“As the local officials who approved the project pay tribute to the boost to international tourism in the region, it seems that Italy has learned to embrace Christo’s monumental, ephemeral brand of sculpture. But against the instincts of an artist who claims not to understand computers, the Floating Piers will have a digital afterlife. The selfie-friendly installation has generated 130,000 hashtags on social media, while Google is due to put 360-degree images of the work online through its Street View function.”
Tag: 07.05.16
How Louisiana Killed Its Film Industry
“Louisiana’s once-booming film industry – dubbed “Hollywood South” – was off by as much as 90 per cent this past year, according to the Louisiana Film Entertainment Association. The drop is all attributed to the state’s decision to wind down its generous incentives last July, scaring off movie makers.”
Enrollment In UK Schools Arts Education Is Way Down. Here’s Why
Labour MP Catherine McKinnell, who tabled the debate, claimed that poorer children have been hit hardest by the introduction of the EBacc. She pointed to Creative Industries Federation figures showing that schools with a high number of disadvantaged children have been more than twice as likely to withdraw arts subjects than schools with low numbers.
What A Missouri Music Store Can Teach Theatres About Community-Building
For theatre to become a “front porch” space that welcomes diverse perspectives, we as theatre professionals must trust our communities to engage with challenging material, and we must trust ourselves to hear and act upon opinions that challenge our ideas.
Can You Build Communities Around E-Books? Here’s Emily Books
“In 2011, Emily Books caught the wave of electronic publication and molded it to fit the needs of their ideal reader. They brought out-of-print titles, or books by passed-over female authors, back to life. At first, Gould said, they had just wanted to solve a problem fomented by commercial publishing’s need to turn a profit.”
Study: Music Lessons Help Students Focus, Tune Out Distractions
Belgian researchers report 9- to 12-year-olds who had been taking regular music lessons displayed “enhanced cognitive inhibitory control” compared to a group of same-age peers. Their study, in the journal Musicae Scientiae, adds to the already large body of evidence showing cognitive benefits of musical training.
Talking With Your Hands Makes You Learn Things Faster (We Knew It!)
“Thanks to René Descartes and a pantheon of very serious dead white men, Western intellectual history has long maintained that thought is something that happens only in the kingdom of the brain; it’s just the body’s job, as educator Ken Robinson famously quipped, to bring the brain from meeting to meeting. But your hands suggest otherwise.”
How They Train Conductors At The World’s Best Conductor School
“The Sibelius Academy has some features that are unique in the world,” says Jasper Parrott, a leading artist agent in London who regularly visits leading conservatories to watch emerging talent. “It offers opportunities to work with an orchestra, its own very competent student orchestra. And thanks to Finland’s abundance of good orchestras, Sibelius Academy conducting students get professional opportunities even before they graduate.”
How Screen Culture Is Killing Dance (But Maybe Not)
“This new normal wherein everyone carries a small screen with them everywhere starts to have a grim, dystopic cast to it. It’s largely responsible for the loss of casual contact with the unfamiliar and the weird, with that which we did not choose, and—more to the point of my pet project—it doesn’t help bring anyone into contact with dance who wasn’t already interested in it. But then, surprisingly, it does; the screen also emerges as a vehicle that can introduce casual viewers to concert dance.”
Syrian Refugees’ Adaptation Of ‘The Trojan Women’ Arrives In Brexiting Britain
“The play Queens of Syria is a chance to put a human face on the worst humanitarian disaster since the second world war. … The play, directed by Zoe Lafferty, has changed over time as the cast has shrunk to 13 women” – from up to 50 during the original workshops in the Suyrian refugee community in Amman – “and personal circumstances have moved on.”