Larger Community

Opportunity to make work at Teaneck Creek

This post comes to you from Cultura21

The Ecoart Committee of the Teaneck Creek Conservancy in Teaneck, NJ seeks proposals from ecoartists or ecoartist teams to create an ecoartwork in 2012-13.

The Teaneck Creek Conservancy is a 46-acre eco-park within Bergen County’s 1,200-acre Overpeck Park, this property is being reclaimed and rehabilitated as wetland habitat and for positive public use through a unique “Brownfields to Greenfields” project. Community-based plans for the Conservancy are developed by artists, activists, scientists, historians, educators in a non profit partnership with local government over the past ten years. These plans have created a park with a 1.5 mile trail system for passive recreation, eco art, wetlands research and rehabilitation, and public outreach and education that is focused on the property’s environmental resources, land use, and history.

For this project, they are seeking an experienced ecoart practicioner, who´s capable of responding imaginatively to a recovering urban forested wetland, and will work collaboratively with community students and volunteers, and mentor a local artist in the creation of the piece.The work should build support among the larger community for an understanding and definition of ecoart that is inclusive yet underscores the notion of ecology and our impact on this recovering environment. The process will be video documented throughout the residency period.

The Anticipated total budget including artist(s) fee is a range of USD$15000. – 20000.

To apply, you can submit via email by June 1, 2012 to devery [at] teaneckcreek [dot] org :

1) A brief artists statement of interest outlining a preliminary proposal for this site project. (Interested artists are strongly encouraged to visit the Conservancy prior to making a submission.)

2) Up to 5 images of representative works that address the requirements of this RFP. Images should be smaller than 1MB. A website address can be substituted. They are interested in viewing your work as an ecoart practitioner.

3) C.V. , either via e-mail or associated with a website.

4) Contact information including daytime phone number.

You can check the proposal form at  Teaneck Creek´s website and you can also check www.PuffinFoundation.org  for further information and directions.

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

EMOS Call for Papers & Proposals | Earth Matters on Stage

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA - May 31-June 3, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS

Ecology is at the heart of burgeoning creativity and interdisciplinary scholarship across the arts and humanities. This Symposium, together with the concurrent EMOS Playwrights’ Festival, invites artists, scholars and activists to share their work, ideas, and passions with one another and with the larger community who attend the Festival.

We welcome creative and innovative proposals for workshops, round-tables, panels, working sessions, installations, or participatory community gatherings that explore, examine, challenge, articulate, or nourish the possibilities of theatrical and performative responses to the environmental crisis in particular, and our ecological relationships in general. We encourage proposals that go beyond a recitation of ideas or positions, and instead bring presenters and participants together as they engage the driving question of how theatre has or might function as part of our reciprocal relationship with ecological communities.

Possible topics for exploration include: land and body in performance; representations of bioregionalism; eco-literacy; representation of/and environmental justice; green theatre production; old cultural narratives/new stories; indigenous performance; community-based performance/ecological communities; sensing place/staging place; the ecologies of theatrical form and/or space; animal representation; and application of ecocriticism to plays, performance and culture.

Please email a one-page (250 word max.) proposal and/or abstract by November 1, 2011 to:

Prof. Wendy Arons
School of Drama ~ Carnegie Mellon University
warons@andrew.cmu.edu

Please include:

  • Type of session & title;
  • Your preferred type of space (classroom, theatre, studio, or outdoors);
  • Time-length (60 min; 90 min; half-day);
  • Ideal or maximum number of participants;
  • Short bios of presenter(s).

For more information about the EMOS Festival and Symposium at Carnegie Mellon University in 2012, see http://pages.uoregon.edu/ecodrama/.

LDI and Sustainability: Part I

Reprinted from Live Design: “Creating Sustainable Theatres: Part 1″ by Curtis Kasefang, October 20, 2009

Following up on Bob Usdin’s excellent piece on the greening of the entertainment industry in the “Green Issue” (“How Green Is Green?” August 2008), I want to explore the broader picture, including the facility itself and the surrounding community.

So that we are all starting at the same place, I will use the generally accepted definition of sustainability. The most popular definition of sustainability can be traced to a 1987 UN conference that defined sustainable developments as those that “meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs,” (United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987 p.24, §27). While this provides a general framework of the ideal, more specifics may be garnered from the following corollary: “Sustainability integrates natural systems with human patterns and celebrates continuity, uniqueness, and placemaking,” (Early, 1993).

In general, many speak of sustainability as having three overlapping components: economic, social, and environmental. Theatres, by definition, score high on the social sustainability scale as places where cultures can mix, and they exist to communicate ideas, broaden our points of view, educate, and entertain. When looked at with a wider lens, theatres also play a role in the economic sustainability of the urban environment. The impact that performance facilities have on communities by fueling jobs in the hospitality, food service, and retail industries, as well as their supply chains, is well documented. Theatre Communications Group, among others, has published studies on theatres’ economic impact on the larger community. Environmental sustainability can further economic sustainability in the operation of a theatre. If we use resources more efficiently, we save money. Environmental sustainability is usually what we are speaking of when we talk about “being green.”

Working as a theatre consultant and chairing my city’s historic districts commission, I think about how buildings—new and existing—can support the goal of being sustainable. Although our measure of greenness for new construction or renovation is the US Green Building Council’s LEED New Construction certification, it doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the value of reuse of a building. Preservationists and sustainability cheerleaders like to remind us that “the greenest building is the one you already have.” What they are so eloquently pointing out is that, to properly consider the sustainability of a project, one must look at the impact of materials used from raw material to the dump. By thinking of things in this fashion, one can assign a carbon footprint to materials and components. If you can avoid using materials by adapting something that exists, you have avoided a significant carbon impact, waste stream, and release of pollutants.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative has pointed out that, when one disturbs soil, one releases carbon. So in terms of minimizing carbon impact, the greenest choice is to renovate an existing facility. Demolishing an existing structure and building new also can be a triple impact in that one sends an existing building and cleared vegetation to our overburdened landfills. Shockingly, 25% of our waste stream is construction waste (Carl Elefante, director of Sustainable Design, Quinn Evans | Architects).

Another lesson from the preservation crowd is that renovation has a much larger economic impact on the local and regional community than new construction because costs from new construction generally divide to 50% materials and 50% labor. In rehabilitation projects, that figure is closer to 70% labor and 30% materials, and the skill level of that labor is higher. In renovation projects, the figures are somewhere in the middle (Don Rypkema, Place Economics).

These lessons hit on all three components of sustainability because reuse of an existing building can be a huge contributor to the local economy, and a green initiative makes this kind of project attractive to local governments and donors.

Existing facilities are not without challenges. Many, especially those built in the arts building boom of the 1970s, feature inefficient, poor quality systems that make them energy hogs. The challenge with these facilities is how to make them function better without racking up an unrecoverable payback period. Many also lack daylighting in support areas, create huge storm water runoff issues, and are monumental heat islands. Nationally, 50% of our building stock was constructed in the period from 1950 to 1979, when the cost of energy was not a significant consideration. Another 30% was built after 1979 (Elefante).

Performance facilities have the economic challenge of being expensive to build. In my 19 years experience as a theatre consultant, I can tell you that, whether your budget is $800 million or $500,000, there isn’t enough money to achieve the desired goals. Reuse of a facility, and/or a sustainability goal provides access to additional financing through tax credits and an additional field of potential donors.

Historically, operating and construction costs have been separate pools of money that were never discussed in the same meeting. As a consequence, we have deleted storage areas, picked less efficient equipment, and designed less efficient systems to save construction costs, when, in reality, we have actually just shifted costs to operations. We need to break that wall between operating costs and construction costs during design. Further, even the construction costs tend to get divided with performance equipment and viewed as an independent budget from the disciplines that install it, support it, and cool it.

The design criteria of the facility needs to incorporate sustainability as a goal from the outset of the project, and the project team needs to be given the requirement that its choices be reviewed in light of operating costs. In many cases, looking at a one-to-three year operating budget in conjunction with construction costs will be enough to allow the team to make environmentally responsible choices that can have fiscal benefits that last decades. Furthermore, part of the requirement for the design needs to be that it supports operational sustainability, not just sustainable construction.

Going green is a major theme at LDI2009, with a Green Day conference and Green Technology Today Pavilion (www.ldishow.com).

Curtis Kasefang is trained as a lighting designer and embarking on his 20th year as a theatre consultant. He is a principal with Theatre Consultants Collaborative, LLC. Prior to his consulting work, he was a production manager for a four-theatre complex. He also chairs his local Historic Districts Commission.

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Creating Sustainable Theatres: Part 1

This excerpt from Curtis Kasefang follows up on Bob Usdin’s August 2008 “How Green is Green?” Piece for LIve Design. Remember, November 2009 is Green Day at LDI.

In general, many speak of sustainability as having three overlapping components: economic, social, and environmental. Theatres, by definition, score high on the social sustainability scale as places where cultures can mix, and they exist to communicate ideas, broaden our points of view, educate, and entertain. When looked at with a wider lens, theatres also play a role in the economic sustainability of the urban environment. The impact that performance facilities have on communities by fueling jobs in the hospitality, food service, and retail industries, as well as their supply chains, is well documented. Theatre Communications Group, among others, has published studies on theatres’ economic impact on the larger community. Environmental sustainability can further economic sustainability in the operation of a theatre. If we use resources more efficiently, we save money. Environmental sustainability is usually what we are speaking of when we talk about “being green.”

via Creating Sustainable Theatres: Part 1.