Applications are now available for the 2012-13 ICPP Certificate Program. Updated application information, now live on the ICPP website. On-campus residency dates for 2012-2013 are: July 6–22, 2012; November 15–18, 2012; and March 8–11, 2013. Applications are due February 1, 2012 for the ICPP Professional Certificate Program. Visit the ICPP website for an application and more information.

Popularity: 5% [?]

The Waterfront Committee of Manhattan Community Board 2, the community board which serves the West Village and Soho is seeking ideas on possible programming for Pier 45 (at Christopher Street) that could be arts-related.

The Waterfront Committee is interested in exploring new community-based programming ideas for Pier 45. At their last meeting on September 26, when suggestions included dance events and free outdoor Shakespeare – ideas that were met with a very affirming response.  The committee decided to solicit the NY arts community at large for more specific ideas.

You or your arts organization are invited to propose your ideas for new arts programming for Pier 45 at the next  Waterfront Committee meeting Monday, October 24, beginning at 7:00 PM at Housing Works, 320 W. 13th St. 4th Floor Conference Room.  If you cannot attend, you are welcome to send a one-sheet to Jonathan Slaff at jslaffATacedslDOTcom. He will submit it for you at the meeting.

Arts-related ideas are not the exclusive focus of the committee’s thinking, but they are an important one.  The committee also plans to solicit ideas from a variety of non-arts related community organizations, including FIERCE, a gay youth advocacy organization.

Pier 45 is part of Hudson River Park.  It lies at the foot of Christopher Street and is accessible by nearby highway crosswalks at the ends of both Charles St. and Christopher St.  Its dimensions are 858 feet x 94 feet.  It has a grass surface and a 50′ x 50′ canopy at its western end.  Nearby mass transit includes two PATH stations (9th Street and Christopher Street) and the #1 Subway.  Although service has been reduced, the pier is also still served by the M8 bus on weekdays.

In requesting your creative ideas, the committee is simply taking first steps to explore an idea.  This is not a funding opportunity!!!  As promising, suitable ideas are presented, the committee hopes to refer them to the full Community Board and to recommend them, as community input, to the Hudson River Park Trust, which is responsible for the management and operation of the Pier.

Solicitation is not limited to organizations or individuals located in the area of Community Board 2.

Popularity: 20% [?]

We don’t really know anything about this, but it could be interesting.

The Between the Seas Festival, which will be held at The Wild Project in New York City from August 29th- September 4th 2011 is now accepting submissions for both performance and scholarly work. Deadline for performance and paper applications is March 30th 2011.

The Between the Seas Festival seeks to engage performing artists and researchers from the Mediterranean and Mediterranean diaspora with the goals of sharing with New York City audiences the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary cultural production from the Mediterranean; encouraging exchange and future artistic collaborations between NYC-based and Mediterranean-based artists; exploring the different Mediterranean identities; generating interest and debate over Mediterranean identity and culture.

The festival is produced by Les Manouches Theater Company under the Artistic and Producing direction of Dr. Aktina Stathaki and with the collaboration of distinguished scholars, theater practitioners and festival managers from the US and Europe.

For more information visit www.betweentheseas.org.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The DUMBO Arts Festival is now accepting proposals to participate in this year’s festival which will take place on Friday, September 23rd, Saturday, September 24th and Sunday, September 25th. The official Festival hours are Friday 6pm to 9pm, Saturday 12pm to 8pm, Sunday 12pm to 6pm and 6pm to midnight all three nights for all outdoor projections.

All projects must be open continuously during the official Festival hours. Please consider carefully if you are able to undertake this three day commitment before submitting your application. Projects that close early undermine the “official Festival hours” mandate of the event.

For more information, visit the festival website here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

In October of 2011, Pig Iron Theatre Company will open the doors of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training, a two-year program in physical and ensemble-devised theatre for emerging theatre artists, based in their hometown of Philadelphia.  This bold new venture will bring together a diverse mixture of performance-makers who will train their bodies and imaginations, develop their artistic vision, and meet friends and collaborators from across the country and the globe.

The core of APT will be inquiry: inquiry into movement and into what moves us. It will be a meeting place for daring, passionate performers and directors to meet, train, devise and form long-lasting collaborations. The journey of each student will be a journey both inward and outward, searching for his or her own creative motor while simultaneously responding to the world around us – its rhythms, characters, and contradictions.

Applications are being accepted through April 15. Places in APT’s inaugural class will be filled with qualified applicants (as determined by the admissions committee) on a rolling basis up until the deadline. To apply please consult the application instructions and requirements, available as a PDF here.  Send all questions to admissions@pigiron.org. Once the full application has been received, you will be notified regarding the committee’s decision within 6 weeks.

For more information, make sure to visit www.pigironschool.org.

Popularity: 3% [?]

OurGoods.org, the new barter network for creative people, is live and ready to go. It is basically a cool new system to help creative people exchange goods and services in new ways. Anyone is welcome to set up a profile and start getting help with their projects in a network of mutual trust and respect. They’re also offering four live barter network events in November. Each event starts with an optional workshop, and continues with a live barter network where they’ll help you organize your NEEDS and HAVES, offer tips for bartering, and match you with potential barter partners.

The events are free but RSVP is required! RSVP to: RSVP@ourgoods.org.

Sat Nov 6
Dance Theater Workshop
219 W 19th St

Co-sponsored by:
The Field
Dance/NYC
Movement Research
DTW

3pm: Barter: a Budget Supplement (workshop)
4pm: Live Barter Network

Sun Nov 7
WOW Café Theater
59 E 4th St

Co-sponsored by:
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Dixon Place
HERE Arts Center
Fourth Arts Block

Noon: Self-Producing 101 (workshop)
1pm: Live Barter Network

Sat Nov 13
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor

Co-sponsored by:
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
Exit Art
Smack Mellon Studios
F.E.A.S.T
LES Printshop

3pm: Barter: Idea Party (workshop)
4pm: Live Barter Network

Sun Nov 14
Brooklyn Arts Exchange
421 5th Ave, Brooklyn

Noon: Self-Producing 101 (workshop)
1pm: Live Barter Network

Popularity: 1% [?]

Since 2005, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) has established a vibrant residency program that has hosted over 40 artists and their collaborators, spanning theater, dance, music, video, and installation. While EMPAC will continue its open call residency program, EMPAC is pleased to announce four additional focused initiatives:

‐ Audio Production / Post‐Production
For sound recording, development of multichannel sound works, documentation, mastering, mixing, film scoring, or any other task involving microphones, speakers, consoles and computers.

‐ Creative Research
Provides artists, writers, and theorists with the opportunity to conduct research over extended periods of time (minimum six weeks).

‐ Dance / Theater
To rehearse, workshop or finalize a production. Provides a group of up to six individuals a two‐week rehearsal period in a 3,300 sq. ft. black box space with full production support.

‐ Video Production / Post‐Production
For multiple camera shoots, documentation of a performance, development of multichannel video projection, digital video post‐production, or any project involving HD video cameras, computers, and projectors.

EMPAC’s unique facilities offer four major venues including a Concert Hall, Theater, and two black box Studios, in addition to artists in residence studios, and a state of the art infrastructure. To apply, please include a letter of intent, a project description, a resume or CV for all major collaborators, as well as works, samples, and other supporting materials. Proposals are reviewed by EMPAC curators four times a year. Upcoming reviews will take place on October 15, January 14, April 15, and July 15. In general, residencies are scheduled six months to one year in advance.

For more information, go to: http://www.empac.rpi.edu/residencies/artist/

Popularity: 1% [?]

Sam Miller, currently the president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, has worn many hats over the course of his career. He has been executive director of both Jacob’s Pillow and the New England Foundation for the Arts, he founded and still serves as President of the Board of LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity). He also is the guiding force behind the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University which will be the first program of its kind in the States. We were lucky enough to get a few minutes of Sam’s time to learn about this exciting new program.

CULTUREBOT: Tell us a little about how the program came about.

SAM MILLER: Going all the way back to Jacob’s Pillow and then NEFA with the National Dance Project, I’ve always worked with this idea of “How do you encourage presenters to know more and care more about dance and contemporary performance?” What knowledge do they need and what skills do they need? So its been a consistent interest of mine.

When we put together NDP one of the core goals around it was to encourage collaboration and partnerships between artists and presenters in the development and presentation of work. That system works better the more knowledgeable and committed presenters are. It shouldn’t just be about the financial incentive – there should be a passion about this interesting work.

As time went on I became concerned that you have these really interesting artists making work and audiences that have an appetite for this work…. but do we have a next generation of future presenters who have the knowledge and skills to respond to the artists’ work? How can presenters connect it to audiences most effectively? So that was my concern – my work over the past number of years has been about that connection between artists and audience and the role presenters play in the development and presentation of the work. The better the presenter is, the better off the artist will be in making that connection.

So you perceived a need for this kind of program?

As I was working independently the past couple of years – I was working with the Mellon Foundation and the Eiko and Koma Retrospective project – I spent a lot of time thinking about what does the system need and where are the gaps. It became clear to me that one of the gaps was in professional development. Judy Hussie-Taylor at Danspace was one of the people who said, “We need some kind of a place to do this.”

I had been working with Wesleyan University as an incubator on some projects so – here was the need for these leadership development programs and here was Pam Tatge at the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan saying they could respond to that need. So the three of us came together around how to develop a partnership program in response to the need.

One of the first things we did was say, “Is this kind of training being provided and is it just a function of directing people to it?” We found that there are strong programs in the visual arts – Bard, California College of Art and the great work that Independent Curators International is doing – but there wasn’t a performance-based program.

As you mentioned there already is a pretty strong infrastructure for curatorial training in the visual arts, how will ICPP integrate that?

What we’re looking for is a program that examines and takes advantage of the best features of both visual arts, media arts practices and performing arts. We’re not trying to impose the visual arts practice on performing arts or vice versa. There’s a hybrid that we’re after. How are we going to get that? We’ve put together a core faculty that draws on people from different spheres. So there’s Doryun Chong from the Museum of Modern Art, who was also at the Walker, some key Wesleyan faculty members from different departments – theater, dance, music and the visual arts – and then people like Philip Bither and Judy Hussie-Taylor who have historic experience or are currently involved in areas where there is an intersection between visual art and performing arts.

What’s the program going to look like?

There are six courses. First there’s a survey of artistic practice to look at contemporary dance and performance over the past 50-80 years and look at key movements, artists, trends and issues so people can understand where this work comes from. How do you look at it? How do you talk about it?

The second course will deal with topics in curatorial practice. We’ll talk about what’s the terminology here – how has performance historically lived in the museum and what are its characteristics. Then we’ll look at three case studies – one would be The Walker. Philip Bither can talk about when you sit around the table at a contemporary arts center and you have these conversations as curators where the visual arts curator says “I’m going to go do an exhibit that comes out in three years.” Philip then has to turn around and do a season that has 30, 40 events…. So how does curatorial practice that comes out of a contemporary art center translate in one of those institutions.

Then we are going to work with one of Judy Hussie-Taylor’s artist/curators to talk about how they work with Judy to develop a program that works within a larger season.

We’re also going to look at a small university or a community-based presenter that has worked with a single artists on the development of a project over time – so those kind of three layers of practice will be something to examine.

Then there are two contextual courses – one will be sort of a survey course – from Bauhaus to Butoh – examining what were the cultural trends that surrounded this work over the past 80 to 100 years.

The second contextual course will be looking at intercultural performance, work from multiple cultures and multiple traditions – how do we look at it? How do festivals frame it? What are are the different issues around that?

The fifth course will be entrepreneurial strategies. It will be a series of modules that look at how do we do this and what are some of the theories behind how do we do it? What’s the history and ideas around philanthropy? What’s the gift economy? What forces are we really engaging when we then turn around practically and raise money for this work?

So there will be a sort of a lecture/workshop module where we’ll look at issues around philanthropy and how you put the money together, there will be issues around social media and how it really works – network theory. But also how do you build marketing strategies and develop the networks that the work needs. So we’ll look at the practical aspects of this work. That’s important to think about in terms of how performance work differs from visual arts work in that we’re not dealing with objects, we’re dealing with the artists and we need to support them in the development of the work. We’ll look at what practical tools you need but also what theories underlie these practical strategies.

And the sixth course is the independent project which will allow each student to put together something that will allow them to use these tools in real life.

For each of the on-campus sessions there will be artists-in-residence at Wesleyan whose work we will see. They will participate in these discussions and the courses – so there will be that aspect, it will be totally present each time we’re together.

The other reason its designed as low residency with both on-campus and web-based learning is that it reflects our practice as presenters. That is – we get together and we work intensely and look at work. But we are also required to look at work online, think about work online, interact with our colleagues and artists online so the benefit of a low-residency program is not just to let professionals work and learn – it also mimics what our professional experience is actually like.

Who is the program for?

This is a low-residency, certificate program geared toward working professionals. So its two weeks in July, three days in November and three days in March on campus at Wesleyan. The rest of the time its web-based learning. We’re looking for about 20 students beginning in July of 2011. What we’re looking at are a number of different types.

First is the person who is in a presenting organization who is in the number two spot or number three spot, however you would characterize it, who has some skills – it could be a really strong marketing or development background, could be that they are really knowledgeable about music – but who says, “Hey if I had this stuff I could really do my job better and grow up to be this…” so first of all somebody in a presenting organization.

Secondly is an artist who may want to develop a curatorial capacity in terms of a career transition or as a career enhancement. they want to be able to have this practice.

The other is independent curators who want to develop these kinds of projects for performance.

Then again there may be people in smaller organizations who do come from music or visual arts who say “If I had this experience I would really be able to do a better job and advance professionally.”

The curriculum is designed to have a combination of theory and practice, so its not just curatorial theories – it is how do we do the work and not just think about the work.

What would you like to see as the outcome?

This is going to sound corny, but I do tend to think of things in sort of twenty year arcs. I’ve been working in Cambodia since 1990 and our challenge was “How do you develop the next generation of artists in Cambodia? How do you develop an independent sector?” And it doesn’t happen overnight – it takes 20 years, 10 years, 15. So I think here its not quite like that….

There are four things I’d like to have happen. First you develop the tools and knowledge that you need to do this work. Secondly because there are twenty students plus faculty – you develop a network of colleagues that you can work with going forward. Third, we’ll have not just twenty students there but we’ll have twenty projects that will be at least conceptualized – and hopefully actualized – which will illuminate what we think this practice is in its diversity. And fourthly we hope to have a publications program that allows us to reflect on what we mean by curatorial practice in performance – what characterizes it and how can we document and share that with others.

****

For more information about ICPP and how to apply, visit www.wesleyan.edu/icpp

Popularity: 2% [?]

Free Financial Advice for Artists and Independent Workers | Oct 23, 2010

The Department of Cultural Affairs, the Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Financial Empowerment and City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer will present the second Art of Money: Personal Finance Resources for Artists event offering FREE one-on-one financial counseling and workshops to help working artists, arts administrators, and independent workers reduce debt and manage credit. The event takes place Saturday, October 23, from noon to 5 PM at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Long Island City, Queens (31-10 Thomson Avenue at 47th Avenue).

Visit nyc.gov/artofmoney for more information.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Established in 2007, the Rockefeller New York City Cultural Innovation Fund competition is one of the ways the Foundation spurs creative endeavors that enrich the fabric of our city. Submit your idea for a grant for a groundbreaking arts or cultural project.

Many of last year’s winners focused on innovations in the production and presentation of the arts. Other organizations plan to leverage the arts to support community resilience and urban sustainability.

Again this year, winners are expected to include artistic innovations, fresh business models, imaginative prototypes for public/private partnerships, entrepreneurial approaches to capital generation, and marketing to untapped audiences.

From the Foundation’s $2.5 million NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, winners will receive two-year grants, ranging from $50,000 to $250,000. Consider submitting your idea, if your organization is within the city’s five boroughs and your project falls into one or more of these categories:

• Creative engagement with the issues shaping New York City’s future cultural and civic agenda.

• Programming and premieres of new artistic work that demonstrate fresh perspectives and can activate new directions in the visual, performing and media arts.

• New partnerships among cultural organizations, community-based institutions, universities and the private sector.

• Interventions designed to confront longstanding bottlenecks and limitations on the expansion of cultural vitality with fresh approaches and solutions.

MORE INFO CLICK HERE.

Popularity: 1% [?]