Yearly Archives: 2012

Good Pitch Europe 2012 – GPEU12

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Good Pitch is an innovative model bringing together the skills of documentary filmmakers with NGOs, foundations, social entrepreneurs, brands, governments and media around leading social issues to expand the resources aimed at maximising the impact of social-issue documentary.

Good Pitch Europe will be held on 25th of June at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, UK. Eight filmmaking teams pitch their film and its associated outreach campaign to the assembled audience with the aim of creating a unique coalition and campaign around each film in order to accelerate its impact and influence and form alliances.

The final pitch is immediately followed by a Networking drinks event where nearly 100 filmmakers and around 300 participants can exchange ideas and contacts with broad discussion encouraged around the issues and challenges involved.

The eight selected projects are the work of a raft of international filmmakers, featuring stories from across the globe. These documentaries explore the European financial crisis, the plight of freedom of speech in the face of resistance from multinational companies, state-building and the emerging democracy of South Sudan, the fight for LGBT rights in Uganda, nonviolent protest and community activism in East Jerusalem, civil war crimes in Sri Lanka, surviving a devastating stroke, and the 21st century revolution in Egypt.

To know more about the event and the selected projects, visit http://goodfilm.org/

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

Backstage Sustainability Workshop, Roskilde Festival 2012

This post comes to you from Culture|Futures

Roskilde Festival and Backstage invites you to Backstage Sustainability Workshop on July 3rd from 10:00-14:00. Get a guided tour of the festival ground and experience quirky experiments, green installations and sustainable solutions.

For registration, see:

http://roskildegruppen.dk/raadgivning_viden/backstage/backstage_2012/sustainability/

Culture|Futures is an international collaboration of organizations and individuals who are concerned with shaping and delivering a proactive cultural agenda to support the necessary transition towards an Ecological Age by 2050.

The Cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policy-making, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research and development. It is those decision-makers and practitioners who can reach people in a direct way, through diverse messages and mediums.

Affecting the thinking and behaviour of people and communities is about the dissemination of stories which will profoundly impact cultural values, beliefs and thereby actions. The stories can open people’s eyes to a way of thinking that has not been considered before, challenge a preconceived notion of the past, or a vision of the future that had not been envisioned as possible. As a sector which is viewed as imbued with creativity and cultural values, rather than purely financial motivations, the cultural sector’s stories maintain the trust of people and society.
Go toThis post comes to you from Culture|Futures

Dear Mother Nature: Hudson Valley Artists 2012

This post comes to you from Cultura21

The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art presents its annual exhibition of work by artists from the mid Hudson Valley.

The exhibition will run from June 23 to November 4, 2012 in the museum’s Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery and North Gallery.

This year’s exhibition titled Dear Mother Nature: Hudson Valley Artists 2012 is organized by guest curator Linda Weintraub. Ms. Weintraub served as the first director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College where she originated 50 exhibitions and published over 20 catalogues. She is the author of several books about contemporary art including To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, to be published by the University of California Press in 2012.

For Dear Mother Nature: Hudson Valley Artists 2012, Ms. Weintraub invited artists to send something to Mother Nature that expresses their relationship to her and their feelings about her. What would it be? Love letter? Care package? Medal of honor? Bill for unfulfilled promises? Payment for services rendered? Prayer for guidance? Crutches for support? Bouquet of praise? Compensation for damages? Reward for effort? Entreaty for forgiveness? Pledge of devotion? Summons for misconduct? Condolences? Advice? Warnings?

You can read an interview with the curator here.

For more information about the exhibition, you can go to http://www.newpaltz.edu/museum/exhibitions/exhibitions_6.html

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

Arts education for transformation

This post comes to you from Cultura21

On the way to the forthcoming Rio+20, we would like to share with you this video by IDEA (International Drama Theatre and Education Association), which celebrates the 2010 World Congress on Arts Education. This video is one of the contributions of the Brazilian Network of Arteducators  (ABRA) to debates taking place on Culture and Sustainability  in the People´s Summit during Rio+20. The 2010 Congress was created by artists and arteducators from 60 countries to share pedagogies that nurture empathy,  solidarity, creative humanity, cooperation and democratic communities for sustainable futures.

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

Edinburgh’s greener Fringe

Fukushima – A Silent Prayer of Poetry

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes:

Among the bevy of shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe about Hitler, adolescence, Macbeth and stage spiritualists, there is a remarkable number of dance and physical theatre pieces with ecological themes. Consumerism and happiness, oil and politics, the Japanese earthquake, undercover policing, urban architecture and fear of the woods are among the ideas and sensibilities these shows are expressing.

Theatre shows number highly this year, too, with around 70 that have ecological themes varying from the strongly activist to the bucolic. Shows about animals, food and an apocalypse always feature. This year, there are three shows walking to Edinburgh; shows about abattoirs, about the Deepwater oil spill and the Fukushima nuclear leak; and shows about a swamp, plastics, population and the price of milk.

“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

Earth Matters On Stage 2012 at Carnegie Mellon University

  There have been a bevvy of eco-theater conferences in recent years, but it’s great to bring it all together with Earth Matters on Stage, which took place this past May 31st-June 2 at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburg, PA. It included a collection of performances, presentations and panels covering everything from carbon footprint to eco-dramaturgy. Session titles included: “Sustainable Design,” “Ecocriticism & Contemporary American Theater,” and “The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production,” among many others. That last one was by CSPA’s Ian Garrett, and involved discussions of all the usual players: Arcola Theatre, Julie’s Bicycle, the Broadway Green Alliance . . . Discussions of sustainable design carried throughout the festival and bled into discussion of performance throughout the weekend. Again and again: how do we make theatrical production more sustainable? How do we incorporate or cultural dialogue with the planet into the work? How do we make work that goes beyond “being less bad” into something that actually has a positive impact on the environment?

Below are a selection of photos from the event. Keynote speaker and performer was Holly Hughes, one of the NEA four, whose most recent work (“The Dog and Pony Show: Bring your own Pony,”) examines her relationship with her pets. Ecodrama Playwright competition winners this year included Chantal Bilodeau, whose work “Sila,” explores a cultural cross-section of inuit culture, scientific researchers, and polar bears, and Mark Rigney, whose play, “Bears,” depicts a slow deterioration of civilization through the intimate stories of a group of zoo-bound bears.  The work of Earth Matters founder Theresa May was ever-present in the discussion on eco-dramaturgy, and the weekend ended with a discussion of conferences past and future. The dialogue continues, as we discuss and discover more ways that our set of skills can serve the environment.

Readings in Performance and Ecology (What Is Theatre?)

This ground-breaking collection of essays focuses on how theatre, dance, and other forms of performance are helping to transform our ecological values. Leading scholars and practitioners explore the ways that familiar and new works of theatre and dance can help us recognize our reciprocal relationship with the natural world and how performance helps us understand the way our bodies are integrally connected to the land. They also explore how environmentalists use performance as a form of protest; how performance illuminates our relationships with animals as autonomous creatures and artistic symbols; and how performance can help humans re-define our place in the larger ecological community.

CSPA Director Ian Garrett contributed a chapter about the carbon footprint of theatrical production.

Purchase here Amazon.com: Readings in Performance and Ecology (What Is Theatre?) (9780230337282): Wendy Arons, Theresa J. May: Books.