On 25 November, 2009, the Globe and Mail reported the following story:

Cultural Olympiad artists say they’re being muzzled.

The arts-festival portion of the 2010 Olympics risks sliding into a squabble over free speech, as artists who signed on to be part of the Cultural Olympiad learn of a clause in their contracts that prohibits negative comments about the Games and its corporate sponsors.

Four days later, the story appears to have been removed from the Globe and Mail website. Attempts to access the archived story generate an error message. CTVglobemedia is the official media partner for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

The Marsha Lederman-authored piece was still online at ctvolympics.ca as of November 29 at 10:00am.

The rest of the text of the piece is below:

Some artists contacted by The Globe and Mail, along with organizers of other Olympic and Commonwealth Games cultural events, called the requirement unusual and disturbing. Several artists didn’t realize they had signed such an undertaking.

“This is Canada. I can’t believe that we’re being asked to limit our comments to the press,” said Andrew Laurenson, artistic director of Vancouver’s Radix Theatre, whose critical comments about arts funding and the Olympics have drawn the attention of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

Laurenson’s Radix Theatre group is to be part of HIVE, an innovative theatrical event involving 12 local companies performing in a single, huge location as audience members move from show to show.

He sent out a newsletter in September that decried cuts in British Columbia government funding for arts and culture and addressed the perception that “massive overrides in Olympic expenditures” were at least partly to blame.

“Good news: HIVE 3 is coming,” he wrote. “Bad news: It involves Olympic money.”

A VANOC representative called HIVE’s producer after the newsletter was sent out, and the producer subsequently sent an e-mail titled Gentle Reminder to everyone involved in HIVE about the need to keep commentary separate from the logo of the Cultural Olympiad. A HIVE 3 image – including the Cultural Olympiad logo – had been sandwiched between Laurenson’s good-news/bad-news comments.

The controversial clause in the VANOC contract signed by artists involved in the three-year, $20-million Cultural Olympiad festival reads: “The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.”

The Olympics have previously faced criticism over possible restrictions on public demonstrations during the Games and the police questioning of Olympic critics.

Other VANOC contracts contain similar clauses, and the Cultural Olympiad’s program director, Robert Kerr, says it is standard practice for an event of this scale.

Artists say otherwise and appear to have backing from organizers of similar events. “There was nothing from Salt Lake in which we in any way censored or shackled [our artists] through their work of art or in anything they wanted to say about the Olympics,” said Ray Grant, artistic director for the Cultural Olympiad at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002.

“If this is a trend, it’s a bit of a dangerous trend for the arts.”

Nor was there any such language for artists participating in the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

“I cannot recall anything which forbade artists from saying anything negative about the Games,” Andrew Bleby, executive producer of performing arts for Melbourne’s Cultural Program, wrote in an e-mail. “Our artists certainly signed no such thing.”

One HIVE participant interpreted the VANOC response to Laurenson’s letter this way: “Are you in or are you out? Don’t be in [the Cultural Olympiad] and then stab us in the back, basically.”

Kerr said the newsletter did raise eyebrows at VANOC. “We were a little surprised, but we didn’t put any handcuffs on anybody. It was more a question of, is the artist still comfortable being a part of it,” he said.

Kerr insists VANOC is not interested in controlling artistic content and points out that many of the works involved in the Cultural Olympiad have dealt with difficult subjects.

Indeed, a visual-art exhibition that was part of the 2008 Cultural Olympiad featured a restaging of an infamous anti-Olympic protest photo. When asked about the photograph in a January, 2008, interview, Kerr was emphatic.

“These are artists expressing their views and observations and I think we have to embrace that,” he told The Globe. “We can’t shy away and try to put a lid on things.”

In an interview last week, Kerr again stressed his belief in artistic freedom, but said there has to be some control.

“If someone were to get up in the middle of a production and all of a sudden start coming off on an anti-Olympic rant, well that would be completely antithetical to the context of the work and the Games and the presenter,” he said, later adding: “We’re not asking anyone to promote our sponsors, but that they not come out and disrespect our sponsors.”

Along with two colleagues, Elizabeth Booth and Charles Bladen, I have edited a collection of papers from our Olympic Legacy conference held last year at the University of Greenwich. The collection contains seven substantial, refereed papers on Olympic legacy issues, including information about London 2012, Beijing 2008, Torino 2006, the Cultural Olympiad, volunteering and an overview of the meanings of ‘olympic legacy’.  You can download the publication for free by clicking on the image below.  If you would like a hard copy for your library or reference use, please leave a comment on this post and I will get in touch.

THIS JUST IN: Large Spiral Mound was not selected to receive funding from the Arts Council and the Cultural Olympiad. Needless to say it is disappointing. It is worth noting that though we were not selected, what began as a mere notion, whim or fancy some years ago has matured and developed in to a very real and exciting possibility. This would not have happened without the competition’s support. So many thanks to whoever selected the project for short listing in the first place!

We are now exploring other ways and means to create this work, outside of the Olympic context. If you would like to help or get involved in any way please contact me through this blog or email me at airstrip1@live.com

Allez Oop!

LMS.

Desert Crossings celebrates a South West natural treasure. The Jurassic Coast is recognised as a World Heritage Site not merely for its stunning scenery; the exposed rocks along the coastline afford us a unique view into the Earth’s history, going back hundreds of millions of years to way before the dinosaurs. The person responsible for uncovering many of the stories hidden in these rocks is the amazing paleontologist Mary Anning. Born in Dorset in 1799, Anning made her first discovery when she was just twelve! She found the first complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur ever discovered. She went on to make many other important fossil finds along the Jurassic Coast, which revolutionised natural history. Until her time it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. Taken all together, Mary Anning’s discoveries became key pieces of evidence for extinction, setting the stage for a real understanding of the history of life on Earth.

***

A big thank you to all off you: the many, many people who are backing Desert Crossings! We’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedback, which makes us feel that this is a truly global project that truly belongs to the South West.

Here are a few of the many positive comments left in support of Desert Crossings:

“Desert Crossings is a most impressive and fascinating … This brilliant idea reminds us of the present fragility of our world and the urgent need to protect the earth and all living things … Desert Crossings is sure to be a success.”

“I have to put my support behind Desert Crossings as a genuinely cross cultural project on a scale which dance can rarely aspire to and involving both professional artists and the widest community in a range of experiences of art and life across two continents.”

“I’m most excited by State of Emergency’s project Desert Crossings.”

“What speaks to me is that Desert Crossings builds bridges between the two continents and promises to engage communities in a global conversation about universal hopes and dreams of a better world. More of this dialogue is sorely needed and Desert Crossing seems a perfect example to create greater awareness. It gets my vote!”

“Desert Crossings definitely.”

“Desert crossings sounds fantastic, for the cross continent/cross culture element … I think this one has the greatest potential for impact in regard to raising global awareness of what kind of world we would really like to live in. Could be really REALLY beautiful I think!”

You can read more comments on the Artists taking the lead website and maybe leave your own comment, if you feel Desert Crossings’ message of welcoming the world needs to be heard. Check out the information about Desert Crossings on this blog, read the About Desert Crossings page.

Inspired by the Calgary 1988 Olympics, the home of the 2010 Games is about to play host to a contest that organisers worry might get out of control.

After all, the stakes don’t get any higher for a poet than when there’s a chance to get paid.

Haiku Idol debuts in Whistler on Saturday September 12 2009, to mark the 6 month countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The live, high-speed, poetry-writing contest  involves one bag of money, one thesaurus, and 20 writers ranging from the celebrated to the obscure, who will test their mettle, with hopefully, a minimum of spittle, when they’re given one torn-out page from the thesaurus, one pencil, one notebook and one half hour as everyone else heads to the bar, to scribe a poem, of any length and any style.

When the bell rings, its pencils down and mikes up, as they take the spotlight to read, and reveal what the crucible created. The winner takes the money, and runs.

Due to limited seating, potential poetry-slammers and audience members are advised to purchase their tickets in advance at www.theviciouscircle.ca.

The Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, September 11-13 2009 presents He Read, She Read: The Battle of the Book Clubs, followed by Haiku Idol, Saturday September 12, 7:30pm, Players Chophouse, Whistler Creekside, $25

10th July 2009

Creative Sparks at the Ironworks for London 2012 Open Weekend

Blaenavon Ironworks will form the dramatic backdrop for a programme of unique, site specific community performances as part of the London 2012 Open Weekend supported by BP – a series of events across the country enabling access to excellence in the arts, culture and sport and celebrating three years to go until the London 2012 Olympic Games.

A FREE event will take place between 12 and 3pm on Saturday 25th July during which audience members will be able to enjoy performances by TSP voices – a community choir based in the Trevethin, St Cadoc’s and Penygarn area, Shift – a contemporary youth dance group based in Forgeside Hall and members of the Hillside Primary After-School Dance Class. Performances have been inspired by the Cultural Olympiad theme of Cauldrons and Furnaces.

The event offers participants the opportunity to develop their skills by performing in a challenging and exciting setting, showcasing their artistic and creative talents in the local community. Each of the groups performing in the event has been developed by Head for Arts, the community arts organisation for the Heads of the Valleys. The event is also supported by Cadw and the Arts Council of Wales.

The London 2012 Open Weekend created by London 2012 is supported by BP, the Premier Partner of the Cultural Olympiad. London 2012 Open Weekend will take place every year in July.

London 2012 Open Weekend enables everyone to share in the excitement of the Games, be inspired to get involved, unleash their creativity and try something new by accessing excellence at events across sport, art and culture taking place over the weekend. The Head for Arts event joins hundreds of other London 2012 Open Weekend events – from family discover sports days and athletics opportunities to flower festivals and drawing classes, exploring museum archives and pottery, there is an opportunity for everyone. Full listings, including Head for Arts events, at www.london2012.com/openweekend

Kate Strudwick, Creative Project Manager Head for Arts says: “The London 2012 Open Weekend provides a great opportunity for us to give a sneak preview of some of our plans for the next few years. We plan to develop work around the Cultural Olympiad theme of Cauldrons and Furnaces which, next year, will feed in to a community play as part of the Ebbw Vale Eisteddfod celebrations as well as contributing towards smaller events in the intervening years leading up to the Games. All of this will culminate in a really spectacular production being staged at the Blaenavon Ironworks site in 2012.

We hope that audience members of all ages will be inspired by the performances delivered on the 25th July and that they too will be encouraged to “unleash their creativity” and get involved in Heads for Arts projects in the future”

London 2012 is the first Organising Committee to create such a wide platform of public participation in the Games, taking the values, ideals and benefits of the Games to people and communities like never before. Opportunities such as London 2012 Open Weekend are encouraging participation and recognising the contribution people, places and projects are making to the success of the 2012 Games.

This year’s London 2012 Open Weekend follows the success of last year’s event, which launched the Cultural Olympiad and enabled over 700,000 people to become involved with the Cultural Olympiad.

Shape, the UK’s leading disability arts organisation, have developed a free resource pack aimed at encouraging new ways of engaging with the London Olympics, particularly for disabled audiences and artists.

In conjunction, they’re also running the My Games Competition. Tell Shape what the Olympics mean to you and you could win a games console…

Visit the website for full details of both the resource and the competition.

Artists of all kinds from across the UK are being challenged to use the nation as a blank canvas for twelve inspirational commissions that will showcase our creativity to the world, as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Submissions can be in any art form by new or experienced artists. The requirements for entries are: to be original, be inspired by their location and leave a legacy for communities beyond 2012.

So come on all you Kent artists –  what inspires you about where you live or work and can you convince the Arts Council to choose you in less than 400 words?!

More details from www.artiststakingthelead.org.uk

The ACE Cultural Olympiad project needs help getting more music applications as the word ‘artists’ in the programme title has apparently put off musical organisations because of the strong association with visual arts.

The deadline for applications is 29 May. Shortlisted applicants will receive £5,000 to develop their ideas into a proposal and they winning projects will be funded by the commission fund for the programme.

For a look at Frayling’s outgoing comments (tha’ts his comments upon leaving as chair of Arts Council England) see  http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/23349/aces-frayling-attacks-planning-of-cultural What do you think?

Get involved especially if your arts group does movement.. but opening up could also mean opening up a new space or a rehearsal- so don’t rule out music. Contact the Cultural Programmer, Paul Kaynes.

If you’re already planning an event for that weekend – or have an idea that could be part of the fun – why not send a brief email to: culturalolympiadwm@artscouncil.org.uk

The Whistler Chamber of Commerce went looking last month for a creative writer to develop a series of 2010 Business Success stories, and they found Rebecca Wood Barrett.

Wood Barrett, a founding member of the Vicious Circle, is a local writer and filmmaker, a two-time finalist in the 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown, documentary producer, the winner of the 2008 Whistler Select Writing Awards’ Postcard Jam contest and the 2008 Sea to Sky Literary Contest for Long Fiction. Most recently, she’s been working on her UBC Creative Writing MFA, wrangling a toddler, and launching the first green circle creative writing seminar series for Whistler, the Feeding the Seed program.

All of which to say she is eminently qualified to tell stories about local folk who got a leg up from the Olympic juggernaut.

The first story that came to mind was about the Whistler Writers Group. That piece was submitted as an example of her writing, and is reproduced here. It’s longer than a blog-attention-span might typically last, but worth every minute. 

This fall, Wood Barrett will teach a workshop on Writing a One-Page Screenplay, at the Whistler Readers & Writers Festival.

No Boundaries

by Rebecca Wood Barrett

On an icy night in February, a hush falls over a Whistler theatre stuffed beyond capacity. Extra chairs have been squeezed onto the end of rows, and the opening presenter warns us that if there is a fire, everyone must leave in an orderly fashion. The audience laughs. They inch to the edge of their seats, eager for the presentation to begin.

But this is no show about hucking off cliffs, or shredding the gnar. There is no ski-bum speaker to regale us with tales of how they survived an avalanche, won a gold medal against all odds, or lived off-the-grid for two years in a van in Lot 4, chasing the powder dream. You won’t hear a pumping soundtrack, no tortured vocals by disaffected youth. This is no filmmaker showdown, no wet-T shirt contest, no homage to the extreme, featuring risky stunts in the mountains on boards or skis or bikes.

This is literature, baby. And it’s sold out.

If you didn’t snap up your tickets early, you can be forgiven. A literary reading and Q&A⎯even with a CBC icon⎯is not your typical high-octane Whistler spectacle. But it seems that the word-nerds have dug the spike of their literary crampons in and secured traction.

The apparent overnight success has in fact been germinating since 2003, when the Celebration 2010: Whistler Arts Festival and Whistler Arts Council granted seed money to the Whistler Writers’ Group to put on a literary event. The first plantings of the Literary Leanings Reading Series evolved in the attic space at a Creekside restaurant, where writers read to an audience of fifty. Along with up-and-coming authors Nancy Lee (Dead Girls), Lee Henderson (The Man Game), and Adam Lewis Schroeder (Kingdom of Monkeys), our own local writers read from their stories to an appreciative, but all-too-small audience.

Stella Harvey, founder of the non-profit Whistler Writers’ Group and organizer of the event, credits the annual injection of Olympic cultural funding as raising the profile of the literary arts by attracting quality authors to Whistler. Over the years, headliners have included Patrick Lane, Lorna Crozier, Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, Ivan E. Coyote, Noah Richler, Warren MacDonald, David Gilmour, John Valliant and Annette Lapointe. Harvey says “It also gives local writers from the Sea to Sky a chance to share the stage with their better known counterparts, to showcase their talents when they wouldn’t otherwise have this opportunity. The local writers come from Squamish to Pemberton, some of whom include Stephen Vogler, Lisa Richardson, Jude Goodwin and Pam Barnsley.”

Seven years on, Literary Leanings 2009 has grown in stature and become a must-see event at the month-long arts festival⎯which has now morphed into the Whistler Winter Arts Festival, co-presented by the Whistler Arts Council and Cultural Olympiad Vancouver 2010. The Whistler Winter Arts Festival was created in 2003 to build capacity and create excitement for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Harvey says, “The funding allows us to bring in a big name. It makes for a marketable show, something unique and different, and of a quality that people will come and watch. Now people want to attend a literary event⎯it put us on the map.”

The Big Name this year is Joseph Boyden, fresh from his Giller Prize win for his novel Through Black Spruce. Boyden’s wife and author Amanda Boyden (Babylon Rolling) and Steven Galloway (The Cellist of Sarajevo) join him onstage as Shelagh Rogers of CBC Radio moderates the discussion and interviews each writer. Later, the show will be broadcast to the country on national radio.

Take a step back, and you might ask why this cultural convergence, taking place in the exquisite venue of the Squamish Lillooet Cultural Centre, is being funded by the world’s greatest sporting event? What do Canadian Joseph Boyden, who is Metis, and Amanda Boyden, who is American and a former trapeze artist, have anything to do with the pinnacle tournament of winter sports? What can Galloway, who is bookish in glasses and with a self-deprecating wit, offer to the 2010 Olympics? No world records for speed skating or ski jumping are being broken tonight.

However, there is something strange and serendipitous happening, and the audience senses it. Rogers asks Galloway a question about how he came to write his book. In it, a cellist plays in a bomb crater in Sarajevo for 22 days to commemorate the same number of people who died one day during the siege. “We have a tendency,” Galloway says, “in North America in particular to view art as a luxury item, things like music or books as almost a frivolity. But the way Europeans look at it, and kind of the way I look at it, is that one of the points of art and music is to remind us of our innate humanity.”

The audience nods, as though Galloway has expressed a collective thought⎯yes, this is why we are here, listening to these authors read.

Is it possible then, that the three pillars of the modern Olympic Movement⎯sport, culture and environment⎯are the combined values that honour our very humanness? That the link between the desire to race beyond physical boundaries in the extremes of winter, is not so far from the hunger of writers to explore, through literature, the edges of our humanity in times of extreme duress?

Perhaps the audience seems to think so, for at the end of the evening the applause lasts a long time.

In the great Native hall after the show is over, the audience members line up to buy the authors’ books, and ask them for their autographs. In one year’s time, the world will come to Whistler to watch our athletes, and at the same time honour our artists, the core of our community.

An article that I have written with a colleague has just been published in the journal Cultural Trends.  You can view the article’s abstract by clicking here.  You will need the appropriate permissions to read the full text.   The article is based on a review of more than 50 documents from the grey literature relating to the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games in London.

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Stella Harvey’s words of thanks appear in this week’s local papers,  hailing the success of the Between the Sheets Literary Leanings event on February 18. Kudos have been pouring in.

Huge props to the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, The Four Seasons, the Whistler Arts Council, the Holiday Inn, Armchair Books, The Pique, The Question, The Vicious Circle board, and the public.

Check out some of Joern Rhode’s pictures from the evening.

For word-nerds and lit-fans, the Vicious Circle will be defending its grant request for the 2009 Whistler Readers and Writers Festival before Council on Tuesday, March 3, at 2:45pm, at Millennium Place.  Feel free to cheer them on.

My musical palate is very eclectic.

And I will tell you this much – there was one concert I was really looking forward to that was highlighted by the 2009 Cultural Olympiad and it was this guy… Shad.

Partly because he’s from London, ON where I just spent 9 years of my life living before coming out here… but because he is a powerful, smooth, implicit lyrists.  And an even better performer!  I volunteered the night of his concert, on purpose.  Because I knew I wanted to see him perform live.  And wow!  He brought the house down!

Personally, hip-hop – and I mean TRUE hip-hop, to its very core – is a dying art.  With very few greats left out there (shout-outs to K-OS and Common), he has given this art form… a facelift.  It’s so refreshing to find something wonderful in the music industry these days!

And don’t read this wrong – Cultural Olympiad is doing what they can here… showcasing some of Canada’s up & coming talent.  But dear lawd have mercy!!  I have to question what some of these so-called ‘arteests’ getting up there.  Ugh.  Make that a double Ugh.  And then – I see Shad play live and he rocks it out the house!

Now he’s touring the US and its about time too.  I know, I know… I’m Canadian… LOL! But this guy deserves exposure!!!

So here are his tour dates… and I would highly recommend that you check him out if he is in a city near you… trust me – he doesn’t disappoint!!!  I know when he comes back around these parts (August) – I’ll be there!!

Shad – 2009 Tour Dates
Mar 20 – Wave, Austin, TX (SXSW)
Mar 20 – The Music Gym Patio (SXSW)
Mar 21 – SESAC Day Stage Cafe Austin Convention Center (SXSW)
Jun 26 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Pomona, California
Jun 27 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA San Francisco, California
Jun 28 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Ventura, California
Jun 30 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Phoenix, Arizona
Jul 1 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Las Cruces, New Mexico
Jul 2 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA San Antonio, Texas
Jul 5 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Dallas, Texas
Jul 7 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Indianapolis, Indiana
Jul 8 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Jul 9 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Cleveland, Ohio
Jul 10 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Toronto, Ontario
Jul 11 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Montreal, Quebec
Jul 12 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Hartford, Connecticut
Jul 14 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Washington, Washington DC
Jul 15 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Buffalo, New York
Jul 16 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Scranton, Pennsylvania
Jul 17 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Camden, New Jersey
Jul 18 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Uniondale, New York
Jul 19 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA TBD, New Jersey
Jul 21 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Boston, Massachusetts
Jul 22 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Virginia Beach, Virginia
Jul 23 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Charlotte, North Carolina
Jul 24 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Orlando, Florida
Jul 25 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Miami, Florida
Jul 26 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Tampa Bay, Florida
Jul 28 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Atlanta, Georgia
Jul 29 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Cincinnati, Ohio
Jul 30 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Jul 31 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Detroit, Michigan
Aug 1 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Chicago, Illinois
Aug 2 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Minneapolis, Minnesota
Aug 3 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA St. Louis, Missouri
Aug 4 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Kansas City, Missouri
Aug 7 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Boise, Idaho
Aug 8 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Salt Lake City, Utah
Aug 9 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Denver, Colorado
Aug 12 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Calgary, Alberta
Aug 14 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Vancouver, British Columbia
Aug 15 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Seattle, Washington
Aug 16 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Portland, Oregon
Aug 19 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Fresno, California
Aug 20 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA San Francisco, California
Aug 21 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Sacramento, California
Aug 22 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA San Diego, California
Aug 23 – VANS Warped Tour – Venue TBA Los Angeles, California

In case you didn’t know; the West Midlands’ cultural focus for the 2012 Olympiad is – dance! Woo hoo! In celebration of this, The West Midlands Leadership Group for London 2012  is organising  ‘People Dancing’ -  a programme of activity founded on the principle of encouraging mass participation in dance, as part of the region’s cultural activity leading up to London 2012.

Whether you’re a professional dancer, choreographer,dance company, student or you simply love to dance, People Dancing is for you – it’s for everybody! Building on the rich and diverse dance infrastructure that exists in the West Midlands, the aim is to get people of all ages, skills and abilities dancing across the region.

The West Midlands Leadership Group are hosting a series of events throughout the region to launch the programme, outline the resources available and explain how you can be part of this major regional dance initiative. These events are being held on the following dates:

Wednesday 25 February
1.30-3.30pm – The Courtyard, Hereford

Friday 27 February
10.30am-12.30pm – The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

Monday 2 March
10.30am-12.30pm – Stafford Gatehouse Theatre, Stafford

Wednesday 4 March
11am-1pm – Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham

For more information, please contact info@culturewm.org.uk

Midforms Festival 09 (MFF) is a 3-day Digital Culture Festival co-produced by the New Forms Media Society and presented as part of the Cultural Olympiad. MFF facilitates a curatorial design that encourages artists and participants alike to engage and discover the trans-disciplinary genres new media art has to offer.

There are two components: the main exhibition called “Shell” and the “Sound and Visual Series”.

“Shell” is a fresh concept for digital culture proliferation. Housed in the Shell are the inaugural Perl Series (custom built structures showcasing a genre of New Media Art) along with Visual Sound Lounge and roaming performance artists.

“The Sound and Visual Series” explores the edges of visual and audio design. Acclaimed electronic music producers and visual artists showcase the cutting edge in an underground dance environment. The nights include: Mosaic Sounds (Global Fusion), Techforms (Tech and Minimal) and BREAKFORMS (Breaks and HipHop).

Schedule

March 5th-7th:

Thursday March 5th:
7-10pm Opening Reception
9 pm-late Mosaic Sounds and Shell Exhibition

Friday March 6th:
1-4pm SHELL Exhibition
9 pm-late Techforms and SHELL Exhibition

Saturday March 7th:
1-4pm SHELL Exhibition
9 pm-late Breaksform and Shell Exhibition

Please see the EVENTS page for full SHELL programming and Sound and Visuals artist Line-ups

Tickets

$25 limited pre-sales
$30 there after
$75 Festival Pass

Tickets Available At:
Beat Street
Zulu Records
High Life
Club Zone

Midforms is presented by New Forms Media Society (NFMS)
General Information: (604) 728-3024

Venue:

Great Northern Way Campus
577 Great Northern Way
Vancouver, B.C.
Google Map

A Warm Welcome To Midforms09!

Midforms09 is a new media art exposé. It is a precise response to the information and technological revolution; a fantastical digitalization of our cultural makeup. The concept is to explore our constantly morphing relationship with technology and culture. Midforms09 is a pioneering post-contemporary art project that will utilize emerging media technology to articulate our cultural possibilities.

The curatorial design is set to create a dialogue around digital culture, to make digital art more accessible to the public and to amplify awareness of the art and artists.

Technology has facilitated the formation of an artistic movement not limited by geography; a socially conscious network. Midforms is an extension of this framework, a gathering hub for creative minds to network and a point of celebration in our ever-evolving cultural memes.

Deep thanks for participating and have an amazing time.

Jennifer Maksymetz
Artistic Director