“After a successful pilot that saw [Scottish Ballet] work with nine schools in Glasgow and Perth, the Safe to Be Me project will be rolled out to primary schools across Scotland in 2019. So far, the initiative has delivered 40 workshops, reaching nearly 2000 pupils and helping children aged 9 to 11 understand and talk about racism, homophobia, bigotry, ableism and transphobia.” – The Herald (Scotland)
Tag: sj
How Jackie Sibblies Drury Helped Clear The Path For Today’s Wave Of Experimental Black Playwrights
“If it seems lately there’s been a surfeit of Black playwrights tackling race onstage in formally inventive ways, it can be partly traced to Drury’s work at the beginning of the decade.” – American Theatre
Baltimore Museum Of Art Asks The City’s Communities What They Want To See
“On Wednesday, the BMA revealed plans to send an updated version of [a] 1937 questionnaire to about 300 local schools, nonprofits, and other organizations. The results will inform future exhibitions, acquisitions, and programs at the BMA, according to the museum’s director, Christopher Bedford.” – ARTnews
The ‘Goddess Of Democracy’: The 30-Year Afterlife Of The Statue That Symbolized The Tienanmen Square Demonstrations
The original statue, modeled on the Statue of Liberty, was crushed by a tank when the People’s Liberation Army wiped out the multi-day protest in Beijing on June 4, 1989. But every so often a replica appears, particularly in Hong Kong. – Global Voices
Why Anna Deavere Smith Created ‘Notes From The Field’, Her Documentary Play About The School-To-Prison Pipeline
“I was in hair and makeup next to a [Nurse Jackie] castmate, British actress Eve Best, and I told her I couldn’t get out of my mind a news story I had just heard: that a kid in Baltimore, my hometown, had peed in a water cooler at school and they were going to send him to jail. Eve responded, in her fabulous accent, ‘Oh, well, whatever happened to mischief?’ That was when it struck me: rich kids get mischief, poor kids get pathologized and incarcerated.” – Literary Hub
San Francisco Museums Offer Free Admission This Summer To All City Residents Receiving Public Assistance
“The program,” called San Francisco Museums for All and involving 15 institutions, “will run June 1 to September 2, with no limit to the number of institutions or times eligible participants can visit.” – Hyperallergic
Unhampered Access: Libraries Are Bringing Their Children’s Programs To Laundromats
“Laundry literacy programs have recently sprung up all over the country, … and thousands of children have benefited from the chance to hone their early-literacy skills in an everyday setting, often with their parents participating, often on a regular basis, and always for free. Can’t these children simply go to a branch library instead? Not necessarily.” – American Libraries
Should Rio De Janeiro Commemorate Its History Of Slavery Or Move On From It? No One Seems To Be Able To Decide
“For some, commemorating slavery is a vital part of addressing contemporary injustices. For others, it is a distraction [from those injustices]” and other pressing problems. The debate is playing out (again) over the remains of the wharf where slave ships arrived. – The Economist
No One Can See Or Touch These Objects But Ordained Ethiopian Priests. The British Museum *Might* Take Them Out Of Storage And Loan Them To Ethiopia
The objects are called tabots, they’re plaques meant to respresent the Ark of the Covenant, and their presence is what makes an Ethiopian church a sacred space. The British Museum has 11 of them, most of them looted by soldiers after the 1868 Battle of Maqdala; since no layperson may see them (including museum curators), they’re kept in a locked basement. The government of Ethiopia has requested their return; a spokesperson says “the suggestion of a long-term loan of the tabots may be discussed.” – The Art Newspaper
Theatre For Deaf Kids And (Especially) Their Hearing Parents
Director Paula Garfield, mother of two deaf children and deaf herself, created Horrible Histories: Dreadful Deaf “just as much for hearing parents as for their deaf children. It’s a chance for parents and children to experience a BSL-led show together, and for parents in particular (who Garfield explains are often ‘terrified’ when they discover their child is deaf) to see deaf actors happily go about their business, utterly at home in the spotlight.” – The Guardian