Fundraising Efforts

NEW LIFE CANCUN Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals

Artists working with interventions, activism and other participatory practices are invited to apply for participation in NEW LIFE CANCUN. This experimental hospitality project will take place during the UN Climate Change summit (COP 16) in Canc̼n, Mexico from 29 Nov Р10 Dec 2010.

In continuation of Wooloo’s NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN festival – in which we secured housing for more than 3.000 activists coming to the Copenhagen summit – NEW LIFE CANCUN is aiming to connect visiting activists and NGO employees with local families in the area of Cancún, infamous for its vulnerability to climate disasters (mainly hurricanes), as well as for the high-CO2 emissions associated with its tourism sector.

Utilising this meeting of hosts and guests in Cancun as our exhibition platform, artists and activists are invited to explore its social architecture and suggest work proposals of an awareness, educational and/or practical-action nature designed around the topic: “NEW WAYS OF LIVING TOGETHER”.

Up to five artists will be selected for participation and will get all travel, accommodation and production costs covered by Wooloo. Proposals must include a detailed budget. As fundraising efforts are still ongoing, we do not yet know the size of our final production budget. However, it wont be large – so please be aware that your project must be able to be realized in a low-budget manner!

The deadline for work proposals is Thu 1 August 2010.

Please direct all research questions to contact[at]wooloo.org

NEW LIFE is an ongoing series of works focusing on social and artistic experimentation. Staged by Wooloo and taking place in institutions and public spaces worldwide, NEW LIFE aims to be a test field for new ways of living together on our planet.

NEW LIFE CANCUN is a collaboration between Wooloo.org and the Mexican climate change collective Carbonding.

via ==criticalnetwork== NEW LIFE CANCUN.

WOOLOO.ORG – NEW LIFE CANCÚN

Artists working with interventions, activism and other participatory practices are invited to apply for participation in NEW LIFE CANCUN.

This experimental hospitality initiative intends to promote and facilitate participation during the UN Climate Change summit (COP 16) in Cancún, Mexico at the end of 2010 (Nov. 29th – Dec. 10th).

In continuation of Wooloo’s NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN festival – in which we secured housing for more than 3.000 activists during the Copenhagen summit – NEW LIFE CANCUN is aiming to connect visiting activists and NGO employees with local families in the area of Cancún.An area infamous for its vulnerability to climate disasters (mainly hurricanes), as well as for the high-CO2 emissions associated with its tourism sector.

Utilizing this meeting of hosts and guests in Cancun as our exhibition platform, artists and activists are invited to explore its social architecture and suggest work proposals of an awareness, educational and/or practical-action nature designed around the topic: “NEW WAYS OF LIVING TOGETHER”.

The deadline for work proposals is JULY 1st, 2010.

Please direct all research questions to contact@wooloo.org

Proposals must include a detailed budget. As fundraising efforts are still ongoing, we do not yet know the size of our final production budget. However, it wont be large – so please be aware that your project must be able to be realized in a low-budget manner!

NEW LIFE CANCUN is a collaboration between Wooloo.org and the Mexican climate change collective Carbonding

Image credit: Stephanie Claverie

via WOOLOO.ORG – NEW LIFE CANCÚN.

Utah Theatre Disaster Creates Geothermal Potential

Reprinted from The Salt Lake Tribune: “Turning a Crisis into Opportunity” by John Keahay, September 20, 2009

Late last year, a distraught Michael Ballam walked into a board meeting, plopped into his chair and announced, “I have some bad news.”

The founder and general director of the Utah Festival Opera had just come from the historic Utah Theatre — a shuttered movie house that was being converted into a production venue for the northern Utah-based company. Crews, attempting to dig 15 feet down from the orchestra pit tucked beneath the newly expanded stage, had just hit groundwater at 12 feet.

A geyser was bubbling up, filling the pit at about 20 gallons per minute and seemingly dooming the $3.5 million-$4 million renovation.

In the long run, the watery problem didn’t kill the project, But the solution added $500,000 to the price tag, which along with a plummeting economy that was stifling fundraising efforts, forced the cancellation of the 2009 summer schedule of shows planned for the venue.

“In some ways it was a blessing,” said Ballam. The half-million-dollar fix helped designers create a larger, deeper space for the mechanical innards of a complex organ system. This is seen as a distinctive feature of the restored theater that eventually will feature opera, plays, recitals and movies, including silent films.

And the unwelcome water started arts officials thinking about an environmentally pleasing, cost-saving solution for heating and cooling the theater — geothermal energy instead of natural gas.

But first, workers had to solve the immediate problem of the orchestra pit flood. They installed a rubber membrane — below water level — at 15 feet down and then poured 4 feet of concrete to make a “boat” that essentially floats. This keeps the space dry, and it allowed the organ’s inner workings to be installed. The organ console will sit several feet away on an automatic lift in the orchestra pit. During productions, it can be raised and lowered as needed. In addition, a grand piano can be moved onto the lift for the same purpose.

“It’s like the Radio City Music Hall [in New York City], except there the organ comes in and out of the wall,” said Ballam.

As it turned out, the water was the least of the Utah Theatre’s problems. The nation’s economic crisis and its effect on stock portfolios has dulled contributors’ enthusiasm and cut the Utah Festival Opera market-based endowment in half. This has put the renovation on hold, and it could take a few more years before the theater once again comes alive.

“The spirt’s willing, but the bank account’s weak,” said Richard Anderson, Festival Opera’s board vice chairman.

Stalled plans for the theater are ambitious. It is much smaller, at 350 seats, than the main Utah Festival Opera venue, the 1,140-seat Ellen Eccles Theatre on Logan’s Main Street. Ballam said the theater is a perfect facility for launching smaller-scale operas — think intimate Mozart works versus mammoth productions, such as Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida.”

If additional cash is found, “we could open it on a limited basis next season by showing films,” Ballam said. “That would take $1 million. Another million, and we can finish the lobby.” Still another million would buy the inner workings of a backstage “fly” system that raises and lowers scenery. Ultimately, the balcony could be expanded, raising the number of seats to 500.

“We’ll do it in phases,” the general director said. Meanwhile, the Utah Opera Festival, despite hard financial times, plans a full 2010 summer season of five operas and musicals around the corner in the Eccles Theatre, plus all of the associated educational activities. The festival staged 130 events during the 2009 summer season — a tradition that goes back to its inception in 1993.

During the past summer, the festival sold 21,000 tickets to five shows over four-and-a-half weeks, generating $870,000 of its $2.3 million operating budget. The balance is raised through philanthropy.

The Utah Theatre’s season-ending groundwater issue, while a minor disaster, has led the opera company to what could eventually become a long-term, cash-saving alternative. If the water pressure was powerful enough to create a bubbling geyser in the orchestra pit, then something must be driving it.

In this case, an aquifer, fed by subterranean runoff from the mountains to the east, sits another 200 feet below, exerting its pressure upward.

After Ballam walked into the board meeting to deliver his bad news, vice chairman Anderson was struck by a thought. Could the deep aquifer be tapped and, using geothermal technology, could the resulting green energy be used to heat and cool the Utah Theatre?

The aquifer’s water probably is a consistent 50 to 55 degrees, summer or winter.

Anderson uses that technology to heat and cool his home 10 miles south of Logan. His small system takes water from a free-flowing spring, runs its through a heat exchanger and, can manage his indoor climate at a comfortable level whether the temperature outside is 20 below zero or 100 degrees above.

To do the same for the Utah Theatre would require the drilling of two wells adjacent to the building in downtown Logan — one for extracting naturally heated water from the aquifer, another to return it into the subterranean cavity. A commercial heat exchanger would transfer heat from the aquifer water to a liquid within the exchanger, and that would be used to provide heat or cool the theater.

“Of course, you need electricity to run a compressor and the pumps to move the water around,” said Anderson, “but you don’t need electricity or natural gas to heat or cool the theater. There would be no flame [from a pilot light] in the building; no carbon-monoxide detector is necessary.”

The cost would be $10,000 for each of the two wells, $50,000-$75,000 for the compressor and heat-exchange system — no more than for a conventional system, said festival Managing Director Gary Griffin.

Ballam, a world-class opera singer who performs in many Utah Festival productions, loves the geothermal idea beyond its long-term cost- and energy-saving benefits.

“It’s not noisy,” he said. “As an opera singer on stage, you notice when the [traditional furnace] system turns on. It can be distracting.”

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Opera Grand Rapids Goes Green

Reprinted from DeVos Performance Hall

Opera Grand Rapids is rooting itself into a culture of green. The long awaited Betty Van Andel Opera Center will be a Silver LEED certified facility. The center, which will house a rehearsal hall, costume shop and offices, will be built on the West corner of Fulton and Carlton.

Currently a brown field, the parcel of land had been the home of Michigan Litho. After a fire in 2002 destroyed the printing company, the lot has set empty for years, an eyesore for a budding neighborhood on the edge of the City’s downtown.

The Opera’s future building is not the first to go green in Grand Rapids’ growing skyline, recent projects by the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Grand Rapids Ballet are also LEED certified. Planners from the Opera Grand Rapids facilities committee note that going green was always in the plan for the project. At question was the level of certification.

As a Silver level facility, the project will meet standards that include: sustainability, pollution prevention, water efficient landscaping, water efficient utilities, optimized energy performance, construction waste management and the use of regional materials to limit transportation pollution.

Fundraising efforts continue on the long awaited project, which was jump started by a $1 Million grant from the Jay and Betty Van Andel Foundation more than seven years ago. Construction and material bids for The Betty Van Andel Opera Center have come in higher than initially expected, driving the estimated cost of the project up from $1.95 Million to approximately $2.3 Million. A groundbreaking ceremony, originally expected for this fall, will be held when 100% of the funds needed to complete the project have been raised. Currently the Company has raised approximately 80% of the new campaign goal. A public fundraising campaign will be launched later this month.

Once open, in 2009, the facility will consolidate the Company’s resources in one location. Currently the Company stages its operas and fits costumes at a variety of donated spaces throughout Grand Rapids. This means for each of its three shows time, energy and money are spent to set up temporary rehearsal spaces. With the facility, the Company’s costume shop, property and set storage as well as vocal warm up rooms and rehearsal room will all be located in one permanent facility.

The Company will begin rehearsals for the first show of its season, “Tosca” in mid-October. The show will take place Nov. 7 and 8 at 7:30pm at DeVos Hall. Tickets are currently on sale through Ticketmaster.

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