. It is easier to start the conversation at a fringe level of production than Broadway. By involving ourselves with the Edinburgh Fringe, the largest and oldest fringe in the world, we are looking to create the greatest visibility and excitement around the introduction of ideas of sustainability to the largest number of theater artists at home and away.”

“Even more so than we want someone to score perfectly on the questionnaire we use to evaluate shows, we want theater artists to look at the questions and think about how it helps to guide their thinking about sustainability in the their art. There may be questions asked in ways they hadn’t thought, and we hope they ask these questions of their next project and the project after that,” adds Garrett.

Ian Garrett and Miranda Wright founded the CSPA in early 2008 after individually working on each of the programs that now make up the multi-faceted approach to sustainability separately. The organization provides a network of resources to arts organizations, which enables them to be ecologically and economically sustainable while maintaining artistic excellence. Past and Present partnerships have included the University of Oregon, Ashden Directory, Arcola Theater, Diverseworks Artspace, Indy Convergence, York University, LA Stage Alliance and others. www.sustainablepractice.org

A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It – 2010 Recipients

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NEW YORK—MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) have announced the third round of recipients for the A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It, which encourages TCG member theatres to think and act creatively. Six theatres were awarded grants, totaling $225,000, to either research and develop new production ideas or experiment and implement innovative concepts in the theatre field. The total award amount is a 50 percent increase from last year’s total of $150,000.

“In light of these uncertain economic times—when many arts organizations are wary of taking risks or seeking to create work through unproven methods—the A-ha! Program is a beacon to draw our member theatres to experimentation,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director of TCG. “This program allows them to strive for new ways of thinking and development and testing new models, without having to shoulder all the financial responsibility.”

The A-ha! Program has two components: Think It grants ($25,000), which give theatre professionals the time and space for research and development, and Do It grants ($50,000), which support the implementation and testing of new ideas. The program aims to discover and disseminate best practices that can benefit the field by supporting risk-taking, reflection, experimentation and the development of creative strategies in theatres.

“MetLife Foundation is proud to continue its partnership with TCG to support not-for-profit theatres seeking new ways to create and develop work and practices that strengthen local communities and the field in general,” said Dennis White, president and CEO, MetLife Foundation. “We believe the A-ha! Program is essential to participants in building models of creative strategy.”

The 2010 A-ha! Program recipients are:

Think It

  • Pillsbury House Theatre (Minneapolis, Minn.) will develop its transformation into a Cultural Community Hub. The project will focus on assessment and metrics planning that will define and measure organizational success.
  • Curious Theatre Company (Denver, Colo.) will explore innovative opportunities for reinventing the resident artistic company model for the 21st century American theatre, by re-centering artists within producing organizations.
  • Center Theatre Group (Los Angeles, Calif.) plans to conduct focus groups and interviews with students, academic administrators and theatres to explore an internship model that pairs graduate students in arts administration with Los Angeles theatres.

Do It

  • Southern Rep (New Orleans, La.) will establish Youth Onstage New Orleans, LA (YO NOLA) as a pilot program to bring the arts to the underserved population at a New Orleans elementary school, via a student-run theatre company. This program includes mentoring, workshops and building life skills.
  • Northlight Theatre (Skokie, Ill.) is building Northlight On Campus, a two-year, comprehensive residency program in one underserved suburban middle school featuring after-school drama programs, artist visits, student matinees and a commissioned play for students.
  • Dad’s Garage Theatre Company (Atlanta, Ga.) will create their first season of online content in tandem with their live work. This ongoing initiative will be self-sustaining and will redefine them from a theatre company to a creative company.

The process and progress of these recipients will be chronicled on the TCG website, www.tcg.org, and the A-ha! blog, http://aha.tcg.org/.

The grant applications were reviewed by an independent national panel of theatre and technology professionals comprised of Polly Carl, director of artistic development, Steppenwolf Theatre Company (Chicago, Ill.); Brad Carlin, development director, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center & board member/consultant, Salvage Vanguard Theater (New Braunfels, Texas); Ian Garrett, executive director, The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (Los Angeles, Calif.); Thomas O. Kriegsmann, president, ArKtype (New York, N.Y.) and Marilyn Tokuda, arts education director, East West Players (Los Angeles, Calif.).

For more information about the MetLife Foundation, please visit its web site at www.metlife.org.

For more info about TCG, please visit www.tcg.org.

via Stage Directions.

Announcing ECOKIDS, a project of SEA, opening Friday, September 24, 7-9pm

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ECOKIDS

September 24 – November 24, 2010

Opening Friday, September 24, 7-9pm

FEATURING

Cool Coventry Club; Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO); Forest Project; Help Light NJ; Kids Face; Kids Saving the Rainforest; Kids vs. Global Warming; Plant for the Planet; Project Sprout; Pump ‘Em Up; Sahabat Alam; Tree Musketeers

NEW YORK – ECOKIDS, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), is an exhibition that showcases the work of outstanding youth activists who are working to raise awareness and solve environmental issues.ECOKIDS demonstrates that youth movements are leading the call for positive action on environmental challenges.

From student-run organic farms to climate change awareness campaigns, the youth organizations featured in ECOKIDS are based in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Tennessee, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Costa Rica, Germany, Canada and Indonesia. Through the exhibition, workshops and partnerships with school groups and teaching artists, Exit Art provides a public platform for the presentation of youth environmental organizations, projects, and initiatives. Founded by youth activists from elementary to high school age, these “eco-kids” demonstrate that children have the ability to solve environmental issues in the present, andnot simply the future.

Workshops, events and tours will be hosted by The Canary Project, Wave Hill, and Solar 1.

PUBLIC EVENTS FOR KIDS

GREEN PATRIOT POSTERS: Citizen Youth Design Camp NYC
Saturdays, October 2, 9 and 16 / 2-5pm
Organized by The Canary Project
with collaborations by Tara DePorte/Lower East Side Ecology Center and the Intrepid Museum
Age: High School
FREE

GREEN PATRIOT POSTERS: Citizen Youth Design Camp NYC is connected to The Canary Project’s ongoing Green Patriot Posters concept – a campaign centered on posters that encourage citizens to take part in building a sustainable economy. In this camp, youth participants will learn about cities and sustainability from guest speakers; learn how to design and create posters; and design a campaign to get their posters and message out into the world. The posters produced by youth participants will then be included in the exhibition ECOKIDS. For more information on this program, please contact Assistant Curator Lauren Rosati atlauren@exitart.org.

The Canary Project (Ed Morris and Susannah Sayler) has commissioned posters from design leaders as part of Green Patriot Posters, and developed an on-line community for sharing and voting on original designs. The project is being featured in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial Why Design Now?, and will be published in a book by Metropolis/DAP in Fall 2010. For more information on the Green Patriot Poster project, please click here.

Sustainable Design Workshop
Thursday, September 30, 4pm
Organized by Solar 1
Age: 7 and up, *Parents must be present
FREE

The Sustainable Design class will familiarize students with concepts related to architecture, community planning, and product design. Students will explore the environmental consequences and benefits of design on all scales and how it affects the environment and our health. Using recycled materials, each student will design and construct a small, sustainable building. At the end of the workshop, the students will draw a map of the city and choose a place to “build.”

Parents will be able to sign up for this program beginning September 1, 2010. To sign up, please visitwww.exitart.org. For more information on this program, please contact Assistant Curator Lauren Rosati atlauren@exitart.org.

ECOKIDS exhibition and programs organized by Lauren Rosati, Assistant Curator.

ABOUT EXIT ART
Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture. We are prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 28-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and artist Papo Colo, that has grown from a pioneering alternative art space, into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness and consistent ability to anticipate the newest trends in the culture. With a substantial reputation for curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media, Exit Art is always changing.

ABOUT SEA
SEA is a unique endeavor that presents a diverse multimedia exhibition program and permanent archive of artworks that address social and environmental concerns. SEA will assemble artists, activists, scientists and scholars to address environmental issues through presentations of visual art, performances, panels and lecture series that will communicate international activities concerning environmental and social activism. SEA will occupy a permanent space in Exit Underground, a 3000 square-foot, multi-media performance, film and exhibition venue underneath Exit Art’s main gallery space. The SEA archive will be a permanent archive of information, images and videos that will be a continuous source for upcoming exhibitions and projects. Central to SEA’s mission is to provide a vehicle through which the public can be made aware of socially- and environmentally-engaged work, and to provide a fo rum for collaboration between artists, scientists, activists, scholars and the public. SEA functions as an initiative where individuals can join together in dialogue about issues that affect our daily lives. SEA conceived by Papo Colo.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT
General exhibition support provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Bloomberg LP; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; Exit Art’s Board of Directors and our members.

GENERAL INFORMATION
Exit Art is located at 475 Tenth Avenue, corner of 36th Street. Hours: Tues. – Thurs., 10am – 6pm; Fri., 10am – 8pm; and Sat., noon – 8pm. Closed Sun. and Mon. There is a suggested donation of $5. For more information please call 212-966-7745 or visit www.exitart.org.

The Oikos Project

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A theatre hand-built entirely from salvaged material is being constructed in an abandoned playground in Southwark.

The 120-seat Jellyfish Theatre will be the venue for the Oikos Project, which aims to “explore how a new sustainable society can flourish in a world altered by climate change”. To that end, two new plays have been commissioned and will be performed this autumn: Simon Wu’s OIKOS and Kay Adshead’s Protozoa.

The idea for the project came from Topher Campbell of The Red Room, and work to build the theatre began during the London Festival of Architecture earlier this summer. Constructed from scraps begged and borrowed from building sites, struck theatrical sets, and fruit ‘n veg palettes taken from New Covent Garden Market, the theatre has taken shape slowly over the past eight weeks, with the build completed by volunteers guided by German husband-and-wife architects Martin Kaltwasser and Folke Köbberling in a vaguely improvisational manner.

It will be used to host talks and workshops before the plays begin, and the whole thing will be taken down by mid-October, leaving little in its trace. Cedric Price would have been proud.

The Jellyfish Theatre, Marlborough Playground, 11 – 25 Union Street, London SE1 1LB. For more information visit the Oikos Project website.

via The Oikos Project: A Theatre Built From Junk – Londonist.

Kathryn Spence: short sharp notes, rolling or churring whistles, clear phrases » Mills College Art Museum

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KATHRYN SPENCE Untitled (Western Screech Owls), 2009 Coats, pants, stuffed animals, sand, string, thread, wire, pins

The exhibition Kathryn Spence: short sharp notes, rolling or churring whistles, clear phrases will feature new work by the San Francisco Bay Area artist. Spence’s sculptural objects are inspired by birds and the natural world but are composed from the discarded materials of the human world.

Accumulated bits of fabric, thread, paper, and cardboard take on species-specific characteristics and inhabit space as they might in the wild.

KATHRYN SPENCE Untitled (Coyotes), 2009 Sweaters, shirts, towels, stuffed animals, wood, pins, colored paper

Her work demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture the essence of animals without masking her found materials, applying a naturalist’s methods to urban detritus. Spence’s objects emulate the living animals and other items and elements she observes in nature, and explore the disparity between the culture of the artificial and the existence of the untamed natural world that surrounds us. Spence’s works on paper take on sculptural qualities as well, often lying on bases instead of hanging on the wall and incorporating some of the same materials found in her sculpture. Her exhibition at the Mills College Art Museum will include a combination of new two-dimensional and three-dimensional works.

Kathryn Spence received her MFA from Mills College in 1993. She lives and works in San Francisco, California. Kathryn Spence: short sharp notes, rolling or churring whistles, clear phrases is curated by Stephanie Hanor.

via Current Exhibitions » Mills College Art Museum.

Design for the Other 90%

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Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for this “other 90%.” Through partnerships both local and global, individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world’s poor and marginalized.

Designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs from all over the globe are devising cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy, education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities, and affordable transportation for those who most need them. And an increasing number of initiatives are providing solutions for underserved populations in developed countries such as the United States.

This movement has its roots in the 1960s and 1970s, when economists and designers looked to find simple, low-cost solutions to combat poverty. More recently, designers are working directly with end users of their products, emphasizing co-creation to respond to their needs. Many of these projects employ market principles for income generation as a way out of poverty. Poor rural farmers become micro-entrepreneurs, while cottage industries emerge in more urban areas. Some designs are patented to control the quality of their important breakthroughs, while others are open source in nature to allow for easier dissemination and adaptation, locally and internationally.

Encompassing a broad set of modern social and economic concerns, these design innovations often support responsible, sustainable economic policy. They help, rather than exploit, poorer economies; minimize environmental impact; increase social inclusion; improve healthcare at all levels; and advance the quality and accessibility of education. These designers’ voices are passionate, and their points of view range widely on how best to address these important issues. Each object on display tells a story, and provides a window through which we can observe this expanding field. Design for the Other 90% demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world.

Design for the Other 90%: Cooper Hewitt Exhibition |About.

sustainability in theatre

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Click to Play
The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a Los Angeles-based non-profit arts infrastructure organisation, presents an overview of current trends and practices in sustainability for theatre from around the world. We will be looking at UK initiatives from Julie’s Bicycle, the Arcola Theatre and White Light LTD, as well as those of the Broadway Green Alliance, York University in Toronto, Mo’olelo Performing Arts in San Diego and other theaters, arts organisations and artists from around the globe. Join us to learn about the growing momentum towards ecologically-minded arts making! www.sustainablepractice.org/fringe

Owl project

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Arts Council England and London 2012 announced that artists’ collective Owl Project, and north east based producer and musicianEd Carter have been selected as the north east winner of a £500,000 commission for Artists taking the lead, one of the major projects for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

FLOW is an environmentally sustainable floating water-wheel and interactive artspace on the River Tyne. A floating millhouse alongside the water-wheel will contain a range of sensors, combining traditional and new technologies to monitor key environmental details, including water temperature and speed, salinity, and pollution. FLOW is in effect a musical instrument, powered by the tidal river and manipulated by the audience.

Flow can be thought of as a ‘water organ’, in both the musical and biological sense: an instrument that processes water into useful energy, information and sound. The piece will generate its own power, and use sustainably-sourced materials throughout its construction. The project will highlight the importance of the waterways and their industry to the region.

Artists taking the lead, London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Owl Project and Ed Carter’s ‘Flow’ was selected by an independent panel of artists and producers from the five projects shortlisted in August from a total of 83 regional entries.
Flow is an environmentally sustainable floating water-wheel and interactive artspace on the River Tyne.

Flow is one of 12 commissions that will be realised across the UK over the next three years, each inspired by their location and celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. There is one commission for each of the nine English regions and the nations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.