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OPEN HOUSE – Matthew Mazzotta 2013

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OPEN HOUSE is a transforming theater in York, Alabama

Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York Alabama have teamed up to work together and transform a blighted property in York’s downtown into a new public art project this is in the shape of a house, but can physically transform into a 100 seat open air theater, free for the public.

Through open conversations, hard work and planning we have developed a project that uses the materials from an abandoned house as well as the land it sits on to build a new smaller house on the footprint of the old house. However this new house has a secret, it physically transforms from the shape of a house into an open air theater that seats 100 people by having its walls and roof fold down. We call our project ‘Open House’.

Open House lives mostly in the form of a house between the grocery store and the post office, reminding people what was there before, but it opens up when the community wants to enjoy shows, plays, movies, and any other event people can think of that supports community life here in York. When the theater is folded back up into the shape of a house the property is a public park for anyone to enjoy.

Open House was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Visual Artist Network, as well as individual contributions

For more details – matthewmazzotta.com

Be Strong Like Two People: Learning from Elders

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

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invite back

ayr converses is pleased to invite you to Be Strong Like Two People: Learning from Elders.  Gavin Renwick will give a presentation on his experience of working with elders in the Canadian North West Territories 6-9pm Thursday 22nd August 2013 in Ayr Auld Kirk Hall KA7 1TT.  Please RSVP info@ayrconverses.org.uk if you’d like to attend.

Please circulate - pdf version of flyer Working_with_Elders-FINAL2_lo_res

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

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To Life! eco art in pursuit of a sustainable planet

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Linda Weintraub has produced an excellent series of books on arts and ecology – they are toolkits and learning resources suitable for people who want to know more or engage groups in arts and ecology.

The most recent just published by the University of California Press is To Life!  The blurb is here Linda Weintraub: To Life! and you can purchase it here University of California Press.  Other titles are here.

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

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Sustainability in Theater Conference Recordings Online Now!

Sustainability in Theater: People, Planet, Profit, Purpose

A blended conference dedicated to providing tangible, practical strategies to implementing greener theater practices, ensuring theaters remain a vital part of our community.

Day One (WEBCASTED LIVE): Learn

A full day of learning and networking, featuring sustainability experts, sustainability in theater pioneers and success stories.

All Day One activities were broadcast online – and are NOW AVAILABLE.

Please find the recording of the conference online! http://bnw.qwikcast.tv/

Sustainability in Theater conference this Monday and Tuesday

We’ve been talking about it for a couple of months, but it’s here! Tomorrow, Monday, April 30th, 2012 and the next day, Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, the Minnesota Theater Alliance, in partnership with The CSPA and the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) will be hosting Sustainability in Theater: People, Planet, Profit, Purpose at Brave New Workshop in downtown Minneapolis.

In addition to the conference in Minneapolis, there will be many presenters and participants who will virtually attend with the help of Google+ Hangouts. People from across the US and from 4 countries will convening to talk about the impact of theater and its intersection with sustainable development.

It’s not too late to get involved! Head to http://minnesotatheateralliance.org/sit/about.php to learn more!

Invitation to participate in an Earth Forum with Shelley Sacks

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Within the framework of the Citizen Art Days Shelley Sacks offers twice a day the possibility to take part in an Earth Forum „Social Sculpture“ Process at the Freies Museum_öffentlicher Raum Berlin. From February 20th to 24th, in each case from 11 am to 2 pm and 3 to 6 pm, people are given the opportunity to create a humane and ecologically just future in groups of 8 to 12.

Artist and former scholar of Joseph Beuys, Shelley Sacks, invites people of every age and background to a process of creative imagination and exchange in order to bring room for new approaches of thought and action into being. After building an awareness in the group, the focus shall be put on questions directly related to the environment, the neighborhood, the city of Berlin and even the world.

Everyone is invited to participate in the Earth Forum process, whether as an individual or as a network of individuals and organisations who have diverse interests or as an organisation or group of individuals who have similar aims and views of sustainable development, but may have different ideas of how to achieve these aims.

Possible languages are English and German.

Background: The Citizen of Art Days from the 19th to the 24th of February 2012, offer the possibility for citizens to participate directly in the designing of their city by means of workshops, lectures, discussions and city excursions.
Registration and further information here:
www.citizenartdays.de / earthforum [at] citizenartdays [dot] de / 030-49 914 661
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Further projects of Shelley Sacks:
www.social-sculpture.org
www.universityofthetrees.org
www.exchange-values.org
www.ortdestreffens.de

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Arcola Energy for Schools is Project of the Week for London Sustainable Schools Forum

Arcola Energy is a member of Project Dirt ; London’s largest and most active green network. It’s a social network of people / organisations doing tangible green projects. The London Sustainable Schools Forum is a group trying to make London’s schools more sustainable places. We’re really excited that Arcola Energy for Schools has been listed as their project of the week – for our workshops where pupils use renewable energy technologies to design, build and test possibilities for a low-carbon future. For more information about the LSSF – check HERE

Go to Arcola Energy

New metaphors for sustainability: the surprises

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes:

When we’ve asked people to think of a metaphor, we tried to present the idea of ‘sustainability’ in neither a positive nor a negative light, but to leave it as open as possible for people to interpret it in their own way. Even for the DVD, we filmed the four people without knowing ahead of time what their metaphors would be. We didn’t want to promote any one idea of sustainability.

It’s been surprising how positive the metaphors have been, even from those people for whom sustainability is not a strong idea, or from those who acknowledge its ambiguities.

It’s also been surprising to see how people have found something, maybe not the grand conceptual metaphor, but something in their lives that relates to their view of sustainability. This is as important as the encapsulating metaphor, like the ‘iron curtain’ or the ‘glass ceiling’. The metaphors have not been about a concept imposed from the outside, but about a relation between the idea and something from one’s life that makes sense.

We’ll be presenting more metaphors in the next two weeks.

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

New metaphors for sustainability: why we started

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes:

We began thinking about metaphor and sustainability when we noticed that there weren’t any strong or imaginative metaphors for the concept, or ones that we could easily use in conversation. Metaphors are pervasive in human thought and communication. ‘Sustainability’ stood out as an anomaly, a common concept with many definitions, but no metaphors.

So in April, we asked four people to suggest a metaphor and we filmed their responses. We weren’t looking for ‘the’ metaphor. We were experimenting to see whether it was possible to think metaphorically about sustainability, in all its promise, its limitations and paradoxes.

Since then, we’ve added 14 more metaphors, (18 if you count everyone in the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home), and will add another 6 through November and December, here on Ashdenizen and collected on the Directory.

Too, we’ll be posting comments on the project itself, which for some contributors was challenging; for others, playful; and for others, a delicate expression of meaning taken from their everyday life.

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

New Metaphors for Sustainability from the Ashden Directory

From the ‘iron curtain’ to the ‘glass ceiling’, metaphors are one of the most powerful ways in which we frame the way we think. Yet one of the key concepts in environmentalism – sustainability –  seems to be remarkably short of vivid metaphors.

So we asked some artists, writers, architects, cultural commentators, environmentalists, activists and scientists to come up with their own metaphors for sustainability.

Their suggestions are now appearing on our blog Ashdenizen

http://ashdenizen.blogspot.com/

and they are also collected together on the Ashden Directory

http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=2011414_37524050

along with a film of the first four people explaining their choice of metaphor.

http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=2011410_28527468

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