Arts Organizations

Sustainability Offerings from ARTSBUILD ONTARIO

AB_logo_clrArtsBuild is the only organization in Ontario dedicated to realizing long-term solutions to building, managing and financing the sustainable facilities – like theatres, galleries, concert hall and museums – needed for vibrant cultural activity to flourish in Ontario’s communities.

If you are an arts organization that owns or leases space on a full time basis, or have aspirations (or a firm plan) to create your own space, ArtsBuild can help you with tools, resources and services

A recent focus for ArtsBuild is energy conservation and sustainability. We know many arts organizations want to reduce their energy. To help you achieve that goal, ArtsBuild has partnered with leading nonprofit and private sector organizations to provide you with a new suite of tools, resources and services that can help you to achieve greater energy and cost savings. We invite you to take part in our current offerings.

Online Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool: Free Access, Register Now

Measuring and tracking your facility’s utility usage and emission profile allows you to better understand and report your carbon footprint. ArtsBuild has partnered with CarbonCounted, a nonprofit organization, to offer Ontario’s arts organizations a free subscription to an easy-to-use online Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool.

Developed by CarbonCounted, specifically for the arts sector, the Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool will help you to measure and track your facility’s utility usage and emission profile. It will allow you to identify opportunities for energy efficiencies, compare your facility with others across the province and get the data you need to report your progress in reducing your carbon footprint to key stakeholders.

Through ArtsBuild’s partnership with CarbonCounted and the Government of Canada, this tool is free for Ontario arts organizations for two years. (The regular CarbonCounted subscription fee is $100 per year.)

Register for the Online Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool here

Energy Savings Assessments: Call for Interest

Reducing energy consumption – and our utilities bills – is top of mind for many of us. And every dollar saved can go to our programming!

ArtsBuild has partnered with GLOBE, the energy management subsidiary of our nonprofit partner Housing Services Corp, to deliver an in-person, energy savings assessment tailored to the needs of the arts sector.

GLOBE energy auditors will analyze your utilities bills, make a site visit to assess your facility and help you register for the many incentive programs offered through the Ontario Power Authority and your local utilities providers.

Your personalized energy savings opportunities assessment will show you the things you can do today to reduce your energy consumption, and also the improvements you could make that have the best and fastest paybacks.

With the support of the Government of Canada, ArtsBuild is pleased to offer a subsidy for the Energy Savings Assessment to a limited number of organizations.

Register your interest here for more information so you can benefit from this program.

Sustainable Action and Practice in the Arts with Ian Garrett: Register Now

Join your peers and Ian Garrett, one of North America’s most respected voices on sustainable practices in the performing arts, on April 4th, in an online conversation about operational ecology. By looking at current research and examples, Ian will guide participants through this very timely topic.

By joining this free session, you will learn how to identify key performance indicators around sustainability and the cost/benefit analysis for tackling the low hanging fruit by making simple changes in how you operate will improve your energy efficiency.. Ian will also address some of the possible misconceptions about the ecological impact of the creative sector.

This session, and all of ArtsBuild’s Communities of Interest are intended for those who manage cultural facilities and coordinate across departments.

For more information, please contact Lindsay MacDonald>

About ArtsBuild Ontario

ARTSBUILD ONTARIO
ArtsBuild is the only organization in our province dedicated to realizing long-term solutions to building, managing and financing the sustainable facilities needed for vibrant cultural activity to flourish in Ontario’s communities.

We are involved with over 700 arts organizations across Ontario and together with our industry, nonprofit and government partners, we jointly and cost-effectively develop and deliver innovative tools, services and resources to help arts organizations construct and operate the facilities they need.

www.artsbuildontario.ca
 | @ArtsBuildON | Facebook | LinkedIn

ArtsBuild Ontario
100 Regina Street South, Ste. 325
Waterloo City Centre
Waterloo, Ontario
N2J 4P9

EAL/LA Creative Conversations

This post comes to you from Green Public Art

Lessons from Social Entrepreneurs: How to Add Value to Your Organization and Career

Emerging Arts Leaders/Los Angeles presents its day-long 2012 Creative Conversations Event

Tickets Available Now!

Social entrepreneurs seek to satisfy unmet needs within the community by growing an organization that often has a heartfelt and unprecedented mission that aligns with the founder’s personal values. At Emerging Arts Leaders/Los Angeles, we represent a groundswell of young professionals coming up in established organizations or looking to start our own. Often our members have a young, fresh perspective on social/community needs that no one else is addressing. Indeed, many older arts organizations often find themselves behind the curve when it comes to spotting new trends or opportunities for growth in the community.

April’s Creative Conversation will give us insights from entrepreneurs as to how we can identify unmet needs in our community or organization, and show us how we can shape our work to meet those needs. We will explore challenges our speakers have faced and the creative and logistical know-how they drew upon to face those challenges. By looking at our work through an entrepreneurial lens, even if it’s just an exercise for those who do not seek to build our own organizations, we will make ourselves and our points of view invaluable to our organizations and community, and find opportunities to advance our careers.  We’ll have the opportunity to join one another in group discussions and activities – who knows, you could meet your next collaborator on an entrepreneurial venture!

Saturday, April 21, 10:15am-3:30pm
Plaza de la Raza
Cultural Center for the Arts & Education
3540 North Mission Road
Los Angeles, CA 90031

PARKING: Use the lot directly in front of Plaza de la Raza or nearby street parking.

A catered lunch from Panera Bread is included in your ticket price. Within your purchase confirmation email you will be provided with an email address in case you need to indicate any dietary restrictions.

Finally, we hope you’ll join us afterward for Happy Hour at: Barbara’s at The Brewery
620 Moulton Avenue #110
Los Angeles, CA 90031

Driving directions to our Happy Hour location will be provided at the event.

10:15-10:30am: Registration

10:30-10:45am: Opening Remarks

10:45-11:45am: Keynote

Terence McFarland, Chief Executive Officer, LA Stage Alliance

11:45am-12:45pm: Lunch & Youth Mariachi Ensemble Performance

12:45-2:05pm: Your Arts Career Through an Entrepreneurial Lens

  • Rebecca Ansert, Founder & Principal, Green Public Art Consultancy
  • Edgar Arceneaux, Executive Director, Watts Tower Project
  • Molly Cleator, Owner/Founder, A Place to Create
  • Judy Tatum, Independent Non-Profit Consultant

2:05-2:45pm: Applying Entrepreneurial Thinking to Your Personal Goals: Small Group Discussions

2:45-3:15pm: Right Brain Entrepreneurism: Creative Collaborative Activity

Molly Cleator will lead us through a fun and energizing creative activity.

3:15-3:30pm: Final Wrap-Up & Depart for Happy Hour at Barbara’s at The Brewery!

Tickets Available Now!

 

Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art, is an art consultant who specializes in artist solicitation, artist selection, and public art project management for both private and public agencies. She is a graduate of the master’s degree program in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings.

Green Public Art is a Los Angeles-based consultancy that was founded in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building. The consultancy specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, creative community involvement and knowledge of LEED building requirements. Green Public Art also works with emerging and mid-career studio artists to demystify the public art process. The consultancy acts as a resource for artists to receive one-on-one consultation before, during, and after applying for a public art project.
Go to Green Public Art

ISEA2012 Albuquerque – Machine Wilderness: Re-envisioning Art, Technology and Nature

SYMPOSIUM + COLLABORATION • Fall 2012 • www.isea2012.org

New Mexico Arts and Technology Symposium with the International Society

for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), hosted by UNM, 516 ARTS and partners

DOWNLOAD PDF

In the fall of 2012, a group of New Mexico arts organizations will present ISEA2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness, a symposium and series of events exploring the discourse of global proportions on the subject of art and technology, in conjunction with the prestigious International ISEA Conference. Held every year in a different location around the world, ISEA has a 30-year history of significant international acclaim (www.isea-web.org). The symposium will consist of a conference, a series of art exhibitions at various sites, public events, performances, screenings, tutorials and workshops.

The Albuquerque/Santa Fe area is fast becoming a national and international center of media production, visualization and art/science collaboration. However, in the US, New Mexico is geographically isolated, and within the state the many initiatives in the electronic arts are spread out and isolated from each other. ISEA2012 will not only give the region international exposure, but will provide an opportunity for centers of electronic art and media in New Mexico a chance to work together towards a common goal, to build audiences and to help revitalize the urban center of Albuquerque.

The title for the symposium is Machine Wilderness. As part of a region of rapid growth alongside wide expanses of open land, New Mexico presents a microcosm of this theme. Machine Wilderness will present artists’ and technologists’ ideas for a more humane interaction between technology and environment in which “machines” can take many forms to support and sustain life on Earth. The project focuses on creative solutions for how technology and the natural world can co-exist.

Themes for the ISEA2012 collaboration in Albuquerque/Santa Fe include: a bilingual focus, as this project has the potential to draw significant international participation from Latin America; an indigenous thread, focusing on Native American and other indigenous peoples woven into the main symposium; and a focus on land and skyscape. Because of our vast resource of land in New Mexico, proposals from artists will be solicited that take ISEA participants out into the landscape. The Albuquerque Balloon Museum may offer a unique opportunity for artworks to extend into the sky as well. Subthemes of the conference and symposium include: Ancient Cosmologies and Electronic Art; Getting Off the Planet; Land, Energy and Environment; and The Future of Creative Economies.

ISEA2012 EXHIBITION:

The large-scale, multi-site, international exhibition for ISEA2012 Albuquerque will feature artworks that explore perceptions of a larger universe, space travel, and the science of space and the cosmos. Artworks in all media will combine art, science and technology, demonstrating the role art can play in re-envisioning the world.

The exhibition will be curated through a two-part process, with an international call for proposals and works selected by the ISEA Board and selection committee; and a portion of the exhibition titled Getting Off the Planet curated by guest curators Patricia Watts and Jenée Misraje. The exhibition will feature both museum works and commissioned site-specific works located throughout the state, some in collaboration with scientific and technological communities. Albuquerque sites include 516 ARTS and The Albuquerque Museum.

Curators Patricia Watts and Jenée Misraje state, “‘Getting Off the Planet’ is seemingly in our DNA. If where we are now no longer seems suitable, we seek to go elsewhere. As populations rise beyond the Earth’s capacity to sustain us, leaving the planet appears to be the solution. Perhaps this next frontier is where we will find the inspiration needed to continue our existence on Earth with greater insight. The real and imagined prospects of leaving our planet have inspired intriguing works of art.”

LEAD ORGANIZATIONS:

UNM College of Fine Arts – Conference host
ISEA liaison, conference organizing, co-direction of ISEA exhibition
516 ARTS – Leader of community outreach and marketing for fall collaboration
Collaboration coordination, marketing/public relations, publications, co-direction of ISEA exhibition

DATES:

CONFERENCE: September 19 – 24, 2012
COLLABORATION: September – December, 2012

STEERING COMMITTEE:

Sherri Brueggemann, Manager, City of Albuquerque Public Art Program
Regina Chavez, Director, Creative Albuquerque
Andrew Connors, Curator of Art, The Albuquerque Museum
Andrea Polli, Associate Professor, UNM College of Fine Arts and School of Engineering
Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director, 516 ARTS

PARTNERING ORGANIZATIONS TO DATE:

516 ARTS
University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts
The Agora Group/Z-Node
Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau
The Albuquerque Museum
City of Albuquerque Public Art Program
Creative Albuquerque
Currents: Santa Fe Video Festival
ecoartspace
¡Explora!
Film for Change & the Albuquerque International Film Festival
Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
Los Alamos National Labs
New Mexico Museum of Natural History
STEM-A

CONTACTS:

Andrea Polli, Artistic Director, ISEA2012
Mesa Del Sol Chair of Digital Media and Associate Professor, Art & Art History and School of Engineering
College of Fine Arts
UNM Center for the Arts, Bldg. 62 MSC04-2570, Albuquerque, NM 87131
w. 505-266-2327, c. 718-909-5607, andrea@andreapolli.com

Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Producer, ISEA2012
Executive Director, 516 ARTS, 516 Central Ave. SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
w. 505-242-1445, c. 505-235-7580, suzanne@516arts.org, ssbarge@swcp.com

Patricia Watts & Jenée Misraje, Guest Curators, Getting Off the Planet, ISEA2012
tricia@ecoartspace.org
jmisraje@gmail.com

Regina Chavez, Director of Economic Development & Outreach, ISEA2012
Executive Director, Creative Albuquerque, P.O. Box 27657, Albuquerque, NM 87125
w. 505.268.1920, regina@creativeabq.org

Jack Ox, Artist/Scientist Coordinator, ISEA2012
Research Assistant Professor, Art and Art History, College of Fine Arts
Associated Faculty Member with the Center for Advanced Research Computing, UNM
t. 505-217-2167, jackox@comcast.net

Mary Tsiongas, UNM Faculty/Student/Alumni Exhibition Coordinator, ISEA2012
Associate Professor Electronic Arts, UNM
tsiongas@unm.edu

Jane daPain, ISEAYouth Program Coordinator, ISEA2012
New Media Artist, STEM-A Founder/Instructor (http://stem-a.org)
jdap.newmedia@gmail.com

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

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.

EcoArt Treasure Coast Apprentices Rock OUT with “Floating Islands”

A Disptach from South Florida  EcoArt Projects:


VERY EXCITING!! A new video has just been finished. We wanted to bring it to you right away!!
See below for the link!

How quickly our EcoArt apprentices are making contacts and enlisting talent! This most recent effort in documenting the apprentices’ projects was made possible by well known Treasure Coast photographer Thomas Winter…THANKS, TOM!

This first project by EcoArt Treasure Coast apprentices demonstrates very clearly exactly how SFEAP expects EcoArt to spread across South Florida. First, artists interested in “trying on” EcoArt practice are recruited.

Second, with the help of an experienced EcoArt practitioner (in this case, Betsy Damon) these artists begin to learn what is involved…research, enlistment of community volunteers and collaboration from scientists and environmental specialists.

Third, seeking partnerships with local environmental and arts organizations (in this case, the famed Florida Oceanographic Instituteand the Environmental Studies Center, both located on the Treasure Coast in Martin County).

Fourth, developing an aesthetically interesting and environmentally responsive approach to a particular problem at a particular site, and producing it fully (in this case, an artificial research oriented salt water “lagoon” used by the FOS for experiments and public education–the lagoon needed a natural way to keep the water clean).

Fifth, informing the public of what has been accomplished (in this case video documentation and interviews with participating apprentices and community volunteers).

KUDOS, Ecoart Treasure Coast apprentices!! You are on the mark as we work together to bring this model to all South Florida’s watersheds.

Mary Jo Aagerstoun

**EcoArt Treasure Coast is a collaboration between SFEAP, Inc. and the Arts Council of Martin County, funded by the Community Foundation of Palm Beach and Martin Counties and the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and private donations.

EcoArt Apprentices  Demonstrate Water-cleaning Floating Islands Click HERE to see NEW Video about EcoArt Treasure Coast Apprentices’ “Floating Island” project at the Florida Oceanographic Institute **EcoArt Treasure Coast is a collaborative project of the Arts Council, Inc. (Martin County) and the South Florida Environmental Art Project Inc. It is the first of a series of community EcoArt community education and apprenticeship projects that will be organized in each of South Florida ‘s major watersheds by SFEAP, Inc. Initial funding for EcoArt Treasure Coast by the Community Foundation of Palm Beach and Martin Counties, and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs.

IT”S :HERE!!! EcoArt Treasure Coast Apprentices Rock OUT with “Floating Islands”.

The PlanetShifter.com Interview with Ian Garrett, Executive Director: The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, Los Angeles | www.planetshifter.com

Where are you? In the present? In the future? See my lament for clues:

Things only happen here to make what happens next.

Is LinkedIn a viable artistic community in your opinion? How would you improve it?

I don’t think so, and I don’t think i wish it to be. I don’t know if LinkedIn represents a community really as much as an infrastructure. I think it exists separate from something like Facebook without competition because one is about social networks and one is about businesses networks. I also don’t see how it accommodates the needs of an artistic community.

I don’t think there is a social network that does effectively represent an artistic community out there. How specific do you allow it to sort itself? the arts are too expansive with too many points of access to be represented effectively through a network with a defined set of sortable criteria. For self-sorting facebook is more effective because it is focused on individuals not labels. For curated sorting a wiki is better since everything is of equal weight.

That’s the issue with getting past post-modernism isn’t it? Modernism was about the universal, post-modernism was about the categorized, and post-post-modernism is about the unique.

What is at the intersection of mythology, innovation and sustainability?

From now on.

What new symbols, songs, secrets, myths are you driving in the green movement?

I can tell you that I’m trying to drive it away from the color green and images of leaves. The image that bugs me the most is actually grass, since in most places it’s impractical and wasteful regardless of it’s green-ness. I think an era’s aesthetics speak to values and I think we’re pushing the value of the first nature and something more raw, less processed. It’s happening in design, supply chains and our food. I’m also trying to break the myth of technological solutions.

I’m irked by the layering of systems over existing systems to solve problems with the existing system. I’d rather break it down to it’s elemental parts. I’m a big promoter of archaic technology, like using steamed banana leaves or not vitrified drink ware in Indian. Things that were discarded as incorrect in a modern manufactured world that persists into the contemporary era.

Are you an alchemist?

No, there is plenty of magic in real science.

Tell us about your favorite modern painter and how you feel when you gaze at the work.

Are we saying modern or contemporary. I’m a traditionalist when I define the Modern era as something that happened in the beginning of the 20th century out of industrialization. If we’re talking painters though I can name a few. Magritte for being clever and questioning the mudane, Haring for balancing accessibility, message, and challenging art world constructs. I do however find myself most drawing to the infrastructural and phenomenological though and insofar as that is concerned am more trilled by visual are that engages those parts of my brain. That’s not always present in painting, so I have to mention Olafur Eliasson, who fascinates me.

How do you manage the bureaucracy that you’ve created at The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts? How do you personally support your members?

There isn’t much Bureaucracy. We’re extremely small and nimble. We’re the least incorporated we can be and have foregone 501c3 status to stay lean. I suppose we deal with the bureaucracy of partnership with more cumbersome organizations and then it’s oftentimes working within their structure.

We can make our decisions and change methodology rapidly to best accommodate our members and partners since all of the power rests between two equal executives. We’ve yet to expand our power-sharing, outside of partnerships, and those are all project based. It’s not the most profitable, but it’s in line with our core mission, which is really about information and infrastructure. We’re like the opposite of the CIA, we don’t see value in protecting our information, and support ourselves through others valuing sharing information as a desired act.

For the second part of the question though, it’s hard to say. I mean, we don’t have funds to directly support their activities. But, we try and talk directly to all of them. They have our address, phone numbers, email addresses, and ultimately all of our lines of communication like our website, social networks, twitter and so on is all us personally. If you get in touch with the CSPA, you’re getting in touch with us directly. We don’t filter that, and don’t understand ecologically mind organizations that put up blocks, since we gain absolutely zero (aside from profit I guess) from not talking and being transparent if we plan to not destroy the planet and the billions of lives that will impact.

And, ultimately, it helps that I’m the web guy too. It’s part of what I do, so there is nothing standing in the way of our web presence, we do.

What were the 3 – 5 best innovations from last year’s CSPA Convergence?

Well we did this in partnership with the University of Oregon’s School of Theater, so mind you a couple of these might be theater centric.

  • The Convergence itself. I go to a lot of conferences and I deal with but don’t like the hierarchy and artifice that often surrounds them. I prefer the camp model which, like wikis, aims to gather people around a topic and allow all of them to offer something. So I think it’s in expanding the convergence model to get between these models of conference and camp and add on more doing, not just talking.
  • Marbles in a Jar – This is Avery simple re-use model we’ve been working on. It looks at volume of material used as a marble in a jar. You fill the jar until you’re done and then add a second jar for the next and so on to next iterations. For each unit of reused material you move a marble from the first jar to the one for the current project, if you use new material you add new marbles. It doesn’t have to be marbles and jars, but it’s a very simple way to engage your use of raw material
  • Energy Budgets – We’re trying to get theaters to incorporate the expenditures of energy into budgets for making. It incentivizes energy innovation by the user. If no one uses energy efficient devices, it doesn’t matter.
  • Eliminating recycling programs – this idea started at this convergence in response to the 6 receptacles the University of Oregon had for waste. It’s too much. The idea waste receptacle is only one for compost-ables. It’s not entirely feasible though. When speaking at APAP last month I brought this into a more realist goal. Not recycling because you don’t have anything to recycle. At the CSPA we print proofs of the Quarterly for editing that we share and otherwise we don’t generate material waste by our business. That sort of blows people’s minds.

I think Jack Capitalism and Eli Sustainability are headed for a blow-out, down and dirty fist fight in the months ahead? Ready?

I’m ready, but I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be particularly violent. I think that the necessity of sustainability will be the biggest check on a capitalist future. I think about the labor movements of the post-industrial world and the evolution of that “conflict”. I also think about the 4 roles in the actor-centric model of political change and the political pendulum. Sustainability is different still, it’s an opportunity if we want it to be, but as with all of these models of shift, the future is hybrid, not contrary.

* * * * * * *

Ian Garrett Bio –

Executive Director of The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA), a non-non-profit arts infrastructure organization where he collaborates with others like the LA Stage Alliance, University of Oregon, York University, The Arcola Theater, EcoArtSpace, the Royal Society of the Arts, Diverseworks ArtSpace and others to work towards sustainability in the arts, ecological and otherwise.

Programs at the CSPA include a rich online resource guide, curricular development, a quarterly journal, annual convergence, and the development of collaborative local materials re-use programs and a certification program for arts making being initiated through an international partnership between US, Canadian and British producers. The center was founded by funds received through the 2007 Richard E. Sherwood award for emerging theater artists from the Center Theater Group (CTG) awarded to be used forming a working relationship consulting with CTG on the integration of ecologically sustainable practice into their production.

Ian teaches Sustainable Theater and Management Technology courses at the California Institute of the Arts and has been featured in American Theater, DramaBiz, and The Design Magazine and has spoken at The Central School for Speech and Drama, St. Louis University, and the Indy Convergence along with most arts conferences in the United States.

He originally studied architecture and art history at Rice University in Houston, Texas, but has since come to build an awarding winning practice in live performance and installation art, having also attended California Institute of the Arts to complete MFAs in Lighting Design and Producing.

Connections –

Ian Garrett
Executive Director
Ian at sustainablepractice dot org
The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
c/o LA Stage Alliance
644 S. Figueroa St.
Los Angeles, CA 90017

Profile Summary: William “Willi” George Paul Green Business Certified Sustainability Consultant and strategic vision planner, writer and program designer for environmental planning, civil engineering and non-profits for over 15 years. Executive producer at PlanetShifter.com generating 125+ thought leader interviews and 1200 posts to-date since EarthDay ’09. Produced two innovative online community building projects as a PhD Student in Environmental Planning and Design at Virginia Tech. Designed the electronic charrette while earning MA in Urban Planning. Developed marketing and online community building strategies for over thirty Internet start-ups.

Willi Paul, Art and Sustainability Consultant
415-407-4688 | willipaul1 at gmail dot com
Current Portfolio | Linkedin Profile | Digital Archive

Selected Work Product by Willi Paul:

Technology, Arts, and Fringe

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 computing”. 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

  • A Fringe bulletin board
  • A significantly enhanced volunteer section
  • The ability to sell tickets directly form your project
  • Enhanced features to market your project on other social networking platforms

…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 cloud”) 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!

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

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.