Sky Arts Futures Fund: competitive arts funding to make it happen
Applications open on 25th September and close on 19th December 2012.
"Sky Arts also seeks to connect with culture on the ground, supporting and investing in the arts from leading organisations to emerging artists in the UK and Ireland through the Sky Arts Ignition Series. The Futures Fund is part of the Sky Arts Ignition Series and offers five artists each year £30,000 plus mentoring to help you develop your creative practice. ...
Whether you want to direct a piece of theatre, choreograph a new dance piece, write a play, record an album, create a sculpture, a live art performance or produce, Sky Arts will give you the time and money to make it happen.They'll also pair you with a mentor from Sky and the arts to help you develop your networks, skills and knowledge in the arts and the commercial sector.
We invite you to submit an application in one of five categories; Theatre, Writing and Performance; Music; Visual Art; Dance; Creative Producer."
(IdeasTap Ltd. UK)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Practising Theatre History as Research
"Much current scholarship in the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including my own, focuses on the actual performance of plays in their own or later periods, regarding the texts that survive as, in different ways, blueprints for performance, and exploring them in the context of their performance spaces, actors and theatre-practice and of other agencies such as audiences that impact upon those texts in performance. My own research in these areas is largely conducted through practice.
But let me just sketch a brief background. In 1998, a sea-change occurred in the lives of arts (as opposed to humanities) researchers in the UK, with the creation of the Arts & Humanities Research Board (now Council) which, for the first time, funded practice-led research in the creative arts. I cannot stress too heavily the impact this had on the landscape of research in the performing arts.
That's not to say, of course, that research through practice had not been conducted before then. If I take my own department at Bristol as an example, scholars such as Glynne Wickham, Richard Southern and Neville Denny were experimenting from the early 1950s by staging medieval and early modern plays, and using their findings in their published work.
But the arrival of the AHRB not only provided funding for practice-led research in the academy, but in so doing, confirmed it as being as valid and - not to be underestimated - as respectable as research conducted through more traditional or conventional means. And - a point to which I shall return - it opened up debates not only on how such research might most profitably be conducted, but how it might be disseminated in forms other than the books or journal articles that had predominated - and be disseminated, in fact, through the practice/performance itself."
(Martin White)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
HiBROW: a collection of videos for arts enthusiasts
"The British based film-maker Don Boyd, HiBROW's founder, has gathered a wide range of established professionals in the international arts industries, to be called Curators to create content exclusively for HiBROW. Three years of research and development has resulted in the successful production of over 80 hours of professionally produced High Definition video. HiBROW's content will be refreshed every month, and is radically different to current broadcast television and other online content. Available free, it is professionally produced, contemporary and original. With unique access our teams have captured behind-the-scenes rehearsals, work in progress and interviews. HiBROW has relationships with some of the world's great arts institutions and is building new ones with those who want to use our platform to expose larger audiences to their work. These embrace a very broad range of international artistic talent including Vasily Petrenko, Russia's young conductor, Dominic Hill, artistic director of Glasgow's Citizens Theatre, Newton Aduaka, Nigeria's young film director, Raf Bonachela, Spain's great choreographer, Gavin Turk, the British artist, Margaret Attwood, Canada's great novelist, and Britain's great spy author John Le Carré. Their contributions have allowed HiBROW to fashion intimate films of entire performances of new plays, concerts, exhibitions, and literary events all of which have subsequently received glowing critical reviews."
(Don Boyd)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Family Factory: Developing Methods for Live 3D Animation
"In this way the puppeteers would be part of the development of the prototypes for the virtual puppets as well as the characters for the play, before the actual rehearsals would begin two month later. ...
The value of the actual meetings and workshops can not be emphasised enough. This gave the participants hands on experience with the constraints in the actual equipment and a chance to meet the team that would be responsible for operating it. It is not until the artist has a very physical and intuitive impression of the material and the involved people the creative process takes off for real – before this everything is abstract ideas. ...
In the planning of the research project and the actual production the division of labour within and between each field of activity were specified as outlined in section 3.
As the process went on the borders became more blurred exploring the new field between creative production in theatre and animation and methods from computer science and systems development. One of the big challenges was the development of a common language between the artist and the programmer/technicians and to define and invent new methods that were necessary to carry out the production.
I tried to explore the numerous reasons for this in the evaluation phase of the project. This was done by conducting qualitative interviews with the participants and by reviewing the large body of video documentation from the process. The footage was edited to a 50 minute documentary about the project on which the following assumptions are based (Callesen 2001)."
(Jørgen Callesen, 2003, p.15,18,30)
Callesen (2001) Virtual Puppets in Performance, Proceedings, Marionette: Metaphysics, Mechanics, Modernity, International Symposium, University of Copenhagen, 28. March - 1. April, 2001
Callesen, J. (2003) "The Family Factory - Developing new Methods for Live 3D Animation" in Madsen, K.H. Production methods: behind the scenes of virtual inhabited 3D worlds. Springer-Verlag, London.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Opera Australia: coming to a cinema near you
"Opera Australia's first season of cinema screenings has proven so popular it is set to roll out again to an expanded network of between 60 and 70 cinemas across Australia and New Zealand. They're also launching their own independent CD and DVD label and starting TV broadcasts with the ABC.
These three initiatives form part of Opera Australia's digital broadcast strategy designed to combat obstacles of price and location, and reach audiences in a way that fits with contemporary lifestyles."
(artsHub.com.au, 18 May 2011)
2). Media release: Opera Australia launches own CD/DVD label and TV broadcasts after successful debut at cinemas, Three-phase ‘digital broadcast strategy’ takes opera into a bright new future. May 12, 2011
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
