Tag Archives: boston globe

Link Roundup! – 5/13/16

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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Julie Burros, Boston’s chief of arts and culture, during a Boston Creates town hall in March at Bunker Hill Community College. / Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe/file

As reported in this week’s Boston Globe, the draft of the city’s Cultural Plan is now open to public comment — give your thoughts before the end of this weekend!

The draft plan describes five primary goals for arts and culture in the city, including creating “fertile ground” for the arts by encouraging the formation of more funding and venues for arts groups, supporting efforts and policies to keep individual artists in Boston, and cultivating a civic climate where all cultural traditions “are respected, promoted and equitably resourced.” Other overarching goals include integrating the arts throughout the city and creating partnerships to support the city’s arts and culture sector.

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HowlRound’s livestream of the Breaking the Binary symposium is now available to watch:

Breaking the Binary was conceived, organized, and will be hosted by Lisa Evans and SK Kerastas who recognize a strong need for education around this issue in our field—even amongst theatre professionals working from a social justice base. This past year alone there were multiple instances of well-intentioned theaters around the county receiving backlash from trans* communities for their handlings of productions with trans* material. Building on a national movement for equity in our work, SK and Lisa want to provide some holistic support to theatre organizations and artists making this kind of work.

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Link Roundup! – 3/25/16

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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Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

The Boston Globe ran a story about local playwright and actor Melinda Lopez, who was mentioned in President Obama’s speech about Cuba earlier this week:

The president told of how, when Lopez traveled to Cuba and searched for her family’s old home, she had a chance encounter with an elderly woman who had been a neighbor of Lopez’s mother. The woman “recognized her as her mother’s daughter and began to cry” — later producing a baby photo that Lopez’s mother had taken of her infant daughter.

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The Chicago Tribune has a piece about the subscriber model in the arts and how it mirrors the newspaper business:

In this dilemma, nonprofit arts organizations are not unlike newspapers, such as this one, which are also striving to reinvent themselves for the digital age as their print subscription bases decline. As with the arts organizations, the media executives are trying to go where they think the puck is going, which means embracing the habits of millennials who consume individual stories (the newspaper’s equivalent of individual shows) from many different publications shared on social media. At the same time, the publications remain reliant on the revenue that comes from those still-colossal subscription bases.

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Link Roundup! – 2/19/16

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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Pep Montserrat for The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe has a feature on Boston’s new artist-in-residence program:

Imagine a dancer working with police officers to better interpret a suspect’s gait. Or a musician teaching a city parking clerk how to listen deeply. Or an abstract painter rearranging a tangle of contradictory street signs. That’s the idea behind Boston’s new artist-in-residence program, which will embed local artists inside city departments to promote creative thinking about municipal government.

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StageSource Executive Director (and recent C1 PlayLab guest speaker!) Julie Hennrikus wrote an editorial for the ARTery about arts space and funding in Boston:

We are in the midst of a social revolution right now, and cultural equity is part of it. Cultural equity requires acknowledging, addressing and dismantling the systemic and social inequities that are built into the fabric of our society. We can’t achieve what is possible unless we acknowledge that even in the arts, which are supposed to be a great equalizer, inequity persists.

Do we really care about cultural equity? That is an important conversation, and speaks to Boston’s history and its future. We have to care. The arts community has the opportunity to be a leader on this front in a way that would change the city. Could different funding streams help? When companies rely on ticket sales to the degree that they do in Boston, fear of change becomes ingrained. Rethinking offerings, audiences, locations, art forms — all of that requires change.

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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

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! – 10/9/15

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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Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Peter DuBois, left, and managing director Michael Maso in front of the BU Theatre. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

The Boston Globe has a story about this week’s big news regarding the partnership between Boston University and the Huntington Theatre:

After 33 years, Boston University and the Huntington Theatre Company are parting ways, and the university is putting the BU Theatre up for sale, effective immediately. For the highly regarded Huntington, which just two years ago won a Tony Award for regional theater, the dissolution of the partnership with BU ushers in a period of uncertainty.

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Early career director Lucy Gram’s musings in HowlRound about life as an “emerging” artist are great:

Remember, as difficult as it is to make a life in the theatre, it is something I am lucky to be pursuing. What I am pursuing isn’t a career, or “success,” or a title. It’s an artistic practice. It’s a lens through which to look at life; a platform on which to ask questions about the world we know and create visions of worlds we have so far only imagined.

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Link Roundup! – 5/8/15

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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A 60-foot community mural was created outside of the Prudential Center on Memorial Day last year. Photo: Globe file

The Boston Globe recently highlighted some national trends in city development and looked at how arts and culture can be integrated into the development happening in Boston:

More cities have undertaken cultural planning to shape a coherent approach to advancing the arts. Cultural planning looks different in each place, as it should. Yet, when we consider the cities where cultural planning has been most effective, we consistently find an ambitious, inclusive, communitywide effort to develop a shared vision and blueprint for arts and culture — one that prioritizes, coordinates, and aligns public and private resources to strengthen cultural vitality long term.

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Create Equity looked at the barriers that prevent people from participating in cultural and artistic activities if they are from lower socioeconomic and educational backgrounds:

Data from the survey shows that fewer low-income individuals attend pop and rock concerts than their wealthier counterparts, and significantly fewer of them attend visual arts festivals and craft fairs. In fact, people with lower incomes and less education are less likely to read books, go to the movies, take an arts class, play a musical instrument, sing, dance socially, take or edit photographs, paint, make scrapbooks, engage in creative writing, or make crafts. All told, the data paints a consistent portrait of lower participation by low-SES adults in a breathtaking range of visual, performing, literary, and film activities…When large numbers of people face barriers to participating in the arts in the way they might want to, we know that we’re missing opportunities to improve people’s lives in concrete and meaningful ways.

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Link Roundup! – 4/3/15

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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Shaun Blugh, 30, has been appointed the City of Boston’s first-ever chief diversity officer. Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff

The Boston Globe has a story about the mayor’s new Office of Diversity and their efforts to make Boston workforces more equitable:

A glimpse at the city’s roughly 15,000 full-time employees underscores their challenge. In a city in which people of color constitute 53 percent of the population, Boston’s municipal workforce remains 61 percent white, according to records released to the Globe under the state’s open records law. Women slightly outnumber men at City Hall, but on average are paid 7 percent less than their male counterparts.

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The Non Profit with Balls blog has a post up about “Fakequity” — a term he coined for organizations that claim to be interested in creating equity, but don’t participate in active change:

So how does this apply to Equity? People seem to think that forming an equity committee, talking about equity, sending staff and board to trainings, “listening” to communities, conducting research and gathering data, and adding terminologies to websites and brochures are sufficient to achieving equity. But no, these things are necessary, but not sufficient. When we just talk about Equity and go no further, we are guilty of Fakequity. I’ve seen many well-meaning organizations and foundations spend years talking about equity, congratulate themselves on it, and don’t do anything else that would actually help to bring about Equity.

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Link Roundup! – 3/20/15

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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Melissa Hillman’s post on the TCG blog about what engagement really means gets at some important truths about connecting with audiences:

If we’re going to have productive discussions about diversity, even coded as “audience engagement,” we first need to stop pretending that there’s one discrete “theatre community” that’s all failing in the same way. We need to stop pretending that a lack of diversity in big budget theatre is a lack of diversity in “theatre,” as if people of color cannot create theatre unless a big, white theatre bends down to help them. We need to stop pretending that a lack of diversity in big budget theatre audiences is a lack of diversity in “theatre audiences,” as if young people of color have no theatre unless a big, white theatre creates a space for them. You can’t stop young people of color from making art. It’s happening everywhere, all the time. You can’t stop young people of color from consuming art. It’s happening everywhere, all the time.

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Over at The Nib, a cartoonist shares a story about the perception of race in comics:

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#StaffChat: Poverty in Boston

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 on Facebook or Twitter!

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For this week’s Staff Chat, we are looking at the state of poverty in Boston in response to a report released in November:

The report by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center shows that the poverty rate in Massachusetts is at 12%, making it one of the highest in the United States. Massachusetts also leads the nation in income disparity between the lowest and highest levels of wage earners.

The Boston Globe, which broke the story, highlighted some troubling statistics, including:

— After an initial decrease in poverty after President Lyndon Johnson declared “War on Poverty” with an army of Great Society social programs, the poverty rate slowly rose again and the current poverty rate is the same as it was in 1960
— Though several Great Society programs (food stamps/SNAP, Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid) are still going strong, in the past twenty years Massachusetts has slashed almost $3 billion in funding for affordable housing initiatives, early childhood learning programs, and job training for young people
— Wage stagnation is a chief cause of the plateauing poverty rate; had income growth reflected productivity growth, the lowest wage earners would be earning at least $10,000 more per year than they are now. The highest 1% of wage earners would collectively earn almost $1 million less
— Looking solely at cash income, poverty in Massachusetts is at 27%; adjusted according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account other forms of income and public assistance, the poverty rate drops to 12-14%
— Adjusted for inflation, the average working class individual earns $5000 less than his 1960s counterpart

The MBPC report included this infographic to explain how today’s worker would fare had wages increased at the same rate as productivity:

Both the report and the Globe stories point out that many of the Great Society programs are still in place and still yielding results. What sticks out in their assessments of poverty today is the idea that the best way to close the poverty gap in Massachusetts is to strengthen community bonds that will prepare future generations to succeed in all aspects of life – economically and creatively – by developing technical skills through job-based training, achieving more in school, and developing close partnerships with employers and community organizations that can provide support throughout their lives. Continue reading →

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)

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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