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worryinglyinnocent · 5 years ago

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Fic: Artistic Merit

Rated: E

Artistic Merit

Ever since starting her scholarship to the art college, Belle had made no secret of her fascination with erotic art. She had always loved the idea of making the unseen seen, of taking private moments and putting them on public display, showing the world that there was no shame in the joys of sex and intimacy, and normalising it into something that was commonplace and yet still had the capacity to entice and excite.

Indeed, after years of studying the subject, Belle could still feel her pulse quicken when she looked at a particularly sensual piece, and more than once she had found her fingers creeping down towards the apex of her thighs in the most unlikely of places as she worked and researched.

Naturally, when she’d found out about the exhibition at the local gallery, which would include a showcase from one of her own professors, no less, she’d jumped at the chance to uncover more art and new ways of painting pleasure onto paper, and whatever other media she could find.

Belle walked slowly through the pieces, drinking in the atmosphere and feeling the first embers of desire begin to burn between her legs. The images were truly beautiful, and Belle found herself thinking about them from the other side of the camera or paintbrush. What would it be like to pose for such artwork? To perform such acts of love and self-pleasure for the silent artist audience. It was one thing to view art after it was made, but to be a part of its making was quite another.

She had purposefully left Professor Gold’s area of the exhibition until last, knowing that he would be there, and that she would want to speak to him about it. He was standing off to one side as she entered his room, speaking to someone Belle recognised as one of the gallery owners. He acknowledged her with a nod, and she fell to admiring his work.

There was a dream-like, fairy-tale quality in Gold’s painting, which only added to the allure of his work, and it matched perfectly to his subject matter. The main centrepiece of his exhibition was a series of erotic illustrations of classic tales. Red Riding Hood was riding her wolfman, head thrown back in ecstasy as her red cloak slipped to show a peek of bare nipple. The beast was transformed back into a man with his beauty’s love, kneeling naked and vulnerable before her. The little mermaid explored the new bits between her new legs as she stood on the beach in the moonlight.

Belle felt the all too familiar pull of arousal in her belly, and she shifted her hips, feeling wet on her gusset already.

“What do you think?” Gold came over to her, holding out a glass of champagne. Belle had already had one when she’d first arrived – it was cheap and acidic, but she accepted gratefully, hoping that it would stop her being tongue-tied. She’d had a little bit of a crush on her professor since the start of her course, but now that she was here, with him and all of his erotic work, it had developed into something much hotter and more full-bodied.

“I like it,” she said. “I like how the women are all in control and owning their sexual agency. It would be so easy to have something like the princess chained up naked in the dragon’s tower or something like that, but you allow these women to enjoy sex and to own their nudity.”

“A woman’s sexuality is an incredibly powerful thing,” Gold said. “Why do you think that everyone has always tried so hard to suppress it?”

Belle nodded her agreement. “Yes, that is an excellent point.” She looked again at the pictures. “No Snow White or Sleeping Beauty?”

“Slight consent problem there, trying to make those ones erotic. Especially considering the original Grimm tales.”

“What about Cinderella?”

Gold chuckled. “You’re very welcome to continue the series yourself if you wish. I’m happy to accept a collaborator.”

“No, I don’t think it would be the same, not being in your style. Mine’s bolder, yours is more delicate. It wouldn’t work. But…” Belle’s heart leapt to her mouth, unable to believe she was even thinking about making the suggestion. “I’d be happy to be your muse. I’d give you the ideas and pose for them, and you could put them into paintings for me.”

Gold looked at her, his expression unreadable.

“You’d pose for my erotic art?” he asked. There was a huskiness in his voice, a note of desire.

“I’ve posed nude for life drawing classes before,” Belle said.

“Ah, but this is very different.”

“I’m counting on it, Professor Gold.”

There was barely an inch between them now, and Belle could see the flecks of deep gold in his chocolate brown eyes.

“In that case, I’d be happy to accept your proposal,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, and Belle knew that they were talking about so much more than just posing for pictures. “My studio’s only a few minutes’ walk away, and I might expire from boredom if I have to spend any more time with these pretentious idiots.” He looked over his shoulder at the gallery owner. “Shall we get started right away?”

Belle nodded. “That sounds like an excellent idea to me.”

They left the gallery together, and they did not speak much as they covered the short distance to Gold’s studio. It was as if they both knew that the moment would only really begin once they were inside the space where the art would occur.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Gold asked. “Tea or coffee, perhaps, to counteract that rank excuse for champagne that they were serving at the gallery?”

“Tea sounds lovely, thank you.” Belle hung up her coat as Gold went over to the small kitchen area in the corner of the studio, filling the electric kettle and getting mugs and teabags. Belle had never been inside Gold’s studio before, and she wanted to treat this privileged occasion with the proper respect. There were all sorts of things lying around, props and furniture that models had posed with in the past, and of course, his actual works. She looked at the easel where a half-completed painting sat. It was another of the fairy tales, although it was not worked enough for Belle to identify it.

“It’s going to be the Princess and the Frog,” Gold called from the kitchen. “When I finish she’ll be wearing strategically placed lily pads over her essentials.”

Belle laughed as he brought the tea over, and she took a grateful sip. “How many will you do?”

“As many as strike my imagination. Of course, that may be more if you start giving me ideas as well. So…” He led her away from the easel to sit down on an old chaise longue. “Tell me about your vision of Cinderella.”

“Oh, it sounds so stupid now.” Belle looked into the depths of her tea, asking it to give her courage. “I just thought about the prince having a foot fetish.”

Gold gave a snort of laughter, but his dark eyes were in earnest, and Belle thought she could feel them staring into her very soul. God, part of her wanted to throw him down on this chaise and ride him as proudly as Red Riding Hood in her painting.

“Go on,” he said softly.

“They’re in the palace garden,” she said, her eyes never leaving Gold’s. “The clocktower in the background is showing quarter to midnight, or something like that.”

Gold put down his mug and grabbed a sketchpad, his pencil flying over the paper as he roughly outlined her vision.

“Yes?”

“They’re both naked, apart from the glass slippers. She’s sitting on a bench, or a swing seat, or something, and he’s sitting on the ground below her, worshipping her feet in these slippers. She’s enjoying it. Maybe touching herself whilst he’s preoccupied.”

“I see.” Gold’s thumbnail sketch continued to take shape, and Belle had to gasp at how much just the rough outlines were turning her on. Finally, he stopped, putting the sketchpad down between them.

“Something like that?” he asked, his voice a low growl.

“That’s perfect,” Belle breathed.

“And you’d like to strike a pose for this?”

Belle nodded, putting her mug down on the floor beside Gold’s and standing up to unzip her dress, letting it fall to her ankles and kicking it off to one side. She’d gone braless beneath it, and her nipples hardened in the cool air of the studio, making her shiver. She rubbed her fingers over the little buds and moaned, before peeling her panties down her legs.

She left her shoes on, putting her hands on her hips and giving Gold her most sultry pout, letting him look his fill at her, hips pushed forward.

“Am I a good enough model for you, Professor Gold?”

“I don’t think there’s ever been a better one.”

She sat back down, hiking one heel up onto the chaise as she let her legs loll open, spreading her nether lips and touching herself languidly, although she could already feel the sweat beginning to shine on her skin. There was a ready wetness gathering at her entrance, and she rubbed it gently along her folds, circling her clit.

“Would this do?”

“Perfectly, Belle.” Gold was mesmerised by her, unable to tear his eyes away as he stood and began to undress until he was as unashamedly naked as she was. He was erect already, his cock jutting proudly in front of him, and he gave himself a couple of hard tugs as he knelt on the floor before her.

“Every princess needs her adoring prince,” he rasped, kissing along her inner thigh. “Not a foot man myself, though. No, I’m far more interest in this.”

He moved her hand and licked a stripe along her cleft, lapping eagerly at her swollen pearl. Belle cried out at the sensation, nails scrabbling for purchase on the back of the chaise as Gold continued to kiss and lick at her, now pushing his tongue into her entrance, now nuzzling at her patch of close trimmed hair, now flicking the tip of his tongue over her clit and making her scream again.

“Gold!”

He laughed, the sound vibrating against her over-sensitised folds, and he slipped one leg up over his shoulder, bringing him in closer. A finger pushed inside, curling in just the right place as his tongue kept up the relentless teasing of her clit.

Belle didn’t know what she yelled as the dam broke and she came apart for him. She only hoped that the other studios in the building weren’t occupied at this time in the evening. She came back down to herself as Gold pulled his finger out and let her leg slip down, sitting back on his heels and wiping his face clean, licking her juices off his hand.

“Much better than the champagne.”

“I’m glad you think so. Although now, I think it’s your turn.” She reached out, brushing her fingertips over the head of his cock as he got back to his feet. “Time for some adoration of your own.”

Gold sat back on the chaise beside her, and Belle leaned over his lap, gripping his cock tightly and taking the head in her mouth, swirling her tongue around it and over it as she pumped his shaft.

“Sweet Jesus, Belle.” His hand tangled in her hair, and a glance upwards showed his eyes were closed, head thrown back with pleasure. She brought her other hand down to cradle his heavy balls, rolling them in her palm. “Fuck, Belle, I’m going to come!”

Belle let him slip from her mouth, giving him a couple of firm strokes to finish him off and make him come undone for her; he swore as he spurted over her hand.

For a long while they sat slumped on the chaise in the cooling, until Belle chanced to lean in and press her lips tentatively against Gold’s. Strange that they should share such carnal delights before even kissing, but Gold accepted her eagerly, pulling her in closer and running his hands gently over her bare back.

“You know,” Belle said, once they finally broke apart, “I have plenty more ideas for new paintings for you.”

Gold just growled, pulling her in for another kiss, and Belle smiled against his mouth. This was going to be the beginning of a wonderful partnership.

#rumbelle fic #rumbelle #Belle French #Mr Gold #SFSS 2020 #Fic: Artistic Merit

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jeremystrele · 4 years ago

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These Australian Designers Are Changing The Textile Industry

TDF Design Awards

by Amelia Barnes

Kip&Co with Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Kip & Co x Bábbarra. Photo – Caitlin Mills.

Kip&Co with Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Kip&Co x Bábbarra

Kip&Co and the Bábbarra Women’s Centre joined forces to create this spectacular range of textiles and homewares, developed over two years. The collection features eight unique artworks from seven Bábbarra Women’s Centre artists – Deborah Wurrkidj, Elizabeth Wullunmingu, Helen Lanyinwanga (deceased), Janet Marawarr, Jennifer Wurrkidj, Margot Gurawiliwili, and Raylene Bonson. Every element, from the artwork selection, to product range, colours and labels, has been led by the women at Bábbarra.

Profits from sales of the collection will be divided equally between Bábbarra and Kip&Co, and copyright specialists the Copyright Agency were engaged from the very beginning of the project to ensure best practice for licensing and ethical processes were upheld throughout its execution.

The Bábbarra Women’s Centre is one of the most important community spaces in Maningrida, a remote Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land at the tip of the Northern Territory.

Revisit our feature on this collection and collaboration here.

Gorman and Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, Mangkaja x Gorman. Photo – Charles Fréger. Annie Cooper, Annie Coop Textiles. Photo – Lillie Thompson.

Gorman and Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, Mangkaja x Gorman

Iconic fashion label Gorman worked with Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency in Fitzroy Crossing to produce a collaboration with five senior Aboriginal artists: Ngarralja Tommy May, Sonya Kurarra, Daisy Japulija, Nada Rawlins and Lisa Uhl. The collection was photographed in Fitzroy Crossing, and the collection was modelled by local women.

The two-year development process around this 25-piece collection was supported by the Copyright Agency as a national benchmark in fashion licensing rights, making the adaptation of the Mangkaja artists’ works on Gorman silhouettes a landmark achievement. Funds from the sale of the collection were donated to Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency to support youth programs within the art centre.

Revisit our story on this collaboration here.

Annie Cooper, Annie Coop Textiles

Australian textile studio Annie Coop is owned and operated by designer Annie Cooper. The label’s fabric design, production, and manufacturing are entirely conducted in Melbourne, and sold in interior showrooms throughout Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA and UK.

Taking cues from her travels throughout Mexico and Spain, Annie has created an original aesthetic with an uncompromising approach to quality, craftsmanship and sustainability. Her made-to-order fabrics are printed on ethically sourced linen, recycled polyesters, and cotton wallpaper using large format digital textile printers.

Revisit our feature on Annie Coop here.

Ellen McKenna, From Art to Fashion. Photo – Kirsten Bresciani

Ellen McKenna, From Art to Fashion

The debut large-scale, solo exhibition of artist Ellen McKenna showcases the complex process of developing a garment of clothing through art. Titled ‘From Art to Fashion’, the exhibition takes the form of a step-by-step visual journey, beginning with painted canvas artworks, then patterned fabric displays, and sewn garments. The show’s objective is to highlight clothing garments as items of worth – an alternative to the seasonal turn-arounds of the disposable fashion model.

Magpie Goose, Magpie Goose x Ikuntji Artists. Photo – Sarah Mackie. Castle, Little Garden Bedlinen. Photo – Caitlin Mills.

Magpie Goose, Magpie Goose x Ikuntji Artists

Magpie Goose is a platform for Aboriginal artists to share stories and generate income through the creation of wearable art. The objective of the Ikuntji Artists collaboration (a member-based, not for profit, Aboriginal art centre led by a board of seven local Indigenous directors) in particular was to showcase the stories of female artists from the Western Desert.

This capsule clothing collection features eight unique designs originally created by five senior female artists from the Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) community, located 230 kilometres west of Alice Springs. These artworks designs were then set up for screen printing by Magpie Goose, and eventually crafted into clothing.

As a non-Aboriginal owned business, Magpie Goose fosters the celebration of Aboriginal culture, people and stories through the medium of fashion, and helps to create meaningful opportunities for financial gain for their First Nations collaborators.

Castle, Little Garden Bedlinen

The Little Garden range combines hand painted aspects of Castle’s art practice with the commercial production of bedlinen. The collection began as a small painted artwork of a garden, created on paper using pencil, crayon, oils, gouache, acrylic, texta and pastel. Ordinarily this artwork would be reduced down to seven or eight colours before being printed onto products, but for the first time in Castle’s history, this design was digitally printed to capture every single colour and brushstroke of the original artwork. The Little Garden range includes quilt covers, sheets, pillowcases, and a bedspread.

Revisit our feature on this collection here

Baina, Collection .01. Photo – Greta van der Star. Pampa, To-yik-ca. Photo – Victoria Aguirre.

Baina, Collection .01

Melbourne-based label Baina was founded by Anna Fahey and Bailey Meredith. Drawing on their experience in the fashion industry, the pair set out to create considered, organic cotton bath towels that would complement and elevate the commonly neutral bathroom.

Baina’s inaugural range is a seven-piece collection designed to work in any combination, allowing customers to mix and match colours and prints. Products are made from 100 per cent organic cotton and produced in Portugal by a Global Organic Textile Standard certified mill.

Revisit our feature on Baina’s debut collection here.

Pampa, To-yik-ca

The To-yik-ca rug collection is a collaboration between Byron Based homewares label Pampa and the Wichí (Indigenous) peoples of Argentina. This collaboration saw Wichí and Andes weavers engaged to create textiles, which were adapted by Pampa to a large format for the weaving of the rugs.

Designs in the To-yik-ca (meaning ‘loom’ in the local dialect of the Wichí people) collection are representative of the traditional lands of the Wichí people. The end result is a beautiful collection of rugs that balance the contemporary with the traditional. Rugs in this collection feature bold geometric shapes inspired by nature, woven in sheep’s wool, and dyed in Pampa’s signature earthy and pastel tones.

North, Tiwi Strong Women’s Collection. Photo – Matt Sav. Gemma Threadgate, Threadgate. Photo – Natalia Parsonson.

North, Tiwi Strong Women’s Collection

The Tiwi Strong Women’s Collection is the latest fashion collection from not-for-profit organisation North, in collaboration with the Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association.

In this collection, artists of Pirlangimpi and Milikapiti and Waurrumiyanga were invited to share their culture through hand screen printed fashion. Each of the designs was handmade in the community, printed in a workshop with artist Timothy Growcott, then hand-sewn in Melbourne.

North exists as a vessel to celebrate, support and broaden the exposure of textile design by Indigenous artists from remote community art centres. They are a non-Aboriginal owned business, governed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous board members.

Revisit our feature on this collection here.

Gemma Threadgate, Threadgate

If names are anything to go by, Gemma Threadgate chose the right creative pursuit! The Sydney-based textile designer produces small-scale collections for her eponymous label from start to finish, which means designing, hand-printing, cutting and sewing the clothing and homewares with the help of one other maker.

Inspired by Ted Spagna’s 1975 book, Sleep, which explores the intimate narratives of human sleep behaviour through time-lapse photography, Gemma linked the universal act of sleep with the repetitive motions of screen printing.

Threadgate’s subsequent six-piece Sleep collection comprises a newly designed trouser, shirt, dress hat, tote bag and cushion cover. The capsule is guided by slow fashion principles.

We’re proud to partner with heritage Australian brand Laminex to realise The Design Files + Laminex Awards program 2020. Laminex is Australia’s leading supplier of modern laminates, quality engineered stone, timber panelling and more. Find out more here.

Winners of the The Design Files + Laminex Design Awards 2020 + Laminex will be announced November 5!

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sciencespies · 5 years ago

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The Women Behind the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-women-behind-the-pre-raphaelite-brotherhood/

The Women Behind the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Jan. 22, 2020, 4:56 p.m.

The women of the Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood have gone down in history as muses. Despite being artists in their own right, they are remembered as symbols, rather than creators, of beauty. Now, an ongoing exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London gives these long-overlooked figures a space of their own, sharing their stories through works of art, poems and embroidery.

On view through January 26, “Pre-Raphaelite Sisters” centers on 12 women—among others, the roster includes Christina Rossetti, Effie Millais and Elizabeth Siddal—and their contributions to the male-dominated narrative of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a circle of artists active between 1850 and 1900. The show draws on unseen works from both public and private collections around the world to reshape perceptions of these individuals as creative artists and poets who advocated for their own stories to be told rather than simply objectified muses.

“Visitors see these women’s own art, and their roles as collaborators and business partners, not just as lovers and wives,” writes the Atlantic’s Helen Lewis. “The captions restore names to the faces gazing placidly from postcards and posters.”

John Everett Millais, Sophy Gray, 1856

(Courtesy of National Gallery / Private collections)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti,The Blue Bower, 1865

(The Henry Barber Trust, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham)

In 1848, then-students Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in opposition to the more traditional art espoused by the Royal Academy. The original founders, all of whom were under the age of 25, soon invited four other male painters, sculptors and critics to join their secret society. Members heavily rejected the Academy’s promotion of Renaissance master Raphael, as well as the genre painting popular at the time.

Per Encyclopedia Britannica, the Brotherhood’s work focused on religious and medieval themes. Painted with maximum realism inspired by 15th-century Florentine and Sienese paintings, the young artists’ naturalistic creations were populated by beautiful women. The cryptic initials “PRB” appeared in the bottom corner of early Pre-Raphaelite works.

Simply put, the Brotherhood was a boys’ club that intentionally excluded women.

“Though its goals were ‘serious and heartfelt,’” explains Dinah Roe, a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, for the British Library, “the PRB was founded in a spirit of waggish male camaraderie which expressed itself in pranks, late-night smoking sessions and midnight jaunts around London’s streets and pleasure gardens.”

The Brotherhood’s models, who often doubled as the artists’ lovers, were usually at the center of their creations. But some, like Siddal, used their seemingly passive roles as models to fund their own artistic careers alongside their elite husbands.

Evelyn De Morgan, Night and Sleep, 1878

(De Morgan Collection, courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation)

Siddal is among the Pre-Raphaelite women painted over by history. She started modeling not to gain the attention of men, but to fund her own artistic practice. Initially working part time at her parents’ hat shop while modeling on the side, Siddal gained an unprecedented amount of popularity in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, with her likeness becoming a symbol of feminine beauty.

Lying motionless, with her pale, delicate face encircled by a fiery halo of red hair, Siddal is the subject of one of the movement’s most famous paintings, Millais’ Ophelia. Following the success of this piece, Siddal became perhaps the face of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She later married artist and Brotherhood member Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who drew and painted her “thousands” of times, according to the BBC’s Lucinda Hawksley.

Siddal’s own artistic journey was far more extensive than previously believed. As seen in the exhibition, she created paintings with archetypal Pre-Raphaelite qualities, including detailed medieval scenes and precise figures. She wrote haunting poetry, drawing on her experiences with drug addiction, an unfaithful husband and a stillborn daughter, but didn’t live to see them in print; the verses were only published after her death in 1862.

“Far from passive mannequins, […] these women actively helped form the Pre-Raphaelite movement as we know it,” says curator Jan Marsh in a statement. “It is time to acknowledge their agency and explore their contributions.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1877

(Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art / Private collections)

William Holman Hunt, Il Dolce far Niente,1866

(Private Collection, © Grant Ford Ltd)

The exhibit, described by Lewis as “revelatory,” includes more examples of the Brotherhood’s depictions of its 12 subjects than works by the women artists themselves. This dynamic offers visitors a sharp contrast—one can see the Brotherhood’s interpretation of the models next to works that envision them as more than muses.

The Pre-Raphaelite sister who perhaps best exemplifies this dichotomy is Jane Morris. With her full lips and strong features, Morris caught the attention of several Pre-Raphaelite men eager to capture her beauty through art. Yet it was a portrait drawn by another woman, Evelyn De Morgan, in 1904, that depicted a more authentic version of Morris’ feminine beauty by showing her signature raven-colored hair turning grey with age.

Joanna Boyce Wells, Thou Bird of God, 1861

(Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art / Private collections)

In many ways, the work completed by these women can be seen as a rare act of feminism for the time period. By shedding light on these objectified women, “Pre-Raphaelite Sisters” gives visitors the opportunity to gain a holistic view of the groundbreaking sisterhood.

“It is not sufficient to merely add some women to the Pre-Raphaelite canon,” writes Elizabeth Prettejohn in The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites. “Instead, it is a matter of writing a wholly new, and different, story about Pre-Raphaelitism—a story in which the activities of women are no longer incidental, but necessary to the plot.”

“Pre-Raphaelite Sisters” is on view at the National Gallery in London through January 26.

#History

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teenvogue · 6 years ago

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Savage X Fenty Was Everything the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Should Be

In this op-ed, Teen Vogue fashion features editor Jessica Andrews explores the impact of Rihanna's Savage X Fenty lingerie show and its celebration of womanhood.

I walked into the venue for my last show at New York Fashion Week to find a man serving me beverages on a platter. Another handed me the program and kindly asked that I busy myself with mingling before it was time to move to another room, presumably where the show would take place. It was a welcomed departure from the previous shows; one where I had been yelled at by a man for accidentally stepping foot on the desert-inspired set, and another where I was shoved by a male security guard as I stood in line to make way for a celebrity entering the theater. Here, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for Rihanna's first lingerie presentation at fashion week, males were kind, attentive, and helpful, and women and femmes were esteemed guests. I had entered into the world of Savage X Fenty.

There were no seating assignments or VIP sections, no arrangement tied to a ranking of which guests were considered more important or valuable. Celebrities like Selah Marley were standing around the event space like the rest of us. The only ask? We were told that Rihanna would like us to walk around the room to take in the whole experience — and an experience it was. The fall 2018 presentation of Savage X Fenty centered around an array of exotic installations designed to resemble the Garden of Eden. There was a botanical dome, a laboratory surrounded by plants and flowers, even a pool constructed to look like a natural hot spring.

The models, referred to in the notes as the "Savages," explored their idyllic surroundings in a stirring piece of performance art. They wandered through the maze of lush flora with dazed facial expressions and they laughed uncontrollably. Then, suddenly, an army of dancers would emerge, with moves so powerful and sharp that a fuccboi might run for cover. For the finale, the models held hands in solidarity as Rihanna walked out to Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender" from the Wild at Heart soundtrack.

The experience was moving, empowering — spiritual even. It was conceived by Rihanna in collaboration with PRODJECT, a creative agency which also helped conceptualize last season's Fenty X Puma presentation, where Rihanna appeared on a set of pink mountains while perched on the backseat of a motorcycle.

This season of NYFW, I've sat at runway shows and watched brands incorporate less than a handful of black, Latinx, or Asian models or send a single plus-size model down the catwalk in a boxy dress, as if their curves are too offensive to be clearly defined by a specific type of garment. Chromat and Gypsy Sport were among the few brands that disrupted the status quo by dressing models to show off their bodies in a diverse selection of bold looks, not just demure ones.

But it wasn't until I went to Savage X Fenty and saw two models dancing, their hair in afro puffs, thighs rumpled and bellies on full display, that I truly felt seen. It was an admonishment of the narrow standard of beauty often imposed in the lingerie space by other mainstream brands. For so long, a single archetype for the lingerie model was shoved down our throats: white, thin, tall, long hair, hourglass figure, full breasts, flat stomach. My hair doesn't hang low in messy beach waves; it coils tight into a circle, framing my face like a halo. My thighs stick together, my butt sticks out, and they both have stretch marks. Don't I deserve to wear lingerie as well? To feel attractive and alluring? I think of all the times I've been told — through ads and runway shows — that my skin, my body, my hair texture is wrong. And then here's Rihanna, affirming that this is a lingerie body, too.

Styled by Tom Van Dorpe of Management + Artists, Savage X Fenty models presented a show-stopping collection of lingerie that ranged from casual to romantic to racy. There were glow-in-the-dark garters, green leopard-print robes, fishnet bodysuits layered over black bras, criss-cross cage lingerie sets adorned with flowers, a bright blue bra set styled with a do-rag. The collection — ranging from $12.50 to $115 in price — was available for purchase immediately following the show.

With sizes spanning from 32A to 40DDD in bras and XS to 3X in undies and sleepwear, Savage X Fenty is one of the most inclusive lingerie brands on the market. But this isn't diversity the way many brands imagine it: the ticking of boxes with one tokenized model. Rihanna is celebrating the very things society has taught us to be ashamed of: our curves, our skin tones, and our bodies as they change and grow — especially during pregnancy.

📸: Getty Images

#Savage #Savage x Fenty #Fenty #Rihanna #Fashion Show #NYFW #Victoria's Secret #Victoria's Secret Fashion Show #Teen Vogue #inclusivity in fashion #Body Positivity

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lilyjcollins-news · 5 years ago

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Darren Star’s New Series Has More City Than Sex — And It’s Paris

WWD went behind the scenes with the television guru and his star Lily Collins as the new series wraps shooting in the French capital.

click here to see the full set.

Among clichés about Paris: Fashion is such an entrenched part of daily life that taxi drivers in the French capital can talk authoritatively about collections and designers during fashion weeks.

Darren Star discovered a new one: that French extras on film sets know precisely, almost instinctively, how to behave at a fashion show.

That was the case last week when 250 extras assembled for one of the finale scenes for season one of “Emily in Paris,” the television series the “Sex and the City” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” creator has been filming in the French capital, and environs, for the last four months. Shooting wraps up this week, and the 10 episodes are slated to air next summer on the Paramount Network.

“We’re really getting the character and the texture of the city — and it informs everything we do,” says Star, inviting WWD to attend a sprawling shoot in the courtyard of La Monnaie de Paris that involved a garbage truck, a guerrilla fashion show of outlandish neon gowns, and a roped-off red carpet swamped by a noisy crowd.

Star describes the series as a romantic comedy or “dramedy” centered on a “fish-out-of-water” American in Paris, portrayed by Lily Collins, on this day dressed in a floral-print puffer jacket, matching short skirt and bright pink beret.

The 30-year-old actress appears in almost every scene as Emily, sharing her star billing with a city that Star has swooned over since he was 19, and one he found to be more ravishing and picturesque than ever.

“We’ve become very inward-looking as a country, and I think it’s good to do a show that celebrates another culture,” Star says, seated on a director’s chair tucked in a chilly hallway steps away from the main action. “Anywhere you put the camera, this city looks gorgeous and surreally beautiful. That’s another cliché of Paris.”

Beyond the romanticism of the historic city, Star wishes to convey its elegant, unrushed way of life. “There’s still a sense of graciousness and manners, the way people interact with each other, the politeness and respect for one other, which I feel is really missing at home,” he enthuses. “It’s definitely a more mannered society. It still exists!”

Star brought his crew and cast to the gilded Opéra Garnier, the Pont Alexandre III, Le Grand Véfour restaurant, Luxembourg Gardens and the Musée des Arts Forains dedicated to funfair artifacts. “Paris is definitely a character in the story the way New York was in ‘Sex and the City,'” he says. “I revel in the clichés. I love it all.”

The television guru is equally smitten with Collins, daughter of English pop icon Phil Collins.

“She’s the youngest character I’ve written for since ‘Melrose Place,'” he says, name-dropping another of his zeitgeist-defining shows. “You’ve got to come to Paris as a young person to have a certain sense of wonder.”

Collins portrays a budding professional parachuted in from Chicago to implement social media at a French luxury marketing agency, setting the stage for drama and culture clashes — not to mention references to fashion and perfume brands; some real, some fictional.

In an interview, Collins described her character as a “go-getter, determined, optimistic” and perhaps “too happy and slightly annoying. She just has that American sense of can-do that clashes with some of the people she encounters. That can come across as foreign and annoying to some; for others, it’s endearing.

“Emily feels like a very modern woman, finding her way in her job, finding her way in her love life,” she continues. “We can all relate to that.”

Emily’s boss at the fictional agency is portrayed by French actress Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who describes her character as “a little bit the villain” as Star’s “meta-vision” for the show explores the gulf between brash American enthusiasm and French formality and reserve.

“Darren is making as much fun of the Americans as he is the French. It’s a very tender way of looking at it. It’s affectionate cruelty,” she says, her mouth curling into a wry smile. “It’s more about bridging the cultures.”

And, she adds, “there are a lot of great punch lines.”

Star is careful not to reveal too much of the plot, but describes Collins’ character as a charming, yet tone-deaf American who “doesn’t speak French and doesn’t have any great love or affinity for Paris. And she’s not warmly embraced.”

Known more for dramatic roles in films such as “Love, Rosie,” “Mirror Mirror,” and “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,” Collins shows a new side of herself in “Emily in Paris,” Star enthuses.

“She’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s a terrific actress. She is such a romantic comedy star,” he says, marveling that she brought to mind a young Audrey Hepburn in many scenes. “I think people are going to fall in love with her.”

Collins is also a producer on the program, consulted on the wardrobe and brought a contagious, joyful energy to the set. “Her spirit never flags, and that trickles down to everyone on the set,” Star says.

The admiration is mutual. “I grew up loving every show he did,” Collins says about Star, whose latest TV creation is “Younger,” already on its sixth season.

“I love his perspective on female characters,” the actress adds. “He’s so hands-on with everything and is on the set every day, yet he is also so incredibly collaborative. He chimes in and is creatively inspiring all the time.”

Collins has become smitten with the French capital over the past few months. “It has been an utter joy to work here,” Collins says. “There’s so much culture, so much beautiful architecture and so many beautiful sights to see in Paris. The locations have been absolutely incredible.”

Fashion plays an important and colorful role in the show, and Star called on his “Sex and the City” collaborator Patricia Field, plus costume designer Marylin Fitoussi, to team up and shape the look of the show.

“There are a lot of hats. Way more hats than I ever expected,” Star says, shaking his head in mock disbelief.

He gingerly describes Emily’s style as “fun” and not exactly subtle. “She can pull off an Eiffel Tower print dress,” he deadpans. “Her style gets more sophisticated as the show continues, but it’s a series, so she’s always going to be an American.”

Collins describes Emily’s clothes as colorful and loud, telegraphing her personality: “She’s a ray of sunshine; there’s so much color and pattern.”

In her life as an actress, Collins is admired for her sleek-yet-feminine style on the red carpet. She is an ambassador for Lancôme, and a friend of jewelry house Cartier.

Star is also a fan of fashion, more as a spectator, and appreciates the bite-size theatrical spectacle of runway shows. He praised Thom Browne’s spring 2020 display and Chanel’s beach set for its spring 2019 collection.

And he clearly is hip to the tensions that are festering between the new and old guards as fashion enters the social media age. The fashion show scene in the finale episode recounts a showdown between an elderly French couturier and a brash American streetwear brand that results in a boisterous display of one-upmanship.

“Lily’s character comes from the generation of Instagram,” Star explains. “The democratization of taste becomes a subject in the show. Who are the gatekeepers of taste, and how it’s changing is something we talk about in the show.”

Yet Star sees the show mainly as a “love letter to Paris” that will surely inspire many young women to log onto Expedia.com and book flights. Or armchair travelers can simply relish the cinematic splendor.

“Television has become big — and I mean big in terms of scope. I want people to have an experience watching this series,” Star says. “I wanted to share my excitement about Paris in this series, and I think people will be able to leave their lives for a bit watching this show.”

vía WWC.

#lily collins #article #emily in paris #darren star #Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu #lilyjcollins #interview

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rixmatthews-blog · 5 years ago

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Adeste+ Lisbon 2019 - Day 1

Apology in advance: some of the Portuguese names of places don’t have the correct accents above them as I couldn’t work out how to do this on my mac. I’ve tried, I promise. Not just being lazy. If you’ll forgive me for this, then enjoy the below. Thank you.

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After a lovely weekend exploring the beautiful Lisbon (my first time here but it certainly won’t be my last) walking many miles and drinking more than one glass of port, it was with a sense of excitement, anxiety and anticipation that I started the Adeste+ Summer School today, defined on the literature as “a programme aimed at expanding cultural participation by bringing the audience to the centre of cultural organisations.”

With a cup of strong black coffee (quietly reminding myself how hard it is to walk and drink at the same time…), a notebook, my laptop, a socially unacceptable quantity of unusable pens, a broken umbrella and very little else - certainly no real sense of what to expect or the format of the week ahead of me - I arrived at the São Luiz Teatro in the centre of Lisbon, a beautiful theatre in the heart of the city celebrating its 125th birthday this year, owned and funded by “the municipality” (the city).

After meeting some of the other lovely delegates (over a welcome coffee and delicious pastry or two) from Italy, Croatia, Spain, The Azores, Amsterdam and Poland to name but a few, we were taken into the main auditorium. Having thought “ok this is all going to be ok - I’m going to quite enjoy this”, my earlier anxiety very quickly re-surfaced when Aida Tavares, the Artistic Director announced that this seemingly traditional 700-seat three-tiered proscenium theatre (think Lyric Hammersmith, Apollo Shaftesbury Avenue or The Old Vic) would be the perfect place for us to make our presentations. Presentation? sorry did I just hear PRESENTATION? WHAT PRESENTATION? SHIT! WHAT DID I MISS? WHAT EMAIL DIDN’T I READ PROPERLY!?

(Breathe Richard, breathe).

It quickly transpired that all that was meant by “presentation” was to introduce ourselves by name and organisation - much more in-line with my level of preparation. Phew. Ok this - THIS - I can deal with.

We found out more about the theatre in which we were sat - and in the best possible way - it quickly became clear that it was much less traditional than its architecture; EVERY production they programme in the main house has relaxed, audio described and sign-interpreted performances; the Artistic Directors of all the theatres across Lisbon work together and collaboratively as one eco-system working together for the same audience; as well as the main auditorium, there is also a 100-seater black box space in the basement which programmes for young audiences and families; unlike a recent season announced at our National Theatre in London, their current season has seen work from 30 women and 11 men; their ticket prices are incredibly accessible - top price in the main house is €17, and an annual subscription for €10 means customers get 50% off. Prices in the black box are €3 for first-time attenders. Move me to Lisbon now.

We also heard about a fascinating, innovative and frankly quite genius project which I LOVE called “The audience receives” from an independent theatre company who were working with the venue to develop audiences from “positive non-attenders” (e.g. people who are already warmed-up to the idea of going to the theatre, but for whatever reason don’t actually go). The idea of the project is to give members of the public not only cultural access, but also cultural governance. Participants are worked with on a long-term basis - 2 years. Within year 1, participants go to rehearsals, meet artistic teams, see shows and discuss them afterwards through focus groups. Within the second year, participants are actually handed the venue - they sell tickets at the box office, they work backstage, and ultimately they programme the theatre. I really love this. It reminded me that effective audience development isn’t a quick process, it needs real time and investment (in this case 2 years) and it needs genuine and authentic buy in and a passion to make it work across the whole organisation.

For the afternoon - which is also where we will be based for the rest of the week - we headed to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation just outside of the city centre, a brutalist complex in a style similar to the Barbican in London, surrounded by beautiful gardens and, even better, with at least one lovely cafe selling wine (it’s just a fact - before you judge, I was very good and self-restrained. I can’t be falling asleep in the afternoon session now can I).

The afternoon session kicked off with some introductions, and a keynote speech from the brilliant Anne Torreggiani, CEO of The Audience Agency (partners on Adeste+), and it was also great to see other Audience Agency peeps again Penny Mills and Jonathan Goodacre (who I’ve worked with on various projects in the past).

Some of the thinking and methodologies behind the programme/Summer School were explained, primarily a “Design Thinking” approach to audience development. This was totally new to me, but it basically means trying by doing - or “protyping” - making mistakes and learning from mistakes - and ultimately putting the audience member first: asking their opinion, involving them and learning from them. (There’s other stuff to, I’ll expand on this in later posts as this one is far too long already). Although “Design Thinking Audience Development” is a bit of a fancy term, I totally endorse all these ways of working, and while colleagues, friends and family throughout my career and life have reassured me that it’s ok to make mistakes (and I’ve never quite 100% believed them - sorry everyone, nothing personal) it’s really refreshing to hear this in a very formal and academic setting.

We also heard some case studies from a couple of other arts organisations in Lisbon with a brilliant audience development ethos at their heart - including Teatro Luis de Camoes (affectionatley known as LU.CA) which is a theatre producing brilliant work for children and young people, and Carpintaris S. Lazaro, a new contemporary arts centre.

So that was Day 1. I met a lot of lovely people and took in a lot, not all of which I’ve properly absorbed yet, but once it’s downloaded from my brain it will probably appear in this blog. After the lectures and seminars had finished, I had a walk around the beautiful Gulbenkian grounds, I met an elderly cat, and I met a duck, who was resting its beak on the footpath (seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do). Both are pictured below. I spoke to my wonderful partner Olivier, and I remembered how lucky I am to work for Graeae, and to work with colleagues who I can also call friends.

All in all a great start to the week. Bring on day 2. NOW for wine.

#adeste

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suzanneshannon · 3 years ago

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Chapter 9: Community

In April of 2009, Yahoo! shut down GeoCities. Practically overnight, the once beloved service had its signup page replaced with a vague message announcing its closure.

We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year.

Existing GeoCities accounts have not changed. You can continue to enjoy your web site and GeoCities services until later this year. You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.

In the coming months, the company would offer little more detail than that. Within a year, user homepages built with GeoCities would blink out of existence, one by one, until they were all gone.

Reactions to the news ranged from outrage to contemptful good riddance. In general, however, the web lamented about a great loss. Former GeoCities users recalled the sites that they built using the service, often hidden from public view, and often while they were very young.

For programmer and archivist Jason Scott, nostalgic remembrances did not go far enough. He had only recently created the Archive Team, a rogue group of Internet archivists willing to lend their compute cycles to the rescue of soon departed websites. The Archive Team monitors sites on the web marked for closure. If they find one, they run scripts on their computers to download as much of the site as they could before it disappears.

Scott did not think the question of whether or not GeoCities deserved to exist was relevant. “Please recall, if you will, that for hundreds of thousands of people, this was their first website,” he posted to his website not long after Yahoo!‘s announcement. “[Y]ou could walk up to any internet-connected user, hand them the URL, and know they would be able to see your stuff. In full color.” GeoCities wasn‘t simply a service. It wasn’t just some website. It was burst of creative energy that surged from the web.

In the weeks and months that followed, the Archive Team set to work downloading as many GeoCities sites as they could. They would end up with millions in their archive before Yahoo! pulled the plug.

Chris Wilson recalled the promise of an early web in a talk looking back on his storied career with Mosaic, then Internet Explorer, and later Google Chrome. The first web browser, developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, included the ability for users to create their own websites. As Wilson remembers it, that was the de-facto assumption about the web—that it would be a participatory medium.

“Everyone can be an author. Everyone would generate content,” Wilson said, “We had the idea that web server software should be free and everyone would run a server on their machine.” His work on Mosaic included features well ahead of their time, like built-in annotations so that users could collaborate and share thoughts on web documents together. They built server software in the hopes that groups of friends would cluster around common servers. By the time Netscape skyrocketed to popularity, however, all of those features had faded away.

GeoCities represented the last remaining bastion of this original promise of the web. Closing the service down, abruptly and without cause, was a betrayal of that promise. For some, it was the writing on the wall: the web of tomorrow was to look nothing like the web of yesterday.

In a story he recalls frequently, David Bohnett learned about the web on an airplane. Tens of thousands of feet up, untethered from any Internet network, he first saw mention of the web in a magazine. Soon thereafter, he fell in love.

Bohnett is a naturally empathetic individual. The long arc of his career so far has centered on bringing people together, both as a technologist and as a committed activist. As a graduate student, he worked as a counselor answering calls on a crisis hotline and became involved in the gay rights movement at his school. In more recent years, Bohnett has devoted his life to philanthropy.

Finding connection through compassion has been a driving force for Bohnett for a long time. At a young age, he recognized the potential of technology to help him reach others. “I was a ham radio operator in high school. It was exciting to collect postcards from people you talked to around the world,” he would later say in an interview. “[T]hat is a lot of what the Web is about.‘’

Some of the earliest websites brought together radical subcultures and common interests. People felt around in the dark of cyberspace until they found something they liked.

Riding a wave of riot grrrl ephemera in the early 1990’s, ChickClick was an early example. Featuring a mix of articles and message boards, women and young girls used ChickClick as a place to gather and swap stories from their own experience.

Much of the site centered on its strident creators, sisters Heather and Heidi Swanson. Though they each had their own areas of responsibility—Heidi provided the text and the editorial, Heather acted as the community liaison—both were integral parts of the community they created. ChickClick would not exist without the Swanson sisters. They anchored the site to their own personalities and let it expand through like-minded individuals.

Eventually, ChickClick grew into a network of linked sites, each focused on a narrower demographic; an interconnected universe of women on the web. The cost to expanding was virtually zero, just a few more bytes zipping around the Internet. ChickClick’s greatest innovation came when they offered their users their own homepages. Using a rudimentary website builder, visitors could create their own space on the web, for free and hosted by ChickClick. Readers were suddenly transformed into direct participants in the universe they had grown to love.

Bohnett would arrive at a similar idea not long after. After a brief detour running a more conventional web services agency called Beverley Hills Internet, Bohnett and his business partner John Rezner tried something new. In 1994, Bohnett sent around an email to some friends inviting them to create a free homepage (up to 15MB) on their experimental service. The project was called GeoCities.

What made GeoCities instantly iconic was that it reached for a familiar metaphor in its interface. When users created an account for the first time they had to pick an actual physical location on a virtual map—the digital “address” of their website. “This is the next wave of the net—not just information but habitation,” Bohnett would say in a press release announcing the project. Carving out a real space in cyberspace would become a trademark of the GeoCities experience. For many new users of the web, it made the confusing world of the web feel lived in and real.

The GeoCities map was broken up into a handful of neighborhoods users could join. Each neighborhood had a theme, though there wasn‘t much rhyme or reason to what they were called. Some were based on real world locations, like Beverley Hills for fashion aficionados or Broadway for theater nerds. Others simply played to a theme, like Area51 for the sci-fi crowd or Heartland for parents and families. Themes weren’t enforced, and most were later dropped in everything but name.

Credit: One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age

Neighborhoods were limited to 10,000 people. When that number was reached, the neighborhood expanded into suburbs. Everywhere you went on GeoCities there was a tether to real, physical spaces.

Like any real-world community, no two neighborhoods were the same. And while some people weeded their digital gardens and tended to their homepages, others left their spaces abandoned and bare, gone almost as soon as they arrived. But a core group of people often gathered in their neighborhoods around common interests and established a set of ground rules.

Historian Ian Milligan has done extensive research on the mechanics and history of GeoCities. In his digital excavation, he discovered a rich network of GeoCities users who worked hard to keep their neighborhoods orderly and constructive. Some neighborhoods assigned users as community liaisons, something akin to a dorm room RA, or neighborhood watch. Neighbors were asked to (voluntarily) follow a set of rules. Select members acted as resources, reaching out to others to teach them how to build better homepages. “These methods, grounded in the rhetoric of both place and community,” Milligan argues, “helped make the web accessible to tens of millions of users.”

For a large majority of users, however, GeoCities was simply a place to experiment, not a formal community. GeoCities would eventually become one of the web’s most popular destinations. As more amateurs poured in, it would become known for a certain garish aesthetic, pixelated GIFs of construction workers, or bright text on bright backgrounds. People used their homepages to host their photo albums, or make celebrity fan sites, or to write about what they had for lunch. The content of GeoCities was as varied as the entirety of human experience. And it became the grounding for a lot of what came next.

“So was it community?” Black Planet founder Omar Wasow would later ask. “[I]t was community in the sense that it was user-generated content; it was self-expression.” Self-expression is a powerful ideal, and one that GeoCities proved can bring people together.

Many early communities, GeoCities in particular, offered a charming familiarity in real world connection. Other sites flipped the script entirely to create bizarre and imaginative worlds.

Neopets began as an experiment by students Donna Williams and Adam Powell in 1999. Its first version—a prototype that mixed Williams art and Powell’s tech—had many of the characteristics that would one day make it wildly popular. Users could collect and raise fictional virtual pets inside the fictional universe of Neopia. It operated like the popular handheld toy Tamagotchi, but multiplied and remixed for cyberspace.

Beyond a loose set of guidelines, there were no concrete objectives. No way to “win” the game. There were only the pets, and pet owners. Owners could create their own profiles, which let them display an ever expanding roster of new pets. Pulled from their imagination, Williams and Powell infused the site with their own personality. They created “unique characters,” as Williams later would describe it, “something fantasy-based that could live in this weird, wonderful world.”

As the site grew, the universe inside it did as well. Neopoints could be earned through online games, not as much a formal objective as much as in-world currency. They could be spent on accessories or trinkets to exhibit on profiles, or be traded in the Neopian stock market (a fully operational simulation of the real one), or used to buy pets at auction. The tens and thousands of users that soon flocked to the site created an entirely new world, mapped on top of of a digital one.

Like many community creators, Williams and Powell were fiercely protective of what they had built, and the people that used it. They worked hard to create an online environment that was safe and free from cheaters, scammers, and malevolent influence. Those who were found breaking the rules were kicked out. As a result, a younger audience, and one that was mostly young girls, were able to find their place inside of Neopia.

Neopians—as Neopets owners would often call themselves—rewarded the effort of Powell and Williams by enriching the world however they could. Together, and without any real plan, the users of Neopets crafted a vast community teeming with activity and with its own set of legal and normative standards. The trade market flourished. Users traded tips on customizing profiles, or worked together to find Easter eggs hidden throughout the site. One of the more dramatic examples of users taking ownership of the site was The Neopian Times, an entirely user-run in-universe newspaper documenting the fictional going-ons of Neopia. Its editorial has spanned decades, and continues to this day.

Though an outside observer might find the actions of Neopets frivolous, they were a serious endeavor undertaken by the site’s most devoted fans. It became a place for early web adventurers, mostly young girls and boys, to experience a version of the web that was fun, and predicated on an idea of user participation. Using a bit of code, Neopians could customize their profile to add graphics, colors, and personality to it. “Neopets made coding applicable and personal to people (like me),” said one former user, “who otherwise thought coding was a very impersonal activity.” Many Neopets coders went on to make that their careers.

Neopets was fun and interesting and limited only by the creativity of its users. It was what many imagined a version of the web would look like.

The site eventually languished under its own ambition. After it was purchased and run by Doug Dohring and later, Viacom, it set its sights on a multimedia franchise. “I never thought we could be bigger than Disney,” Dohring once said in a profile in Wired, revealing just how far that ambition went, “but if we could create something like Disney – that would be phenomenal.” As the site began to lean harder into somewhat deceptive advertising practices and emphasize expansion into different mediums (TV, games, etc.), Neopets began to overreach. Unable to keep pace with the rapid developments of the web, it has been sold to a number of different owners. The site is still intact, and thanks to its users, thriving to this day.

Candice Carpenter thought a village was a handy metaphor for an online community. Her business partner, and co-founder, Nancy Evans suggested adding an “i” to it, for interactive. Within a few years, iVillage would rise to the highest peak of Internet fortunes and hype. Carpenter would cultivate a reputation for being charismatic, fearless, and often divisive, a central figure in the pantheon of dot-com mythology. Her meteoric rise, however, began with a simple idea.

By the mid-90’s, community was a bundled, repeatable, commotized product (or to some, a “totally overused buzzword,” as Omar Wasow would later put it). Search portals like Yahoo! and Excite were popular, but their utility came from bouncing visitors off to other destinations. Online communities had a certain stickiness, as one one profile in The New Yorker put it, “the intangible quality that brings individuals to a Web site and holds them for long sessions.”

That unique quality attracted advertisers hoping to monetize the attention of a growing base of users. Waves of investment in community, whatever that meant at any given moment, followed. “The lesson was that users in an online community were perfectly capable of producing value all by themselves,” Internet historian Brian McCullough describes. The New Yorker piece framed it differently. “Audience was real estate, and whoever secured the most real estate first was bound to win.”

TheGlobe.com was set against the backdrop of this grand drama. Its rapid and spectacular rise to prominence and fall from grace is well documented. The site itself was a series of chat rooms organized by topic, created by recent Cornell alumni Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman. It offered a fresh take on standard chat rooms, enabling personalization and fun in-site tools.

Backed by the notoriously aggressive Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, and run by green, youngish recent college grads, theGlobe rose to a heavily inflated valuation in full public view. “We launched nationwide—on cable channels, MTV, networks, the whole nine yards,” Paternot recalls in his book about his experience, “We were the first online community to do any type of advertising and fourth or the fifth site to launch a TV ad campaign.” Its collapse would be just as precipitous; and just as public. The site’s founders would be on the covers of magazines and the talk of late night television shows as examples of dot-com glut, with just a hint of schadenfreude.

So too does iVillage get tucked into the annals of dot-com history. The site‘s often controversial founders were frequent features in magazine profiles and television interviews. Carpenter attracted media attention as deftly as she maneuvered her business through rounds of investment and a colossally successful IPO. Its culture was well-known in the press for being chaotic, resulting in a high rate of turnover that saw the company go through five Chief Financial Officer’s in four years.

And yet this ignores the community that iVillage managed to build. It began as a collection of different sites, each with a mix of message boards and editorial content centered around a certain topic. The first, a community for parents known as Parent Soup which began at AOL, was their flagship property. Before long, it spanned across sixteen interconnected websites. “iVillage was built on a community model,” writer Claire Evans describes in her book Broad Band, “its marquee product was forums, where women shared everything from postpartum anxiety and breast cancer stories to advice for managing work stress and unruly teenage children.”

Candice Carpenter (left) and Nancy Evans (right). Image credit: The New Yorker

Carpenter had a bold and clear vision when she began, a product that had been brewing for years. After growing tired of the slow pace of growth in positions at American Express and QVC, Carpetner was given more free rein consulting for AOL. It was her first experience with an online world. There wasn‘t a lot that impressed her about AOL, but she liked the way people gathered together in groups. “Things about people‘s lives that were just vibrant,” she’d later remark in an interview, “that’s what I felt the Internet would be.”

Parent Soup began as a single channel on AOL, but it soon moved to the web along with similar sites for different topics and interests—careers, dating, health and more. What drew people to iVillage sites was their authenticity, their ability to center conversations around topics and bring together people that were passionate about spreading advice. The site was co-founded by Nancy Evans, who had years of experience as an editor in the media industry. Together, they resisted the urge to control every aspect of their community. “The emphasis is more on what visitors to the site can contribute on the particulars of parenthood, relationships and workplace issues,” one writer noted, “rather than on top-tier columnists spouting advice and other more traditional editorial offerings used by established media companies.”

There was, however, something that bound all of the site‘s together: a focus that made iVillage startlingly consistent and popular. Carpenter would later put it concisely: “the vision is to help women in their lives with the stuff big and small that they need to get through.” Even as the site expanded to millions of users, and positioned itself as a network specifically for women, and went through one of the largest IPO’s in the tech industry, that simple fact would remain true.

What’s forgotten in the history of dot-com community is the community. There were, of course, lavish stories of instant millionaires and unbounded ambition. But much of the content that was created was generated by people, people that found each other across vast distances among a shared understanding. The lasting connections that became possible through these communities would outlast the boom and bust cycle of Internet business. Sites like iVillage became benchmarks for later social experiments to aspire to.

In February of 2002, Edgar Enyedy an active contributor to a still new Spanish version of Wikipedia posted to the Wikipedia mailing list and to Wikipedia‘s founder, Jimmy Wales. “I’ve left the project,” he announced, “Good luck with your wikiPAIDia [sic].”

As Wikipedia grew in the years after it officially launched in 2001, it began to expand to other countries. As it did, each community took on its own tenor and tone, adapting the online encyclopedia to the needs of each locale. “The organisation of topics, for example,” Enyedy would later explain, “is not the same across languages, cultures and education systems. Historiography is also obviously not the same.”

Enyedy‘s abrupt exit from the project, and his callous message, was prompted by a post from Wikipedia’s first editor-in-chief Larry Sanger. Sanger had been instrumental in the creation of Wikipedia, but he had recently been asked to step back as a paid employee due to lack of funds. Sanger suggested that sometime in the near future, Wikpedia may turn to ads.

It was more wishful thinking than actual fact—Sanger hoped that ads may bring him his job back. But it was enough to spurn Enyedy into action. The Wikipedia Revolution, author Andrew Lih explains why. “Advertising is the third-rail topic in the community—touch it only if you’re not afraid to get a massive shock.”

By the end of the month, Enyedy had created an independent fork of the Spanish Wikipedia site, along with a list of demands for him to rejoin the project. The list included moving the site from .com to .org domain and moving servers to infrastructure owned by the community and, of course, a guarantee that ads would not be used. Most of these demands would eventually be met, though its hard to tell what influence Enyedy had.

The fork of Wikipedia was both a legally and ideologically acceptable project. Wikipedia’s content is licensed under the Creative Commons license; it is freely open and distributable. The code that runs it is open source. It was never a question of whether a fork of Wikipedia was possible. It was a question of why it felt necessary. And the answer speaks to the heart of the Wikipedia community.

Wikipedia did not begin with a community, but rather as something far more conventional. The first iteration was known as Nupedia, created by Jimmy Wales in early 2000. Wales imagined a traditional encyclopedia ported into the digital space. An encyclopedia that lived online, he reasoned, could be more adaptable than the multi-volume tomes found buried in library stacks or gathering dust on bookshelves.

Wales was joined by then graduate student Larry Sanger, and together they recruited a team of expert writers and editors to contribute to Nupedia. To guarantee that articles were accurate, they set up a meticulous set of guidelines for entries. Each article contributed to Nupedia went through rounds of feedback and was subject to strict editorial oversight. After a year of work, Nupedia had less than a dozen finished articles and Wales was ready to shut the project down.

However, he had recently been introduced to the concept of a wiki, a website that anybody can contribute to. As software goes, the wiki is not overly complex. Every page has a publicly accessible “Edit” button. Anyone can go in and make edits, and those edits are tracked and logged in real time.

In order to solicit feedback on Nupedia, Wales had set up a public mailing list anyone could join. In the year since it was created, around 2,000 people had signed up. In January of 2001, he sent a message to that mailing list with a link to a wiki.

His hope was that he could crowdsource early drafts of articles from his project’s fans. Instead, users contributed a thousand articles in the first month. Within six months, there were ten thousand. Wales renamed the project to Wikipedia, changed the license for the content so that it was freely distributable, and threw open the doors to anybody that wanted to contribute.

The rules and operations of Wikipedia can be difficult to define. It has evolved almost in spite of itself. Most articles begin with a single, random contribution and evolve from there. “Wikipedia continues to grow, and articles continue to improve,” media theorist Clary Shirky wrote of the site in his seminal work Here Comes Everybody, “the process is more like creating a coral reef, the sum of millions of individual actions, than creating a car. And the key to creating those individual actions is to hand as much freedom as possible to the average user.”

From these seemingly random connections and contributions, a tight knit group of frequent editors and writers have formed at the center of Wikipedia. Programmer and famed hacktivist Aaron Swartz described how it all came together. “When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it,” described Swartz, adding, “as a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.” And these insiders, as Swartz referes to them them, created a community.

“One of the things I like to point out is that Wikipedia is a social innovation, not a technical innovation,” Wales once said. In the discussion pages of articles and across mailing lists and blogs, Wikipedians have found ways to collaborate and communicate. The work is distributed and uneven—a small community is responsible for a large number of edits and refinements to articles—but it is impressively collated. Using the ethos of open source as a guide, the Wikipedia community created a shared set of expectations and norms, using the largest repository of human knowledge in existence as their anchor.

Loosely formed and fractured into factions, the Wikipedia community nevertheless follows a set of principles that it has defined over time. Their conventions are defined and redefined on a regular basis, as the community at the core of Wikipedia grows. When it finds a violation of these principles—such as the suggestion that ads will be plastered on the article they helped they create—they sometimes react strongly.

Wikipedia learned from the fork of Spanish Wikipedia, and set up a continuous feedback loop that has allowed its community to remain at the center of making decisions. This was a primary focus of Katherine Maher, who became exectuvie director of Wikimedia, the company behind Wikipedia, in 2016, and then CEO three years later. Wikimedia’s involvement in the community, in Maher’s words, “allows us to be honest with ourselves, and honest with our users, and accountable to our users in the spirit of continuous improvement. And I think that that is a different sort of incentive structure that is much more freeing.”

The result is a hive mind sorting collective knowledge that thrives independently twenty years after it was created. Both Maher and Wales have referred to Wikipedia as a “part of the commons,” a piece of informational infrastructure as important as the cables that pipe bandwidth around the world, built through the work of community.

Fanfiction can be hard to define. It has been the seeds of subculture and an ideological outlet; the subject of intense academic and philosophical inquiry. Fanfiction has often been noted for its unity through anti-hegemony—it is by its very nature illegal or, at the very least, extralegal. As a practice, Professor Brownen Thomas has put it plainly: “Stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works; these fan-created narratives often take the pre-existing storyworld in a new, sometimes bizarre, direction.” Fanfiction predates the Internet, but the web acted as its catalyst.

Message boards, or forums, began as a technological experiment on the web, a way of replicating the Usenet groups and bulletin boards of the pre-web Internet. Once the technology had matured, people began to use them to gather around common interests. These often began with a niche—fans of a TV show, or a unique hobby—and then used as the beginning point for much wider conversation. Through threaded discussions, forum-goers would discuss a whole range of things in, around, and outside of the message board theme. “If urban history can be applied to virtual space and the evolution of the Web,” one writer recalls, “the unruly and twisted message boards are Jane Jacobs. They were built for people, and without much regard to profit.”

Some stayed small (and some even remain so). Others grew. Fans of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer had used the official message board of the show for years. It famously took on a life of its own when the boards where shut down, and the users funded and maintained an identical version to keep the community alive. Sites like Newgrounds and DeviantART began as places to discuss games and art, respectively. Before long they were the launching pad for the careers of an entire generation of digital creators.

Fandom found something similar on the web. On message boards and on personal websites, writers swapped fanfiction stories, and readers flocked to boards to find them. They hid in plain sight, developing rules and conventions for how to share among one another without being noticed.

In the fall of 1998, developer Xing Li began posting to a number of Usenet fanfiction groups. In what would come to be known as his trademark sincerity, his message read: “I’m very happy to announce that www.fanfiction.net is now officially open!!!!!! And we have done it 3 weekss ahead of projected finish date. While everyone trick-or-treated we were hard at working debugging the site.”

Li wasn’t a fanfiction creator himself, but he thought he stumbled upon a formula for its success. What made Fanfiction.net unique was that its community tools—built-in tagging, easy subscriptions to stories, freeform message boards for discussions—was built with fandom in mind. As one writer would later describe this winning combination, “its secret to success is its limited moderation and fully-automated system, meaning posting is very quick and easy and can be done by anyone.”

Fanfiction creators found a home at Fanfiction.net, or FF.net as it was often shortened to. Throughout its early years, Li had a nerdy and steadfast devotion to the development of the site. He‘d post sometimes daily to an open changelog on the site, a mix of site-related updates and deeply personal anecdotes. “Full-text searching allows you to search for keywords/phrases within every fanfiction entry in our huge archive,” one update read. “I can‘t get the song out of my head and I need to find the song or I will go bonkers. Thanks a bunch. =)” read another (the song was The Cure‘s “Boys Don’t Cry”).

Li’s cult of personality and the unique position of the site made it immensely popular. For years, the fanfiction community had stuck to the shadows. FF.net gave them a home. Members took it upon themselves to create a welcoming environment, establishing norms and procedures for tagging and discoverability, as well as feedback for writers.

The result was a unique community on the web that attempted to lift one another up. “Sorry. It‘s just really gratifying to post your first fic and get three hits within about six seconds. It‘s pretty wild, I haven’t gotten one bad review on FF.N…” one fanfic writer posted in the site’s early days. “That makes me pretty darn happy :)”

The reader and writer relationship on FF.net was fluid. The stories generated by users acted as a reference for conversation among fellow writers and fanfiction readers. One idea often flows into the next, and it is only through sharing content that it takes on meaning. “Yes, they want recognition and adulation for their work, but there‘s also the very strong sense that they want to share, to be part of something bigger than themselves. There’s a simple, human urge to belong.”

As the dot-com era waned, community was repackaged and resold as the social web. The goals of early social communities were looser than the tight niches and imaginative worlds of early community sites. Most functioned to bring one’s real life into digital space. Classmates.com, launched in 1995, is one of the earliest examples of this type of site. Its founder, Randy Conrads, believed that the web was best suited for reconnecting people with their former schoolmates.

Not long after, AsianAve launched from the chaotic New York apartment where the site‘s six co-founders lived and worked. Though it had a specific demographic—Asian Americans—AsianAve was modeled after a few other early social web experiences, like SixDegrees. The goal was to simulate real life friend groups, and to make the web a fun place to hang out. “Most of Asian Avenue‘s content is produced by members themselves,” an early article in The New York Times describes. “[T]he site offers tool kits to create personal home pages, chat rooms and interactive soap operas.” Eventually, one of the site‘s founders, Benjamin Sun, began to explore how he could expand his idea beyond a single demographic. That’s when he met Omar Wasow.

Wasow was fascinated with technology from a young age. When he was a child, he fell in love first with early video games like Pong and Donkey Kong. By high school, he made the leap to programmer. “I begged my way out of wood shop into computer science class. And it really changed my life. I went to being somebody who consumed video games to creating video games.”

In 1993, Wasow founded New York Online, a Bulletin Board System that targeted a “broad social and ethnic ‘mix’,” instead of pulling from the same limited pool of upper-middle class tech nerds most networked projects focused on. To earn an actual living, Wasow developed websites for popular magazine brands like Vibe and Essence. It was through this work that he crossed paths with Benjamin Sun.

By the mid-1990‘s, Wasow had already gathered a loyal following and public profile, featured in magazines like Newsweek and Wired. Wasow’s reputation centered on his ability to build communities thoughtfully, to explore the social ramifications of his tech before and while he built it. When Sun approached him about expanding AsianAve to an African American audience, a site that would eventually be known as BlackPlanet, he applied the same thinking.

Wasow didn’t want to build a community from scratch. Any site that they built would need to be a continuation of the strong networks Black Americans had been building for decades. “A friend of mine once shared with me that you don’t build an online community; you join a community,” Wasow once put it, “BlackPlanet allowed us to become part of a network that already had centuries of black churches and colleges and barbecues. It meant that we, very organically, could build on this very powerful, existing set of relationships and networks and communities.”

BlackPlanet offered its users a number of ways to connect. A central profile—the same kind that MySpace and Facebook would later adopt—anchored a member’s digital presence. Chat rooms and message boards offered opportunities for friendly conversation or political discourse (or sometimes, fierce debate). News and email were built right into the app to make it a centralized place for living out your digital life.

By the mid-2000’s BlackPlanet was a sensation. It captured a large part of African Americans who were coming online for the first time. Barack Obama, still a Senator running for President, joined the site in 2007. Its growth exploded into the millions; it was a seminal experience for black youth in the United States.

After being featured on a segment on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, teaching Oprah how to use the Internet, Wasow‘s profile reached soaring heights. The New York Times dubbed him the “philosopher-prince of the digital age,” for his considered community building. “The best the Web has to offer is community-driven,” Wasow would later say. He never stopped building his community thoughtfully. and they in turn, became an integral part of the country’s culture.

Before long, a group of developers would look at BlackPlanet and wonder how to adapt it to a wider audience. The result were the web’s first true social networks.

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rosiemotene · 6 years ago

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My passions in life are Women, Africa, and the arts. On a recent visit to Rwanda, I had the opportunity of meeting the countries most celebrated artist and activist, Hope Azeda. I was introduced to Hope through one of my Ugandan sister, Fiona Marwa. It was the last day of my trip in Kigali and had a limited amount of time but Fiona insisted that I touch base with Hope, who was also trying to push through a crazy work schedule. I was fortunate enough as she made time between her meetings, rehearsals and running Rwanda’s top performing arts centre. We met at a beautiful book shop in Kigali, which had the most breathtaking view that saw endless hills and immaculate gardens. On sitting down with her, her energy and spirit ignited my soul. I knew that although we had set aside 30 minutes to talk, it will be worthwhile.

So who is Hope Azeda?

Hope is the director and founder of the Mashirika Performing Arts and Media Company. Hope Azeda was born in Uganda. Her parents, Norman and Beatrice, were born and lived in Rwanda but fled to neighbouring Uganda in 1959 as a result of increasing ethnic tensions following a Hutu uprising against Tutsi leadership. Hope is one of 11 children and her sibling’s life in Uganda was spent living at a hospital residence, where her mother worked as a midwife. Her father lived and worked at a refugee camp, teaching maths and French. Hope later went on to study at Namasagali College in Eastern Uganda, where her love and passion for the arts began. This led to her pursuing a career in music, dance, and drama. Growing up, Hope’s relatives had told her how beautiful Rwanda was, so it had always been a childhood dream of Hope’s to return to Rwanda – a place she called home despite never having lived there. In 1998, Hope followed her dream and moved to Kigali. It was not easy as she had no friends there and was not fluent in Kinyarwanda or French (two of the languages spoken in Rwanda). Many of her family lived in Rwanda but unfortunately became victims of the Rwandan genocide.

Soon after her arrival in Rwanda, Hope founded the Mashirika Performing Arts Media Company in Kigali. At first, she used to sit with her students under a tree and work, they now work from a beautiful house in Kigali. When she arrived in Rwanda, there was no infrastructure. She went on to say “the country was on its knees. It was in ashes and was trying to rise. As an artist, your instinct takes you there – what can I do?.

As we began chatting in the coffee shop, we realized that we needed a lot more time together and so he invited me to come and visit the centre and sit in on a rehearsal. A few hours later I arrived and a beautiful colourful house. As you enter, the entrance hall is a mirrored room, with beautiful quotes on the wall. The rest of the house is made of a kitchen and an office and I was led outside to the upstairs terrace, where the students are rehearsing for the show. The terrace, like most of the Rwandan terraces, overlooks another spectacular view of Kigali’s rolling hills and perfectly manicures laws.

Mashirika Performing Arts and Media Company.

Mashirika Performing Arts and Media Company were established in 1997. Through different modes of performance including dance, movement, music, drama, and spoken word, Mashirika is constantly exploring new ways to develop, learn and create exciting theatre. The company uses the arts as a tool for social transformation. Partnering with organizations such as the Aegis Trust and the Ministry of Justice, Mashirika has produced many films, plays, and performances based on the causes and prevention of genocide, the Gacaca proceedings (a system of community justice in Rwanda, to help with community rebuilding) and the importance of unity and reconciliation. Mashirika uses performing arts to engage the audience, and teach about important issues. Through its use of interactive theatre and forum theatre, Mashirika is at the forefront of theatre for development; demonstrating its mission that performing art can be Mashirika Theatre Company

The mission The Mashirika Performing Arts Media Company mission is to prove that performing arts is not only entertainment but a tool of social transformation and source of employment. Mashrika uses drama as a tool for social transformation, its productions intended to teach, commemorate and raise awareness of important issues.

Topics of plays have ranged from reconciliation to sexism and AIDS. Plays are taken to communities in villages and markets, intended to create platforms for civic dialogues to encourage development and reconciliation. Mashirika has been at the forefront of using theatre for development, using forms like interactive theatre, image theatre, forum theatre.

Combining art and activism: As the Genocide had taken the front stage in the Rwandan narrative, Hope decided to use that as a way to find healing, create awareness and establish a brighter and positive platform for those to come. The production, Africa’s Hope, was a theatre production which was commissioned in 2004 for the 10th anniversary of the genocide, more than 1,000 performers drew on personal testimonies from the war. Its running time was 100 minutes, which represented the 100 days of the genocide. The play was performed in Rwanda and in Edinburgh for the G8 World Summit in 2005. It also recently toured 15 schools and theatres in the UK. The subject matter was incredibly difficult and it dealt with emotions and trauma through the eyes of a child. Hope, felt that as adults, they had messed up and wanted to explore the narrative through the eyes of the children.

Her other works and projects since have dealt with other social topics from sexism to Aids, often performed in sites ranging from refugee camps to open football pitches and village halls.

Ubumuntu Arts Festival.

In 2015, with a grant from the African Leadership Initiative, Hope set up the annual Ubumuntu Arts Festival, bringing music, dance, art and theatre to the amphitheater at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. It attracts about 5,000 people per day. Azeda chose the venue not only for its symbolic value, but also because the performances give Rwandans a way to engage with the conflict both individually and as a group, or through what she calls “public introspection”. “The set is well-dressed, the scenography is there… It crosses into your own internal conversation,” she says.

The G25 production G25 is the latest theatre production, will commemorate 25 years since the end of the Genocide. When I visited the centre, I sat in on their rehearsals for this production. The production will be performed in two phases in Rwanda, after which it will be staged in New York. For the first phase of the production, Mashirika will collaborate with artists from the UK and Argentina, and their joint piece will be performed on April 12, at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Amphitheatre, to coincide with the start of the official genocide commemoration period. The second phase of the production will see further collaboration between Rwandan artists and those from the U.S, and the performance will be staged at this year’s edition of the Ubumuntu Arts Festival in July, at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Amphitheatre. The production will then be staged in New York, in the US. On the production, Hope says, “The theatrical performance will be a collective of young voices questioning the past as they take on the responsibility of being guardians of a dark history they were never part of. The big question at hand would be; ‘why did one million people die in 100 days, in a country they love, with beautiful people and a beautiful culture’?”

Azeda described G25 as “an open script of global concerns”, as the issues it seeks to address are not unique to only Rwanda, but rather a rallying call to global young voices to be authors of their own destiny.

My time with the performers at their rehearsals and a few pictures taken in the house.

Through Waka talent agency, we aim to work with The Mashirika Performing Arts and Media Company and Ubumuntu Arts Festival with the aim of creating powerful Pan African synergiess that tell our stories, in the most authentic way. Rwanda’s catalyst for Hope! My passions in life are Women, Africa, and the arts. On a recent visit to Rwanda, I had the opportunity of meeting the countries most celebrated artist and activist, Hope Azeda.

#Hope Azeda #kigali #Mashirika Performing Arts Media Company #PanAfrican #RosieMotene #Rwanda #Violence #Waka talent #Waka talent agency #women

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guelphbreakingnews · 7 years ago

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Doors Open 2018 Locations Announced!

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The 2018 event will take place on Saturday, April 21, from 10 am to 4 pm. Site details are posted at guelpharts.ca/doors-open-guelph#thisyearsevent, and listed below.

2018 Site Listing

Guelph Little Theatre

176 Morris Street

In 1935, the first Little Theatre opened at Guelph City Hall. A fire in 1993 forced it from its 26-year home in the Salvation Army Hall on Dublin Street. In 1997, it moved into a former welding shop. The space holds a 288-seat raked auditorium, large raised stage, gracious lobby, rehearsal hall, workshop, dressing rooms, and storage areas. The tour will take visitors to the stage set for its current production. Family-friendly activities include a costume photo booth, prop-making demonstration, and sneak peeks at a rehearsal and performance.

Church House in the Ward

44 Short Street

In 1899, Knox Presbyterian Church established a Sabbath School Mission in the Ward. In 1909, St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church was constructed as a modest Edwardian building with Gothic windows and an impressive Douglas Fir ceiling. In 2002, the church was sold and renovated over five years into a spectacular residence. It is also the home of Sage Solutions, a strategy and facilitation company.

Churches of St. Matthias and St. James the Apostle

86 Glasgow St. N.

Built in 1891-92 in Gothic style, St. James is the newest of Guelph’s stone churches, the last built with local limestone. The church was downsized from its original traditional plan resulting in an unusual orientation. The nave was eliminated leaving the north transept as the nave. The original fine wood ceiling and elaborate vaulting remained in the building’s final form.

St. Andrews Presbyterian Church

161 Norfolk St.

The original Church was built in the market grounds in 1832, but was demolished to make room for Guelph’s City Hall. The new Gothic Revival church built in 1856 was designed by William Hay of Toronto. The open timberwork ceiling and fine stained glass windows memorialize church leaders and a plaque pays tribute to John McCrae who attended the church in his youth. The south-side addition is built of stone salvaged from Guelph’s demolished Opera House.

55 Delhi Street

The Forsyth-Hepburn Home was constructed in 1910 of red brick in Georgian Revival style as a residence for nurses working at Guelph General Hospital. It served that purpose until the late 1950s. Vesterra Property Management acquired it in 2013 and renovated it retaining all original exterior wood trim, bay windows, front porch with Tuscan columns, and the interior staircase.

55 Delhi St. – Intrigue Media

Intrigue Media, a full-service digital marketing company, occupies the top floor.

55 Delhi St. – Two Rivers Health

On the main floor is Two Rivers Health, an integrative health clinic. Helping women and families to create abundant, vibrant lives, the all-female clinician team brings the original vision for this iconic building full circle. Interior design by Michele Levy-Kodarin inspires calm and retains many original elements of exposed brick, entranceway, and restored hardwood.

55 Delhi St. – First Steps

In the lower level is an after-school child care service that fills its four bright rooms with activity. The lower red brick walls have been restored to give children a lesson on our city’s heritage.

Guelph Orange Hall

385 Waterloo Ave.

The Loyal Orange Association of British America has had a continuous presence in the City of Guelph since 1837, having a total of seven different Loyal Orange Lodges and three Ladies Orange Benevolent Associations. Prince Arthur L.O.L. 1331 was first established in Guelph in 1871, but moved into its present building in the late 1940s. Displays will demonstrate various aspects of its history and community involvement.

The New Petrie

15 Wyndham Street

The New Petrie incorporates the remaining pieces of the former Western Hotel built on the site in 1847. Partly destroyed by a fire in 1854, the Petrie could be one of the oldest buildings left on Wyndham Street North. Its back wall and portions of the former stables are preserved in the offices of Hunch Manifest and The Robbie Group. Designed in 1882 by Guelph architect John Day, the building opened as a pharmacy for Alexander Bain Petrie with a unique stamped metal facade and iconic mortar and pestle. Since 2015, it has been restored for several new businesses.

The New Petrie – Hunch Manifest

Hunch Manifest is a Semantic Search Marketing company focussed on digital marketers to translate their content into the language of search engines. This pairing of innovation and heritage demonstrates Jane Jacobs’ words, “New ideas need old buildings.”

The New Petrie – The Robbie Group

The Robbie Group provides advice on pensions and also offers fee-for-service financial planning.

The New Petrie - Sway

Sway was founded in 2013 with a focus on becoming the best visual advertising agency via television commercials and online video. Sway is now an industry leader in brand management, marketing strategy, and unique content creation.

The New Petrie – The Modern Bride

Mr. Petrie wanted the tallest building on Wyndham Street, so he topped it with an empty shell that remained unused for 136 years until it was restored as an elegant showroom and stunning event space for The Modern Bride. Twenty-foot ceilings and eleven-foot windows looking on the Basilica create a beautiful backdrop for the wedding dresses. The Modern Bride is a carefully curated, appointment-only bridal boutique that offers a unique shopping experience for the contemporary bride.

Hospice Wellington

795 Scottsdale Drive

Founded in 1980, Hospice provides care and support to families facing a life-threatening illness. The former Kortright Presbyterian Church was built in 1983. In 2010, David McCauley, architect of the original church, redesigned the building with ten palliative residences in the upper level and community support programs in the lower level. The design includes a living wall, solar panels and rainwater collection system to support the pollination garden on the grounds. Visitors will experience collaborative art and family activities.

10C Shared Space

42 Carden Street

Seed Warehouse was a two-storey stone structure built in the 1860s which later became Massey-Ferguson Farm Supply. Between 1924 and 1934, Ackers Furniture moved in, added the top two floors and remained until 2016. In 1955, a fire caused a huge safe to fall through the first floor to the basement where it remains today. Together with the Chalmers Community Service Centre, the building is now a thriving collaborative workspace and community hub.

Community Living Guelph-Wellington

8 Royal Road

CLGW uses social inclusion and community engagement to support adults with developmental disabilities to live, work and connect in their community. Founded in 1955 by parents of intellectually-disabled children, it provides service to over 400 people and their families. The present building opened in 2007 with services like life skills and computer training, physiotherapy and music therapy with access to ARC industries, kitchen and gymnasium.

Trails Open – Speedvale Trail Underpass

Often in the news last year, the City's upcoming trail underpass will complete a safe and scenic link above the riverbank between the TransCanada Trail, Riverside Park, and the Evergreen Seniors Centre. 15-20 minute hikes will be run throughout the day by the Guelph Hiking Trail Club. Parking off Riverview Drive, behind the Speedvale Ave. E. firehall.

This year Guelph Arts Council is pleased to announce a collaboration with Guelph Museum’s Doors Open After Dark, the Museum’s second annual history-at-night party. After a day exploring Guelph’s hidden gems, Doors Open visitors are encouraged to save some energy to celebrate Guelph’s 191st birthday with pop-up art and history installations at and around the museum. The free fun begins at 9 pm. Artists and historians can watch for a Call to Artists to be released by March 9. For more information about Doors Open After Dark, visit guelphmuseums.ca.

Source: Guelph Arts Council

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connorrenwick · 7 years ago

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LDF17: Creativity and Inspiration in the Shoreditch Design Triangle

The Shoreditch Design Triangle is one of the London Design Festival’s more established design districts and this year was absolutely buzzing with creativity and inspiration. Described by its organizers as “a cultural event that celebrates the creative industry in East London,” it is active during LDF, but also at other key times throughout the year.

One of the stars of the show this year was London-based designer, Yinka Ilori, who specializes in up-cycling vintage furniture, inspired by the traditional Nigerian parables and Dutch wax fabrics that are part of his family’s heritage.

He had two projects in the Shoreditch Design Triangle – one was Estate Playground outside citizenM Shoreditch inspired by the playground on the North London housing estate on which he grew up. He described it as a symbol of “freedom, adventure and friendship” and hoped his new iteration, comprising a swing, a slide and a round-about, would encourage visitors to stop and play, perhaps recapturing some of their own childhood. “Yinka Ilori is a passionate believer in the power of the community to unite, celebrate and bring out the very best in people, whatever their race, culture or beliefs,” said a statement from citizenM. “Like Yinka, we also believe in the power of the people, and commissioned him to create an installation at the entrance of citizenM Shoreditch embodying this message.” Ilori is looking for a local school to donate the playground to after the festival.

His second project was a collaboration with Restoration Station, a social enterprise that trains people in recovery from addiction to restore furniture in order to give them new skills, while also providing a metaphor for their own transformation. “The volunteers each selected an item of furniture from the donated pieces and used color as a catalyst to tell their stories,” explains Ilori. “The workshops didn’t follow a set format: I like the making process to be as organic as possible. Any ‘mistakes’ made in the process could end up being the most powerful part of their narrative.” The resulting 10 chairs were auctioned to raise money to support Restoration Station’s continued work of helping people to find a path back to recovery, society and self-worth.”

Meanwhile a series of talks at lifestyle shop W.A. Green aimed to raise the profile of women in creative industries. Entitled Women Making Waves in Design, the program included speakers such as Grace Souky and Giannina Capitani.

Architecture practice Universal Design Studio collaborated with The Office Group to create this pop-up inside-outside space (with a thankfully water-tight roof!) in which to explore the meditative properties of repetitive activities. We joined them for a sushi making workshop.

Pulpo’s pop-up was a treat for all the senses if only for the wall-to-wall carpet! The German company collaborates with leading designers and European manufacturers to create high-end design products for the home. Both collections pictured above are by Sebastian Herkner. “There is a sensitivity and identity to my work that emphasizes the function, the material and the detail,” he says. “I transport and interpret characteristics from various contexts of society and culture and implement them in new artifacts.”

‘Future living lab’ SPACE10 hosted a pop-up to explore “the consequences of urbanization and the spaces we inhabit.” Events included a collaboration with FranklinTill, a London-based design house and trend-forecasting agency, established by Kate Franklin and Caroline Till in 2010, and a cafe with its own micro-garden growing herbs and vegetables for use throughout the event.

Ready, Made, Go at the Ace Hotel is going from strength to strength and fast becoming a stalwart of the London Design Festival. Curated by Modern Design Review editor Laura Houseley, the premise is that the Ace give her a list of things they genuinely need for the hotel and only the budget they would spend buying them off-the-shelf, and she finds London-based designers to design, prototype and make them from scratch. The result is not only a fascinating exhibition for LDF, but one with longevity and relevance long after the show is over. The salt and pepper shakers above are by Oscar Diaz.

And last but not least, we couldn’t write a round-up of the Shoreditch Design Triangle without stretching the boundaries slightly to include the fabulous Villa Walala by Camille Walala, pictured here with her art director and creative producer Julia Jomaa, which we’ve written about in more detail here.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/ldf17-creativity-and-inspiration-in-the-shoreditch-design-triangle/

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travelbiz · 8 years ago

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Vivid Sydney 2017: Bigger, Bolder, Brighter

New precinct at Barangaroo Expanded Royal Botanic Garden Sydney footprint Goldfrapp, AIR and Nick Murphy for Vivid Music US contemporary artist, Shepard Fairey headlines Vivid Ideas 2017 program announcement video content is available at: http://ift.tt/2m0RgZH

SYDNEY, March 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The world's largest festival of light music and ideas, Vivid Sydney returns bigger, bolder and brighter in 2017, with a new precinct at Barangaroo, an expanded light walk through the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, and imaginary creatures that will transform the Sails of the Sydney Opera House.

Audio Creatures, Lighting the Sails artist impression by Ash Bolland

Organic Vibrations artist impression of the Museum of Contemporary Art by Julia Gorman and Danny Rose

Over 23 nights from Friday 26 May to Saturday 17 June, Vivid Light will transform the cityscape into a creative canvas, take over Sydney stages with Vivid Music's biggest program to date, and provide a global forum for creative conversations at Vivid Ideas.

Vivid Sydney is owned, managed and produced by the NSW Government's tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW.

Vivid Light

For the first time, Vivid Sydney's vibrant kaleidoscope will stream into a new precinct at Barangaroo, with a trail of installations winding through intimate laneways, past waterfront vistas and into a foodie paradise. Visitors will be immersed in A Day in the Light, an outdoor theatre of light and sound that lets them become part of the artwork, and treated to optical illusions at Trapdoor, which tells the stories of Barangaroo's past.

The festival's bright lights will return to the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney with an expanded trail that will take visitors through the heart of the beautiful harbourside oasis. Here, Birds of Lumos, inspired by the rare Rowi species of the New Zealand kiwi, will come to life as they glow and pulse with colour. The nostalgic Dipping Birds, giant 2.5 metre illuminated sculptures, will change colour as they dip back and forth into a pond, and quirky installation You lookin' at me? will turn heads as big glaring eyes follow passers-by. A pop-up landmark celebrating our Harbour City, Sydneyland, will provide a beautiful and iconic photo backdrop for visitors and locals.

At the heart of the Vivid Sydney light walk, the Sails of the World-Heritage listed Sydney Opera House will be bought to life by a series of imaginary creatures curated and designed by acclaimed cinematographer, editor, and graphic designer Ash Bolland. Audio Creatures will show creatures interacting with the environment, morphing and moving between each other across the iconic Sails.

The City's icons will once again be transformed, including the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia with Organic Vibrations, a collaboration between Australian artist Julia Gorman and the Paris-based creative and artistic collective, Danny Rose. Interactive lighting display Dreamscape will let visitors put their own colourful mark on the city's skyline from Circular Quay along the Cahill Expressway to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Destination NSW Chief Executive Officer and Executive Producer of Vivid Sydney, Sandra Chipchase said, "In 2016, a record-breaking 2.31 million visitors came to Vivid Sydney, which is testament to the festival's impressive line-up, continued innovation and growth over the past nine years.

"Vivid Sydney in 2017 will impress with a robust program across Vivid Light, Music and Ideas, so now is the time for visitors to start planning their trip so they can be inspired visually, creatively and musically at Vivid Sydney."

Popular precincts Chatswood, Taronga Zoo, Martin Place and Darling Harbour will return in 2017.

The buildings, shopping malls, streets and laneways of Chatswood CBD will be reinvented as a retro-futuristic smart city called Future City, Smart City with ingenious installations and light sculptures inspired by the 'Steampunk' design aesthetic of 19th century steam-powered machinery.

Lights for the Wild at Taronga Zoo, will return featuring giant animal light sculptures that wowed visitors when they made their debut last year. A few new characters and surprises will join the 2016 favourites, including a swarm of buzzing bees, and a giant interactive Port Jackson shark.

Martin Place will be home to Sydney's most popular food and beverage purveyors, alongside grand, interactive light installations. Highlights include a new version of the multi-award winning 3D mapped projection Urban Tree 2.0, and Deep Forest, an urban jungle for feasting featuring an open flame fire-pit with barbeque treats from Porteno and some of NSW's best fire chefs.

Twenty-eight tonnes of water will be thrown into the air every minute, whilst lasers, flame jets, music and fireworks combine in a celebration of the power of creativity and innovation at Darling Harbour. Magicians of the Mist water theatre will be a spectacular display of technology and art defining the digital era.

Vivid Music

The beat of the Vivid Music program is stronger than ever with over 250 events in this year's line-up. Highlights include an Australian exclusive performance by electronic pop duo Goldfrapp and the return of Curve Ball -- a large-scale live music and art event created by Fuzzy Music, both at Carriageworks.

Popular Vivid Music events return including Heaps Gay, Soul of Sydney, Purple Sneakers and The Argyle's Tokyo Disco.

Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House will deliver an eclectic suite of not-to-be-missed performances from influential American folk-rock band Fleet Foxes, French electronic superheroes AIR, British singer and songwriter Laura Marling, and producer and bonafide hit-maker, Australia's Nick Murphy.

City Recital Hall breaks from its classical roots with an incredible program -- Metamorphosis -- serving up everything from jazz and dance anthems, to multisensory masterpieces. Sydney based indie rock band Dappled Cities will launch their new album IIIII (pronounced five), Grammy award-winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves will take to the stage in a special one off performance, and Paul Mac will host a Sound Bubble Sound Party.

In a Vivid Music first, Vivid Sydney has partnered with the City of Sydney to deliver a program across a multitude of city venues. Showcasing grassroots and emerging local music talent, highlights will include a new roof top festival from Cake Wines, Pie in the Sky, and a showcase of Women in Electronic Music at Oxford Art Factory.

Kings Cross returns with an exciting line-up of performance music, art, 'Avant Cabaret', and cutting-edge, independent and immersive theatre with a bohemian flavour, part of the Vivid KX program.

Vivid Ideas

The Vivid Ideas program will continue to challenge and inspire with more than 200 events exploring the changing face of the creative industries. Iconic American artist Shepard Fairey, who blurs the boundaries of art and design, headlines the Vivid Ideas line-up. His body of work includes his Barack Obama HOPE campaign, the OBEY GIANT art project, and this year's ubiquitous 'We The People' initiative.

In a Vivid Sydney exclusive, Fairey will share his do-it-yourself approach, career highlights and how he managed to turn his creativity into an authentic voice about street culture. He will also create a large scale public mural live on a wall in Sydney's CBD, and some of his most famous works to date will be part of a pop-up exhibition at the Darling Quarter.

Throughout the city, a series of conferences will connect start-ups, emerging talent, practitioners and entrepreneurs with world-class creators and thought-leaders. Highlights include The Sunrise, which connects start-ups with successful founders; Semi Permanent, returning with a series of interactive, immersive experiences featuring leaders from Getty Images, NIKE, Google and more; and family-favourite, Robowars, where some of the country's best engineers and robotic experts put their self-built robots to battle.

The Vivid Ideas Exchange at the Museum of Contemporary Art also boasts a diverse line-up of talks presented by Creative Practitioners covering topics from fashion to placemaking, storytelling, ageism, marketing pitching, health, innovation, big data and mixed reality.

Vivid Sydney Sponsors

Vivid Sydney thanks its sponsors for their support of the festival in 2017 including Partners Huawei, Ford and American Express, and Supporters: Allianz, Canon, City of Sydney, NSW Department of Industry, Google, Oracle Liquid, Property NSW, Sensis, Sydney Airport, Sydney Opera House, TAFE NSW, Technical Direction Company and 32 Hundred Lighting. Vivid Sydney's Access and Inclusion partner is Cushman and Wakefield and the festival continues its sustainability partnership with the Banksia Foundation.

The full 2017 Vivid Sydney media kit, program announcement, video content, and high-res imagery, including 2017 Vivid Sydney light renders and footage of 2016 festival highlights, is available at http://ift.tt/18A1aup.

Media Enquiries:

Katie Lettice, Red Agency M: +61 405 470 925 E: [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Kate Campbell, Destination NSW, M: +61 418 126 211 E: [email protected]

Melissa Coates, Destination NSW M: +61 419 093 882 E: [email protected]

Photo - http://ift.tt/2mDwFw9 Photo - http://ift.tt/2mDxJjB

Read this news on PR Newswire Asia website: Vivid Sydney 2017: Bigger, Bolder, Brighter

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londontheatre · 8 years ago

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FRANCIS TURNLY

With the annual Tricycle Takeover due to open next month, Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham today announces the company’s forthcoming work ahead of the reopening of the building in spring 2018.

This summer, Mikel Murfi returns with his production of The Man in The Woman’s Shoes, which was a sell-out success at the Tricycle last year, playing in rep with his brand new play, I Hear You and Rejoice in the Tricycle cinema space.

Rubasingham’s Olivier award-winning production of Moira Buffini’s hit play Handbagged will receive its US première at the Round House Theatre in Washington DC as part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival – the world’s largest festival dedicated to new work by women.

In a first for the company, the Tricycle Theatre will partner with the National Theatre in a co-production of the world première of The Great Wave which won its playwright, Francis Turnly, the Catherine Johnson Award (2016). Rubasingham directs the production, which opens at the National Theatre in Spring 2018. Turnly was the Channel 4 Playwright in Residence at the Tricycle Theatre in 2015.

The Tricycle cinema space also plays hosts to Inua Ellams’ An Evening with an Immigrant; and comedy nights presented by Upfront as part of their 25th anniversary season.

TRICYCLE TAKEOVER Tricycle Takeover returns for its 4th year with its most ambitious programme to date. Six venues across the borough will host more than 25 free events, screenings, performances and masterclasses across a 13 day period in April. During the Takeover, young people from across London will be invited to get involved as audiences, workshop participants and performers.

Headlining Takeover 2017 are six new plays The Invisible Boy; 24 Hours; Almost, But Not Quite; We Too, Are Giants; Buried; and Mission Improbable, written for six new theatre companies exploring themes of community, the expectations of society and coming of age. Eleven professional playwrights and directors from across the industry have been leading the projects, including names such as Tinuke Craig, Chino Odimba and Somalia Seaton.

The programme of events and masterclasses include Film in a Day; Stage Combat; Podcast Drama Workshop; Puppetry; Mapping Futures Q&A – Creativity in Brent, with Andre Anderson, Dilan Dattani and Indhu Rubasingham; and a special talk with Mariah Idrissi, the first hijab wearing model to sign to a major agency from Wembley Park.

TRICYCLE CINEMA SPACE THE MAN IN THE WOMAN’S SHOES & I HEAR YOU AND REJOICE Written and performed by Mikel Murfi

Summer 2017 Mikel Murfi returns to the Tricycle following the sell-out success of The Man in The Woman’s Shoes in 2016 to present a further run of the production in rep with his new one man show I Hear You and Rejoice.

Late in life, Pat Farnon, a cobbler and all-round contented man, marries the redoubtable Kitsy Rainey. It’s a match made in heaven, in more ways than one.

Written and performed by Mikel Murfi, I Hear You and Rejoice is a tender and joy filled account of a most unlikely marriage.

This show is the second collaboration between Sligo County Council Arts Service, The Hawk’s Well Theatre Sligo, and Mikel Murfi. It was created for the Bealtaine Festival 2015.

Originally from Sligo, Mikel Murfi trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq, Paris. As an actor and a director he has worked in all the major theatres in Ireland. He has won 5 fringe first awards in Edinburgh and the Irish Times award for Best Supporting actor. His film work includes The Commitments, The Butcher Boy, Intermission and Jimmy’s Hall. Following sell-out runs in Dublin and at the Galway International Arts Festival, he performed in 2014 at the National Theatre London in Enda Walsh’s acclaimed production of Ballyturk with Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea. He performed in The Last Hotel – an opera by Enda Walsh in Covent Garden. He’ll appear once again at Sadler’s Wells in November 2017 in Michael Keegan-Dolan’s sell out show from last November – the dance theatre production of Swan Lake/Loch Na hEala.

ROUND HOUSE THEATRE, WASHINGTON DC US Première of HANDBAGGED By Moira Buffini 31 January – 25 February 2018 Directed by Indhu Rubasingham Part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival Presented by arrangement with Tricycle Theatre and Eleanor Lloyd Productions

Indhu Rubasingham’s Olivier Award-winning production of Moira Buffini’s Handbagged makes its US première at the Round House Theatre in Washington DC as part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival – the world’s largest festival of new work by female playwrights.

The monarch – Liz. Her most powerful subject – Maggie. Two enduring icons born six months apart. One destined to rule, the other elected to lead. But when the stiff upper lip softened and the gloves came off, which one had the upper hand?

Handbagged is the ‘wickedly funny’ (Evening Standard) new play that opens the clasp on the relationship between two giants of the 20th Century.

Moira Buffini’s ‘irresistibly mischievous’ (The Independent) comedy speculates on that most provocative of questions: What did the world’s most powerful women talk about behind closed palace doors?

NATIONAL THEATRE A Tricycle Theatre and National Theatre co-production THE GREAT WAVE By Francis Turnly Spring 2018 Dorfman Theatre Directed by Indhu Rubasingham

An epic play set in Japan and North Korea. On a dark and stormy night two sisters, Hanako and Reiko, are swept away by a gigantic wave. Reiko survives while Hanako is, seemingly, lost to the sea. Their mother, however, can’t shake the feeling her daughter is still alive.

The Great Wave won the Catherine Johnson Award (2016), and renews Turnly’s collaboration with the Tricycle Theatre – in 2014 he was awarded the Channel 4 Playwright in Residence, joining the Tricycle Theatre for a residency throughout 2015.

Francis Turnly’s plays include Hiding for Watford Palace Theatre, Bogland for The Lyric Theatre, Belfast and Harajuku Girls for Finborough Theatre. He has written several plays for Radio 4 including the original detective drama, Hinterland.

TRICYCLE CINEMA SPACE AN EVENING WITH AN IMMIGRANT Presented by Inua Ellams and Fuel Written and performed by Inua Ellams Summer 2017 Award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams returns to the Tricycle with An Evening with an Immigrant.

Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother in what is now considered by many to be Boko Haram territory, in 1996, Ellams left Nigeria for England aged 12, moved to Ireland for 3 years before returning to London and starting work as a writer and graphic designer.

Part of this story was documented in his hilarious autobiographical Edinburgh Fringe First award winning play, The 14th Tale, but most of it is untold. Littered with poems, stories and anecdotes, Inua will tell his ridiculous, fantastic, poignant immigrant story of escaping fundamentalist Islam, directing an arts festival at his college in Dublin, performing solo shows at the National Theatre, and drinking wine with the Queen of England, all the while without a country to belong to or place to call home. Age recommendation: 15+

TRICYCLE CINEMA SPACE UPFRONT COMEDY CELEBRATES ITS 25 BIRTHDAY WITH A NEW SEASON AT THE TRICYCLE The Upfront Comedy season continues with:

Sunday 2 April, 7.30pm John Simmit, Wil-E, Mr Cee and Thanyia Moore Upfront founder John Simmit introduces an international line up headlined by Washington’s Wil-E, and featuring circuit everyman Mr Cee and spiky, sassy south Londoner Thanyia Moore.

Sunday 7 May, 7.30pm Kane Brown, Rudi Lickwood, Kayleigh Lewis and Glazz Campbell Comedy’s alpha male Kane Brown introduces Harlesden’s own Rudi Lickwood, award-winning new girl Kayleigh Lewis and Sheffield’s affable ex-boxer Glazz Campbell Age recommendation: 16+

LISTINGS TRICYCLE THEATRE 269 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR Box office: 020 7328 1000 www.tricycle.co.uk

http://ift.tt/2mwIfLs LondonTheatre1.com

#IFTTT #LondonTheatre1.com

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blackkudos · 8 years ago

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Paul Williams

Paul Revere Williams, FAIA (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Correll. He also designed many public and private buildings.

Early years

Orphaned at four years of age, Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California, designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African-American architect west of the Mississippi.

He married Della Mae Givens on June 27, 1917, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles. They had three children: Paul Revere Williams, Jr. (born and died June 30, 1925, buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles); Marilyn Frances Williams (born December 25, 1926); and Norma Lucille Williams (born September 18, 1928).

Architectural career

Williams won an architectural competition at age 25, and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down." This skill was developed so that his white clients (who might have been uncomfortable sitting next to a black architect) could see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him.

Struggling to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920.

From 1921 through 1924, Williams worked for Los Angeles architect John C. Austin, eventually becoming chief draftsman, before establishing his own office.

In 1923, Williams became the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles (now headquarters of the Paradigm Talent Agency).

A. Quincy Jones (1913–79) was an architect who is claimed to have hired Williams and later collaborated with him on projects in Palm Springs, including the Palm Springs Tennis Club (1947) and the Town & Country (1948) and Romanoff's on the Rocks (1948) restaurants.

During World War II, Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect.

In 1951, Williams won the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Man of the Year award and in 1953 he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African-American community.

Williams also received honorary doctorates from Lincoln University of Missouri (doctor of science, 1941), Howard University (doctor of architecture, 1952), and the Tuskegee Institute (doctor of fine arts, 1956).

In 1956, he won an award for service, from Wisdom Magazine, for "contributions to knowledge and distinguished service to mankind."

In 1957, he became the first black member to be inducted into the AIA's College of Fellows. An April 2, 1957 letter from the Executive Secretary of AIA, offered Williams the honor of Fellowship and membership in the College of Fellows "for your notable contribution in Public Service."

Publications

Book: The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945), with a successor volume New Homes for Today (1946).

Essay: "I Am a Negro," American Magazine (1937).

Posthumous Honors

In 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games.

In 2008, Williams was posthumously honored with the Donald J. Trump Award for his significant impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of real estate throughout Greater Los Angeles. The award was accepted by his granddaughter, Karen Hudson. Donald Trump presented the award to Hudson via video presentation.

In 2017, Williams will be posthumously honored with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal. “Our profession desperately needs more architects like Paul Williams,” wrote William J. Bates, FAIA, in his support of William’s nomination for the AIA Gold Medal. “His pioneering career has encouraged others to cross a chasm of historic biases. I can’t think of another architect whose work embodies the spirit of the Gold Medal better. His recognition demonstrates a significant shift in the equity for the profession and the institute.”

Works

Private homes

Williams designed more than 2,000 private homes, most of which were in the Hollywood Hills and the Mid-Wilshire portion of Los Angeles (including his own home in Lafayette Square, part of historic West Adams, Los Angeles, California). He also designed at least one home in the San Rafael district along with many others in Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge. The Linda Vista Area of Pasadena has many Spanish Colonial and French Country homes of his design including many commissioned by business magnates (Chrysler Corporation) and actors.

His most famous homes were for celebrities, and he was well regarded for his mastery of various architectural styles. Modern interpretations of Tudor-revival, French Chateau, Regency, French Country, and Mediterranean architecture were all within his vernacular. One notable home, which he designed for Jay Paley in Holmby Hills, and the current residence of Barron Hilton, was used as the 'Colby mansion' in exterior scenes for The Colbys television series. Williams's client list included Frank Sinatra (the notorious pushbutton house), Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lon Chaney, Sr., Lucille Ball, Julie London, Tyrone Power (two houses), Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Lahr, Charles Correll, Will Hays, Zasu Pitts, and Danny Thomas.

In contrast to these splendid mansions, Williams co-designed with Hilyard Robinson the first federally funded public housing projects of the post-war period (Langston Terrace, Washington, D.C.) and later the Pueblo del Rio project in southeast Los Angeles.

Williams famously remarked upon the bitter irony of the fact that most of the homes he designed, and whose construction he oversaw, were on parcels whose deeds included segregation covenants barring blacks from purchasing them.

A number of his works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Works

(In Los Angeles, unless otherwise noted)

28th Street YMCA, 1006 E. 28th St., Los Angeles, CA (Williams, Paul R.), NRHP-listed

Angeles Mesa Elementary School, Los Angeles, California

Angelus Funeral Home, 1010 E. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA (Williams, Paul R.), NRHP-listed

Arrowhead Springs Hotel & Spa, San Bernardino, California;

Beverly Hills Hotel (redesigned & added rooms in the 1940s);

Carver Park Homes, Nevada;

First A.M.E Church

First Church of Christ, Scientist, 501 Riverside Dr., Reno, NV (Williams, Paul Revere), NRHP-listed

Luella Garvey House (1934), 589-599 California Ave., Reno, NV (William, Paul Revere)

Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building

Goldschmidt House, 243 Avenida La Cuesta, San Clemente, CA (Williams, Paul R.), NRHP-listed

Guardian Angel Cathedral, Las Vegas, Nevada;

Hollywood YMCA;

Hotel Nutibara, Medellin, Colombia, the city's first grand hotel inaugurated in 1945

The La Concha Motel, Nevada;

Los Angeles County Courthouse;

Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration;

Marina Del Rey Middle School

Nickerson Gardens;

Palm Springs, CA, Tennis Club;

Roberts House Ranch "The Tropical Terrace", Malibu, CA (The remains of the burned down structures can be explored on Solstice Canyon Trail in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.)

Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills, California;

Second Baptist Church, 1100 E. 24th St., Los Angeles, CA (Williams, Paul R.), NRHP-listed

Shrine Auditorium (Williams helped prepare construction drawings as a young architect.);

The retro-futuristic googie styled Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). (In the 1960s as part of the Pereira & Luckman firm and with consulting engineers, Williams helped design this futuristic landmark.)

Woodrow Wilson High School

One or more works in 27th Street Historic District, along 27th St., Los Angeles, CA (Williams, Paul), NRHP-listed

One or more works in Berkley Square, area bounded by Byrnes Ave., D St., Leonard Ave., and G St., Las Vegas, NV (Williams, Paul R.

The concrete paraboloid La Concha Motel in Las Vegas (disassembled and moved to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, for use as the museum lobby 2006;

He also designed the Al Jolson tomb in Hillside Memorial Park, to which Jolson's body was moved in 1951. The tomb and fountain is prominently visible from the adjacent San Diego Freeway. It is perhaps a fitting tribute to both Williams and Jolson that he was chosen to design Jolson's resting place, as Jolson had a long history of supporting African-American entertainers, in a time when that was controversial.

Professional Records

Williams' business records (letters, drawings, photographs) are lost. They were stored at the headquarters of Broadway Federal Savings in Watts. Williams renovated and repurposed this former Woolworth's building in 1954 for the bank. During "the turmoil and civil unrest that rocked Los Angeles" in the aftermath of the jury's verdict in the Rodney King case, the building and all contents are burned.

Death

Williams retired his practice in 1973, and died from diabetes on January 23, 1980, at age 85. Williams was interred in the Sanctuary of Radiance, Manchester Garden Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood. Williams's widow Della Williams (1895–1996) co-founded (with Fannie Williams) 'The Wilfandel Club' Established November 21, 1945, by black women active in the Los Angeles, California, community. The Wilfandel Club’s goal has been to promote civic betterment, philanthropic endeavors, and general culture. The Wilfandel Club is the oldest African-American women's club in Los Angeles. Club meetings are still held at the beautiful Wilfandel Club House on 3425 West Adams Blvd in Los Angeles. Della Williams survived her famous husband by 16 years, living to the age of 100, and dying on July 24, 1996. She was interred in the Williams crypt Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood.

On October 29, 2015 a monument and memorial plaza to Paul Williams was dedicated just to the north of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building as part of its recent renovation. The monument features a 9 foot tall bas relief of Paul Williams with many of his significant works. The bas relief is flanked with interpretive panels with a biography of Mr. Williams as well as a history of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Quotes

"If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated."

"Planning is thinking beforehand how something is to be made or done, and mixing imagination with the product – which in a broad sense makes all of us planners. The only difference is that some people get a license to get paid for thinking and the rest of us just contribute our good thoughts to our fellow man."

“Without having the wish to ‘show them,’ I developed a fierce desire to ‘show myself,’” Williams wrote in his 1937 essay for American Magazine, I Am a Negro. “I wanted to vindicate every ability I had. I wanted to acquire new abilities. I wanted to prove that I, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, deserved a place in the world.”

Legacy

Williams is featured on the documentary series Profiles of African-American Success.

Wikipedia

#Paul Williams

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