James Irvine Foundation

The New Children’s Museum in San Diego: TRASH

ecoartscotland, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

TRASH, Photo provided by New Children’s Museum

The New Children’s Museum in San Diego is doing a major exhibition on trash.  The following is their introductory text.

The artists in TRASH, each with differing prerogatives and intentions, share the common desire to draw attention to an invisible issue that increasingly dominates our lives. Did you know that in the United States, annual production of waste has tripled since 1960? That the average American produces 4.5 pounds of trash every day? In this exhibition, our mission is to change how we see trash, and changing perspective starts by asking more questions.

How do we decide what is trash?
How does your trash impact the lives of others?
How can we imagine new possibilities, and a new future for our trash?

For nearly 100 years, artists have chosen to work with trash to create a tangible connection to everyday life and to reject the idea that making art requires precious or expensive materials. Today artists are also passionately interested in the environmental impact of their materials. Through their transformation of trash into art, our artists encourage you to envision trash as more than waste needing disposal. They want you to see possibilities where others see waste.

The future starts here at NCM. We want to empower kids to act as the agents of change at home, and we look to kids to find the new approaches, new ideas, and new solutions that will change our future.

TRASH is organized by The New Children’s Museum and is made possible by the generosity of Laurie Mitchell & Brent Woods, Farrell Family Foundation, SDG&E, Lynne & Glenn Carlson, Maryanne & Irwin Pfister and Fernanda & Ralph Whitworth. Support is also provided by The James Irvine Foundation, Nordstrom, the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, the County of San Diego’s Community Enhancement Program, and NCM members and Annual Fund donors.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Powered by WPeMatico

the arctic is melting and everyone wants a piece of it « Mo`olelo Blog

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two years ago, thanks to a grant from The James Irvine Foundation, Mo`olelo commissioned playwright Chantal Bilodeau to write a play that explores the intersection of race, class and climate change. Originally from Montreal, Ms. Bilodeau was already researching the impact of climate change on the Inuit communities of the Canadian Arctic. This commission supported that work. As she traveled to the arctic and did further research, she encountered the complexities and contradictions of climate change: ice versus maritime commerce, human rights and activism colliding with family obligations, sovereignty colliding with sustainability. The result was a new play, Sila. The title, Sila, is an Inuit word for the breath of life, the primary component of everything that exists.

Mo`olelo workshopped the first draft of this script last year; Ms. Bilodeau and Mo`olelo’s Artistic Director Seema Sueko journeyed to Montreal in January of this year to workshop the script at Playwrights Workshop Montreal with Inuit and Quebecois actors; and we will now host the third and final workshop reading of this script on May 24. We invite you to join us. For those who saw the reading in 2010, the script has gone through significant adjustments, with some characters “being fired,” and a tightening of the story.

Details

What: a reading of Sila by Chantal Bilodeau

When:   Tuesday, May 24, 2011 with 5:15 PM Potluck reception & mingle with the artistic team and 6:00 PM Reading

Where: The 10th Avenue Theatre, 930 10th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101

Reservations: Space is limited. Email: tickets@moolelo.net or call 619-342-7395

Admission: Bring something to drink (bottle of wine, soda, whatever you fancy), food to share (cheese & crackers, hors d’oeuvre, or some other munchie), or make a $10 donation at the door.

www.moolelo.net

About the play:

The Arctic is melting and everyone wants a piece of it.

In the race to shape the future of the region, four characters – an ice scientist, an Inuit activist, an officer for the Marine Communications and Traffic Services and a polar bear – see their values challenged as their lives become intricately intertwined.

Tuesdays at the 10th: SILA from Mo`olelo

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In June 2009, Mo`olelo received a two-year grant from The James Irvine Foundation to commission playwright Chantal Bilodeau to write  a new play that explores the intersection of race, class and climate change.

Chantal journeyed to the Canadian arctic in August 2009 and met with scientists and Inuit activists.

Please join us for a reading and discussion of the first draft of this play, currently titled Sila, on June 15. Your feedback will help Mo`olelo and the playwright as we continue to develop the script.

About the play:
 The Arctic is melting and everyone wants a piece of it. In the race to shape the future of the region, four characters – an ice scientist, an Inuit activist, an officer for the Marine Communications and Traffic Services and a polar bear – see their values challenged as their lives become intricately intertwined. Mixing puppetry, projection, spoken word poetry and three different languages (English, French & Inuktitut), Silais a plea for increased collaboration in dealing with the big challenges of our time.

Directed by Seema Sueko
Featuring: Mike Sears, Jacob Bruce, Randy Reinholz, LaVonne Rae Andrews, Tonantzin Carmelo

When: Tuesday, May 25
5:15 PM Pre-reading munchies by Cooking 4 Life - Cooking-4-Life will be offering a free sampling of healthy vegetarian lasagna, delicious coleslaw salad and an opportunity to register for one of their free gourmet dinners in the lobby  of the theater before the reading.
6:00 PM Reading

Where: The 10th Avenue Theatre, 930 10th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101

Cost: FREE (Suggested donation of $5 at the door)

Reservations: Space is limited. RSVP at tickets@moolelo.net or 619-342-7395

Traffic & Parking: Please note that there is a 7:05 PM Padres game at Petco Park on June 15. We recommend arriving at the theater early, for the 5:15 PM reception to avoid the game day traffic. There is metered street parking around the building, and a $5 parking lot one block away at the northeast corner of 11th Avenue and E Street. The machine at this lot accepts Visa, Master Card and exact cash – please note on some game days the parking fee at this lot is raised to $10.

Mo`olelo Receives $30,000 Grant from The James Irvine Foundation

Announcements, news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Funds will commission playwright Chantal Bilodeau to write a play on race, poverty and environment

Thursday, June 18, 2009 – San Diego, CA – Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company, San Diego’s community-focused, socially-conscious, Equity theater company, today announced The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the Company a $30,000 grant over two years to commission a new play by Chantal Bilodeau. This grant is made as part of the Irvine Foundation’s Creative Connections Fund, which was designed to reach small and midsize arts organizations pursuing a diversity of projects and ideas.

The funds will support the commissioning, work-shopping and development of an original script by Ms. Bilodeau that focuses on the contemporary debate over the Northwest Passage and the intersection of climate change, commercial opportunity and the survival of Inuit peoples native to the region. Through the play development process, Mo`olelo will engage San Diego’s Native American populations and environmental organizations to contribute to the evolution of the script through public readings and discussions.

Mo`olelo launched a greening initiative in 2007 to identify how theater can be created without damaging the long-term health of our communities and the environment. In addition, central to Mo`olelo’s mission is to select plays that focus on diverse communities and allow the Company to engage local, nontraditional theater audiences.

“Commissioning this play will provide an opportunity for Mo`olelo to draw the connection between issues of race, class and the environment,” said Seema Sueko, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Mo`olelo. “This will allow us to support on stage, through content, the greening work we are doing backstage.”

The commission will launch in July 2009, with a first workshop and public reading of the script tentatively scheduled for June 2010. Revisions and adjustments will be made and a second workshop and public reading is scheduled for May 2011. The script is expected to be completed by June 2011.

Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Canada. Her plays include Pleasure & Pain (Magic Theatre; Foro La Gruta and Teatro La Capilla, Mexico City), The Motherline (Ohio University; University of Miami), Tagged (Ohio University; Alleyway Theatre), as well as several shorts that have been presented by Brass Tacks Theatre, City Theatre Company, The Met Theater, Philadelphia Dramatists, Raw Impressions, and Women’s Project. She has been a fellow in the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights Workshop and at the Dramatists Guild and has received grants from NYSCA, the Canada Council for the Arts, Stichting LIRA Fonds (The Netherlands), the Quebec Government House, Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts and Association Beaumarchais (France). Her translations include plays by Quebec playwrights Larry Tremblay and Catherine Léger, French-African playwright Koffi Kwahulé and Jean Cocteau. Current projects include the book for the musical The Quantum Fairies in collaboration with composer Lisa DeSpain and lyricist Mindi Dickstein and the translation of four more plays by Koffi Kwahulé.

The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful and inclusive society. The Foundation’s grantmaking focuses on three program areas: Arts, California Democracy and Youth. Since 1937 the Foundation has provided over $1 billion in grants to more than 3,000 nonprofit organizations throughout California. With $1.4 billion in assets, the Foundation made grants of $78 million in 2008 for the people of California.

About Mo`olelo – Mo`olelo means story in Hawaiian. Selected as the inaugural Resident Theatre Company at La Jolla Playhouse, Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company is a socially-conscious theatre organization dedicated to broadening the scope of San Diego’s cultural environment by telling powerful stories that are as diverse as the islands of Hawaii, by paying Equity wages to local actors and developing environmentally-friendly theatre practices. A recipient of the Patté, San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, McDonald Playwriting and the Anti-Discrimination Awards, its mission is to create new works based on research within various communities, produce lesser-known works by master and contemporary playwrights, and educate youth. To learn more, visit www.moolelo.net or call 619-342-7395.

grant from The James Irvine Foundation « Mo`olelo Blog.