Tag Archives: Julie Burros

Link Roundup! – 5/20/16

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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ARTS AND CULTURE CHIEF JULIA BURROS. / PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER CHURCHILL

ARTS AND CULTURE CHIEF JULIA BURROS. / PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER CHURCHILL

Boston Magazine has a feature examining the ups and downs of the city’s cultural planning process to date:

But goals alone do not make a plan. Certainly, the effort was enormous, the aims lofty, the motives sincere. But let’s be blunt: The key issues were identified very early on in the process. It shouldn’t take more than a year of visioning exercises—at a cost of $1.4 million, almost the same as Burros’s fiscal year 2016 annual department budget of $1.7 million—to pinpoint challenges and strengths that have been evident in the arts community for years and years. Privately, people in the arts community have been wondering when all of those lofty goals will translate into action.

The answer wasn’t forthcoming when Burros presided over a town hall meeting at Bunker Hill Community College in March. Remember: The Boston Creates team had promised that the first draft of the actual plan would be released at this meeting. But Burros simply reiterated the five goals (which now include a specific focus on equity). No action items. No timeline. No metrics. No funding stream.

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This week’s Boston Globe also has an article looking at the funding details (or lack thereof) in the draft proposal of the cultural plan:

The authors write that Walsh has made “great strides” when it comes to arts funding, proposing a $2.3 million budget for the Office of Arts and Culture in fiscal year 2017. Nevertheless, they cede that the “possibility of further increases is severely limited. The city faces increasing fiscal pressure from different sources, including statutorily limited revenue tools, rising fixed costs, underfunding of charter school reimbursement, decreasing local aid, and the growing need for a wide range of city services.”

In other words, a push for dedicated arts funding in Boston — already a highly politicized venture as City Hall must sway state legislators — must also compete against other city needs, such as education, housing, and public safety.

Burros avoided discussing funding tactics, such as potential public-private partnerships, in detail last week, saying it was too early. “The creation of the plan and the implementation of the plan are really two different things,” she said, calling the draft a “milestone.” “When we’re at the final plan and we’re announcing implementation in June, there’ll be even more specifics.”

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Link Roundup! – 10/23/15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

The Boston Globe has another article about local theatre space, this one addressing the role of Julie Burros on the issue:

But the lack of a robust public response from City Hall to recent developments has raised eyebrows. Is Burros just a figurehead, and how committed is Walsh to the arts?

“This is an opportunity for him to show he is a champion of the arts,” said Matt Wilson, the executive director of MASSCreative, a statewide advocacy group that made arts an issue in the Boston mayoral race. “We hope he seizes it.”

What people keep referencing is what Walsh’s predecessor Tom Menino did. Over two decades, Menino used his bully pulpit to get private and public partners to restore aging theaters, including the Paramount, Modern, and Opera House, which helped jumpstart the revitalization of Downtown Crossing.

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This post from The Guardian asks what theatre spaces might be like if they operated more like town squares:

But there are significant differences between the civic function of the theatres of almost 60 years ago and that of theatres in the 21st century. The days when every town thought it should have a theatre as a matter of pride, and to demonstrate how cultured it is, are long gone. Often, increasingly cash-strapped local authorities see their theatres as a drain on resources rather than an asset, and, quite rightly, they don’t see that what people really want and need is yet another revival of Private Lives. So how can those in the arts create new or better relationships with local authorities and other local partners, to ensure that the arts stay on the agenda and remain part of the conversation about who we are and how we live together?

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Link Roundup! – 4/10//15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh. (Jeremiah Robinson/mayor’s office)

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh. (Jeremiah Robinson/mayor’s office)

The WBUR ARTery featured this week’s presentation of the cities new cultural plan, Boston Creates, announced by Mayor Walsh and Julie Burros:

Boston Creates, or #BostonCreates, is the umbrella title for a 10-year plan to provide resources for the creative community, while engaging — and challenging — artists and audiences to articulate priorities for how those resources should be spent.

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The cast of How to Get Away With Murder. Photo by ABC Studios.

The cast of How to Get Away With Murder. Photo by ABC Studios.

Slate writer Aisha Harris spoke to several film and television actors of color about their experience during the recent “diversity boom” in Hollywood:

There’s also the question of what diversity actually means to casting directors. Wise characterizes the goal as “digestible diversity,” or a certain type of non-white look: Asian actors with typically American or European features (like freckles, she suggests); black women with a lighter skin complexion. You’ll go into an “all ethnicities” casting call, she tells me, and “without fail, you’ll wonder who got that [part], and it’ll be someone German (whose father is kind of half-black).” This perspective seems to have borne itself out in at least one particularly notable—and racist—casting call for the upcoming N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, which made headlines last year. In it, sought-after women were, whether intentionally or not, ranked in groups from “A” to “D” by race, class, and skin tone. (Group B, for instance, consisted of “fine girls,” who “should be light-skinned.” Group D, on the other hand, was listed as “African American girls. Poor, not in good shape. Medium to dark skin tone.”)

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Link Roundup! – 2/13/15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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Kindergartners at Wheeler paint the backdrop for their school photos. (Courtesy of Ada Leaphart/Integrated Arts Academy at H.O. Wheeler)

Kindergartners at Wheeler paint the backdrop for their school photos. (Courtesy of Ada Leaphart/Integrated Arts Academy at H.O. Wheeler)

This piece about the Integrated Arts Academy in Vermont combining the arts with math, science, social studies and other curriculum really highlights the importance of creativity in the classroom:

What does art integration look like? Recently, a fourth-grade lesson on geometry examined the work of the famous Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. The class talked about his work and then created their own art using angles in the style of Kandinsky. Students had to be able to identify the angles they’d used and point them out in their art.

“Higher analytical thinking and reasoning and student voice fit so well with the arts,” said Bobby Riley, the school’s principal. Teachers are seeing ways to make connections between subjects and watch as students find creative confidence and voice in their expression.

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The Boston Globe has an interview with Julie Burros, the new arts and culture chief, about her plans for Boston and what she’s learned about the city’s cultural scene since taking office:

On the relationship between the arts and income inequality, I’m curious to know: Can you use arts and culture to address that growing problem?

Maximizing people’s creative capital could help create income opportunities for people who maybe don’t see themselves fitting into the four-year college track or the corporate world. There’s another relationship in, how can unlocking people’s creative tools help them be more employable, more well-rounded employees for all different kinds of industries? And then there’s just the appeal factor. If we have more robust arts and culture offerings in our schools, it could keep kids in school longer.

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#StaffChat: Envisioning Boston’s Cultural Future

Staff Chat posts feature articles and news that the C1 team discusses as part of our weekly all-staff meeting. We’d love to hear your thoughts, too — hit us up here in the comments, or on Facebook and Twitter!

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While C1 was busy opening our Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy by Aditi Kapil over the past few weeks, some exciting announcements about the state of Boston’s cultural community were released. The staff is reading a few articles this week to catch up on the news – check out the links below:

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“Seven Moon Junction” by Shinique Smith, the Greenway Wall in Dewey Square

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