Category: Banging on about… the Arts

AspireBalkans – MISIM ZNAŠ, TAJ RAD; BRATE!

Greetings to the AspireBalkans blog, a one shop blog spot with information, offers, proposals, hunches and ideas about our forthcoming arts and creative education programmes across the Balkans. We’ve been working in Serbia since 2010, are building relationships in Macedonia, and looking forward to making new friends and colleagues in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, Slovenia and across the region in the years to come.

Our work in Obrenovac, Serbia started here:

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https://drnicko.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/poetry-on-the-serbian-hoof/

And carries on here:

http://pascotd.weebly.com/index.html

Watch this space for further action!

Pitch a Film on a Friday: Liverpool Greets Southampton: April 1912.

Scene 1: a waiting room at the quayside of Southampton docks. Posters on the wall exhort everybody to mind their luggage, their personal safety and boarding papers. The launch day of the Titanic has arrived. Whilst full of noise and bustle outside – porters shouting, announcements on the p.a. Etc., the room is quiet until Dick, and his wife, Ros, enter. They’ve arrived late for embarkation. Dick is nervous, excited at the thought of his wife’s imminent departure and the thought of being able to leave her: but he’s trying to translate his excitement into something resembling concern over his wife’s journey. Ros is subdued, uneasy about something but unable to identify the cause of her unease. She doesn’t want to leave Dick but desperately wants to see her parents again – they haven’t met since the marriage 10 years previously.

DICK
You’ve got the ticket haven’t you?

ROS
I thought you did.

DICK
Oh.

ROS
Calm down. You’re making me nervous.

DICK
Just imagine, setting off on the greatest voyage in the history of mankind within seconds.

ROS
I can’t fathom why you had to go and buy such an expensive ticket.

DICK
Don’t you want to see your mother?

ROS
Of course I do.

DICK
You haven’t seen her since the marriage. Now you’re going and you’ve not stopped complaining.

ROS
I know. I’m sorry.

DICK
She might be dead next week. Then how would you feel? Guilty, that’s how.

ROS
I wanted us both to go, not just me. They’d get to meet you at long last.

DICK
Well, I can’t can I? Someone’s got to earn the money to afford these holidays. Let’s have a look in that shoulder bag. (HE STARTS TO LOOK THROUGH IT).

ROS
Dick, I’m sorry, really I am. I didn’t mean it to be like this.

DICK
It must be here somewhere. Make-up case. Perhaps it’s in your make-up case.

ROS
I thought you wanted to come, I thought you’d meet them, I thought you could do with a break, I don’t want you slaving away at work, no-one to come home to of a night, it’ll be awful for you being on your own, I know how you hate it.

DICK
Why haven’t you got a decent makeup case?

ROS
(INCENSED THAT HE’S NOT BEEN LISTENING)
Look at that bag. I had it all neatly packed and you’ve ruined it.

DICK
I’ll put it all back.

HE STARTS STUFFING THINGS INTO THE BAG BUT IT DOESN’T FIT.

ROS
I spent an hour on that.

DICK
Let me try again.

ROS
All that fuss and you’ve forgotten the ticket.

DICK
I don’t understand it.

ROS
I won’t be able to go now.

DICK
You bloody well will, after all that palava. I’ll fix it.

ROS
D’you know, it’s as if you’re trying to get rid of me?

DICK
Don’t be daft.

A STEWARD ENTERS THE WAITING ROOM.

STEWARD
Morning everyone, bright as buttons are we? Ready for the big adventure?

DICK
You could say that.

ROS
You are, aren’t you?

DICK
Ros, please, not now.

STEWARD
Jolly good, jolly good. That’s what I like to hear. Got your ticket sir?

DICK
No.

ROS
I’ve hit on something here, haven’t I?

DICK
No.

STEWARD
Don’t go thinking you’re boarding the Titanic without a ticket.

ROS
What have you got planned up that sleeve of yours?

DICK
Nothing at all. Steward, I’ve come to wave off my wife. I shall be straight off your premises afterwards, fear not.

ROS
I bet you will.

DICK
But we have a problem, we can’t find our ticket. But we must be on your passenger list… look, there we are… Stubbs… Rosalyn Stubbs.

ROS
And who’s on your passenger list then Dick? Who are you sailing off with after you get shot of me?

DICK
Nobody. Rosalyn my dear, you really do talk the most indisputable garbage.
STEWARD
Are you sure? She might be anybody.

DICK
Well she’s not anybody. They’re nobody.

STEWARD
Pardon? No-one said anything about this sort of incident. I’d better report back.

DICK
But what about her, she’s got to get on the boat.

STEWARD
She’ll be allowed to board when it’s clear her papers are in order. If you’ll excuse me, I need to see my chief.

ROS
You’re panicking aren’t you?

DICK
I am not panicking.

ROS
Just suppose I miss the boat, then what? We go home and try again, but we can’t do that can we, because do you know why?

DICK
I haven’t wasted three thousand quid for all this…

ROS
No, because you’ve got a nice little tugboat sunning herself back home haven’t you?

DICK
I don’t know what you’re talking about.

(THE SHIPS STEWARD RETURNS WITH THE CHIEF STEWARD)

CHIEF
My steward says there’s a problem with your tickets.

ROS
I think you do and I think you’re lying through your pulled back grin and your newly capped teeth. Who is she then?

DICK
Ros, you’re making a scene.

CHIEF
Do you have any receipt of payment about your person?

ROS
You bet I am, you’re about to go screw some piece of fluff the moment we’re out of sight and you expect me not to make a scene. Is it Maud?

DICK
Excited, she’s just getting excited. Don’t be silly.

CHIEF
Hmm… Difficult situation. But in the circumstances…

DICK
The receipt, I’ve got the receipt!

ROS
It’s Jane, isn’t it? Jane with the bob?

CHIEF
Jones, take Mr. Stubbs here across to HQ, get hold of Temple, tell him there’s an emergency…

DICK
Jane and Bob? Honestly, Rosalyn, what do you take me for?

CHIEF
Tell him I’m requesting a D3 embarkation, and that he has to sort it out.

DICK
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be straight back.

CHIEF
Hurry up Mr. Stubbs. There’s no time to waste.

DICK LEAVES THE WAITING ROOM RAPIDLY.

ROS
It’s Jane you conniving piece of low life isn’t it? And you expect to pack me off to the States to have some sordid affair with some half baked haddock from accounts.

CHIEF
A memorable day, madam, the Titanic, the biggest ship in history. 46,000 tons. Certain to be quite a splash when it sets sail.

THE STEWARD RE-ENTERS

STEWARD
Mrs. Stubbs? What are you doing here? I thought you were on board..

ROS
Dick… where is he?

THEY ALL RUSH TO THE WINDOW AS THE BOAT LEAVES THE HARBOUR AMIDST HORNS BLOWING AND MUCH SHOUTING AND CHEERING.

ROS
Will you look at that. He’s on the boat, waving at us all. The nerve…

STEWARD
How on earth?

CHIEF
(SPOTTING SOMETHING ON THE FLOOR UNDER THE BAGGAGE) Madam… is this yours?

ROS
The ticket, it was there all along… what’s this… a letter… Dear Ros, by the time you read this… can’t cope any more with your jealousy… need to escape… new life on my own… will write soon. Dick.

STEWARD
So he wasn’t packing you off to the States to have an affair with a haddock.

CHIEF
Steward. Know your place.

STEWARD
Sorry Chief.

ROS
He’s gone. I don’t believe it.

CHIEF
Don’t despair madam. He won’t get far. He’ll be on the next fishing boat back to Southampton before he knows it. Taking advantage of the system like that.

ROS
Jealous? I’ll give him jealous. Just wait until he gets back. He’ll regret the day he bought that ticket, I can tell you.

CHIEF
A small drink perhaps to calm the nerves? Scotch on the rocks perhaps?

ROS
Thank you captain. I don’t mind if I do. And make sure there’s plenty of ice.

THEY LEAVE THE WAITING ROOM WITH THE SOUND OF SHIPS HORNS, SHOUTING CROWDS AND BRASS BANDS DROWN THEIR CONVERSATION.

FADE TO BLACK END

Aspire Trust е организација за уметност од Велика Британија, посветена на трансформирање на животните приказни на луѓето на креативен начин.

Aspire Trust е организација за уметност од Велика Британија, посветена на трансформирање на животните приказни на луѓето на креативен начин. Ни причинува задоволство да објавиме дека после неодамнешните значителни инвестиции од Советот за уметност на Англија, во моментов планираме да го создадеме „Скапоцени“: врвен културен и образовен настан во англиканската катедрала во Ливерпул, во октомври 2012 година.

„Скапоцени“ ќе претставува инспиративна, мултимедијална театарска продукција со висок квалитет, направена врз основа на приказните од Титаник. Настанот ќе вклучува продукција на настани во живо, медиумски, дигитални и образовни настани, и општествени настани низ Велика Британија и во светот, и ќе се одржи првата недела во октомври 2012-та година.

Продукцијата ќе опфати приказни, филмски снимки, звучни пејзажи, изворна музика и театар во живо, со цел да се оживее патувањето на Титаник и да се истражат приказните на луѓето погодени од трагедијата. Поставена во навистина импресивната театарска сцена на англиканската катедрала, продукцијата ќе биде едно од највизионерските и неодоливите театарски искуства на годината.

Ние развиваме врвна стратегија за интернет-технологија и технологија на игри („Digi-Treasured“) којашто гарантира изненадувачка, иновациска и врвна форма на развој на публиката и нејзино учество, какви што нема во светот. Digi-Treasured ќе им овозможи на потенцијалните учесници да нурнат не само во продукцијата, туку и да учествуваат заедно со уметниците и публиката пред, за време на настанот и по самиот настан, преку уред за виртуелна реалност на интернет. Ова ќе биде од посебен интерес за луѓето кои не се во состојба да присуствуваат на самиот настан поради географските или временските разлики.

Во потрага сме по 12 (дванаесет) меѓународни партнери коишто се заинтересирани за можноста да работат заедно. Партнери може да бидат невладини организации, организации за уметност, училишта, претпријатија за информатичка и комуникациска технологија од приватниот сектор, универзитети: секој што е заинтересиран да учествува виртуелно во еден од најголемите настани за јавен настап во Велика Британија годинава.

Tips for Business Start Ups: 3 blindingly obvious things about the arts business: ideas, experiences and immortality.

What do you actually do, many people ask of Aspire. Do you provide products or services? Services or products? What do you sell? someone asked insistently this week when we were part of a trade mission to Skopje in Macedonia.

After some spinning around of the options – tickets? consultancies? projects? It occurred to me that we do all and none of things. No, what we sell are ideas. As simple and complex as that: ideas.

And we sell them to audiences, participants, staff, funders, project holders and stakeholders, past present and future. it’s not even as something as structured and regulated as knowledge or know-how although that’s part of the picture. No, It’s ideas. Widgets we are not.

The difficulty in selling ideas is that they’re difficult to demonstrate to people and say, there you are, there’s an idea. Would you like to buy it? We have neither have catalogues nor a website which advertises stuff we can sell on in a clear unambiguous way. An idea may as frequently be present on the back of a fag packet as it is in a business plan. Many of the better ones don’t even make it onto the fag packet.

Annoyingly for the accountants amongst us, ideas cannot be pinned down, measured or assessed with much confidence about their economic viability. Ideas are a bit like thought bubbles which lead to further thoughts, which lead to actions which lead to consequences –some beneficial and worthwhile, others unexpected and unwelcome.

We may –and do –produce many things over a year – but given the nature of the arts, these are frequently ephemeral, may just last for a few minutes or hours and may have taken many weeks or months of preparation for that big moment of arts production – when whoof! Its all gone in the flash of an eye, the curtain has come down, the houselights gone up and you’re left looking at a bare stage going, is that all there is?

The notion of arts as service is equally unreliable. Good arts activities will lead to personal experiences which are memorable, transferrable and irreversible. Once you participate in a workshop for example, you may not like it – but you can’t un-do the experience and you can’t take it back to the retailer complaining that you don’t like the colour, that it doesn’t fit or that you were given it by mistake by your grand-aunt. An arts workshop is for life, not just for Christmas. It’s a service you don’t always know what you’re going to be getting from it.

So, the products fade quickly and cost a small fortune to put together; the services may be modest and last for a few hours on a wet Tuesday afternoon in a school in Ellesmere Port.

But what they alll have in common is that the ideas that drives this economy lead to fundamental and vital experiences – learning, fun, play, entertainment, reflection, friendship, connection, love, humour and bewonderment.

Oh, and perhaps even immortality on a good day: a big claim for any business, to be sure, but one which ranks up there with the best of all human aspirational activity.

A Waiting Story: Little Red Riding Hood in the Macedonian Forest

In the time before Red Riding Hood got betrayed by a Wolf in Grandma’s clothing, the young girl would quiz her elderly relative about her habits and whereabouts. Some would say that this was the cause of her early demise but others dispute this telling of the fable.

Why do you cook toffee apples granny? Why is your house made of gingerbread? Why do you go walking in a forest? Is it for the peace and quiet?
Hardly, dear, you can hear trains and cars and city bustle. A call to prayers from a nearby mosque sounds like a wolf weeping but that’s no reason to walk in the forest.

Is it for the Fresh air and invigorating atmosphere?
Upto a point my dear: until the logging trucks drive by and the fumes wash over as you sit by the roadside, slightly blackened from the sooty deposits. So that’s no reason to walk in the forest.

Is it for exercise and maintaining a healthy body?
That may be fine dear, as long as you haven’t got knees which give you grief and buckle every step of the way. That’s no reason to walk in the forest.

Do you commune with nature, then? asked Little riding Hood impatiently. Or perhaps even yourself?

If you stood still long enough, it might be possible to commune with anything, but to walk in the forest you have to keep on walking: stumbling cursing sweating breathing so much, there’s not a lot of communing to be done. That’s no reason to walk in the forest.

Is it to get around the next corner then? asked Little Red Riding Hood sarcastically.

Ah, smiled her elderley relative, that is an answer. There’s always another next corner, another bend to get around, a hillock to navigate, there’s just another view to catch before you turn around and do the same journey but in reverse order.

So that’s why you go for a walk in the forest, Granny? she asked with a faux impression of relief.

Yes, my dear, that’s the reason to walk in the forest: to retrace your steps. I walk in the forest in order to go around in circles.

And enough of the prying questions! True to her word, Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother – who had her own genetic stock of impatience – stepped back, sprung the latch from the pantry and out leapt a huge brown wolf, scantily dressed in grandma’s clothing who proceeded to devour her then and there, lock stock and barrel. And that, dear reader, was the end of Little Red Riding Hood and her inquisitive questions.

RIP Lanternhouse, Cumbria. Lest we forget.

Like a cantakerous old Uncle, I’ll remember Lanternhouse in Cumbria as a somewhat distant relative – but whose influence over my professional growing up was always keenly felt: hovering over my shoulder, whispering exhortations, yelling out criticisms and the ocassionally deranged epiphet which caused the rest of us in the extended community arts family to look at each other in that modern, knowing way. Uncle John was clearly not on form we might mutter; he’s seen better days someone else would offer.

What we shouldn’t forget that without Uncle John, we would not be stood where we are now. Sometimes the shoulders of the giants we stand on start to tremble– and its at that point we’re obliged to stand up straight and take the load off them rather than castigate them for not being who they have been, and for what they’re not doing any longer.

Farewell Lanternhouse and everyone who was fortunate to benefit from your lights. They’ll continue to shine into the darkness of this recession long after the politicians who put you there have faded into miserable obscurity.

If you have a memory of Lanternhouse – or indeed any of the arts companies that are now fading away in the cultural freeze of this recession, please feel free to send them in and we’ll post them up here.

From Paul Kleiman:

Lanternhouse magical moment: a beautiful midsummer’s evening concert, with the band starting in the streets of the town, a tower of instruments and bells, and at the climax, a hot-air balloon flying right over the top of the tower. (the balloon was pure coincidence!!)

For an ongoing list of companies MIA click here.

Lest we forget: dear departed arts and culture organisations who won’t be remembered in despatches (unless we remind people)

As the recession continues its grip on arts companies, small businesses and sole traders up and down the country, its noticeable that many of them are slowly disappearing without a murmur. We don’t think that’s a fitting way to say farewell to those many organisations who have contributed to our national cultural health – whether they’ve been around for 1, 10 or 50 years.

If you’d like to commemorate any arts organisation’s demise, please let us know here and we’ll compile a list of unfortunate souls who didn’t make out of the credit crunch, recession or economic downturn or whatever it’s called today. We’ll make a list which we’ll send onto the relevant organisations (local authorities, arts funders, charities and so on) to put them in the picture of who we’ve lost. If you can add details of a website, numbers of jobs lost, matched funding opportunities missed – and other useful, public quantitative data – that would be great too.

In memoriam:

A-Foundation, Liverpool

Activ8 Success, Birkenhead

Aspire Trust and Aspire Creative Enterprises

Audiences Central

Brewery Theatre, Taunton.

Contemporary Urban Centre (CUC), Liverpool

Durham City Art

The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs

Flambard Press

Foursight Theatre Company

Jazz Action

Lanternhouse, Cumbria

Matthew Street Festival *gone but not forgotten, even though some of us would love to forget it and all it stood for”

Pacific Road Arts Centre, Birkenhead

Pele Productions

Quicksilver Theatre, London. Lost the funding after 34 successful years.

7 Sefton Libraries

Theatre Writing Partnership

Urban Strawberry Lunch

Wolstenholme Creative Space

Whilst other organisations are not yet extinct, the combination of funding cuts at national and local levels is putting them under immense strain. Many organisations have seen massive staff cut backs or remaining staff giving their time for free in order to save the long term health of the company. Their efforts should not go un-noticed.

More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17536195

5 Stanislavskian tips for teachers: role play made easy

1. Characters have objectives. This is expressed through the use of an active and transitive verb eg kick off gracefully.

2. Superobjectives  link objectives through a line of action.’ eg kick off gracefully then retire to the bar to recuperate.

3. In analyzing an action, the actor answers three questions, ‘What do I (the character) do?’ ‘Why do I (the character) do it?’ and ‘How do I (the character) do it?’ eg what on earth possessed me to kick off, go to the bar and then end up having a full day of assessment?

4. Truth on stage is different from truth in real life. Just because you are acting a full day of assessment in role, does not mean that is what you are actually doing.

5. The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process imagination plays by far the greatest part. So, an act of assessment would be much better accompanied by acts of fanciful daydreamings. E,g this school should be closed down… But would be so much more effective if it was placed on the top of a mountain.

The Tuesday Rant: how the arts sector is being shafted by parts of the public sector who should know better.

Dear local authority,

It has come to our attention that you are increasingly awarding tenders for arts projects to universities whose turnover is a zillion times higher than the value of that tender.

Do you not realise that you are undermining the sector you claim to represent?

Dear university, why do you insist on putting students on public projects which effectively takes the bread out of local artists mouths? Do you not realise you are shooting the local arts economy in the head every time you place an unqualified graduate into an arts project?  Would you accept student doctors diagnosing your children’s health if they’d done just one year in medical school?

Dear local authority, why are you complicit with this act under the guise of getting ‘value of for money?’ Old mill owners got value for money by exploiting their workers to within an inch of their lives.  Why are you contributing to this outdated industrial practice? And more importantly, why are you allowed to keep getting away with it?

Maybe you’ll appreciate our case once all your arts workers have lost their jobs because of your funding cuts and come back to the sector to look for work… Only to find there is a skeleton of a sector left because it’s been shafted by universities who place unqualified students on projects which should be run by qualified local professionals. And offer access to their so called ‘premium spaces’ in order to claw back some of the massive capital deficit they’ve built up in ‘investing’ in the local economy. 

Dear local authority, dear university, please don’t coming looking to the sector to dig you out of a cultural desert in a few years time. The responsibility for that emptiness will be yours and the students who have long flown the city.