#cornerhouse pub

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

La Spilla. Il Crossover tra Batman e Flash

La Spilla. Il Crossover tra Batman e Flash

  Buon lunedì freschi avventori di questa webbettola ciarlatana ma umilmente stilosa. Anche oggi si continua a battere le dita a casaccio sui tasti tastiera per cercare di comporre frasi vagamente interessanti e ortograficamente quasi corrette a proposito di uno dei crossover che nel nuovo corso Dc Comicsha visto coinvolti il tuo amato monarca della velocità insieme al crociato protettore di…

[johncordon-photography]

Great night at the Cornerhouse, Frome. Christmas Carnage with the Frukes. Loads of fun and great beer! Shot with a Canon R with RF50mm f1.2lens so iso only 1600 in a dark pub, amazing! #frukes #cornerhousefrome #christmascarnage #liveforthestory #canoneosr #canonrf50f12 #ukuleles #fromelife @canonuk #thefromeindependent #frome_somerset #fromediary (at The Cornerhouse Frome) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6VVqfJlZvM/?igshid=196851aij7zcu

[uonsu]

Ten great things to do in Nottingham

Looking for something to do on the weekend or after lectures? We’ve put together this list of our favourite things to do in Nottingham to help inspire you to explore our amazing home.

The Lost City Adventure Golf

Downstairs in the Cornerhouse you’ll find this mini golf course. For students its £10 for 36 holes and a free beer so you can’t go wrong if you’re looking for an indoor activity during the winter months.

Savoy Cinema

This cinema is the only surviving pre WW2 cinema in Nottingham. It’s got the classic red cinema seats and a bar upstairs – student tickets are a bargain at £4.75.

Ludorati Café Bar

A board game café with over 750 games, Ludorati has something for everyone whether there is 2 of you or a group. You rent a table either in a block of 4 hours or just pay hourly. If you don’t want to play – there is free sating available if you want to just enjoy a hot drink and a piece of cake. 

Wollaton Park/Hall

You may recognise this Elizabethan country house as Wayne Manor as it served as the set for key scenes in The Dark Knight Rises in 2011. The house is surrounded by a huge estate and deer park which makes a great setting for a summer picnic or an autumn stroll. It’s just across the road from the University Park Campus too.

Escapologic

Escapologic is a next level escape room company. Every room is so meticulously thought out it becomes real. You have 1 hour to escape a room with your friends by solving logic puzzles, riddles and finding items around the room - think a combination of crystal maze and Fort Boyard style games. It has a room for everyone with themes ranging from Indiana Jones style crypts, a haunted toy shop and a bank waiting to be robbed.

Sutton Bonington Farmers Market

On one of our very own campuses, Sutton Bonington hosts a farmers market on the first Wednesday of every month between 11 and 3pm. They host local fresh, seasonal and organic produce supporting the local community. It’s supported by the Sutton Bonington Farmers Market Society and sells everything from jams to cheese.

Highfield Park Boating Lake

While the lake doesn’t open again for boating until spring, make sure to hire a boat with friends to take in the stunning Trent building and surrounding nature. You can hire a row boat or a canoe and its right by University Park Campus.

 Nottingham City of Caves

Part of the National Justice Museum, this ancient network of caves spans the entire city. You can start a tour from the Broadmarsh Centre and learn how the caves have been used throughout history, right from its medieval uses as a tannery to the Second World War and beyond. Its £6.95 for students or £14 if you want entry to both the caves and the museum.

Nottingham Castle

The first castle was built here in the 11th century but the one you’ll see now was redeveloped in the late 19th century after being left derelict for over 40 years. Peruse the art galleries upstairs, soak up the estate or grab a photo with the famous Robin Hood statue.

Rescue Rooms Pub Quiz/Karaoke

Every Wednesday from 8pm Rescue Rooms host a pub quiz which is only 50p to play. They have rounds on everything you could imagine so form a team and head down, though make sure to get their early to grab a seat, it fills up quickly.

[adambstingus]

Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’

New figures show we are continuing to spend less money on buying things, and more on doing things and telling the world about it online afterwards, of course. From theatres to pubs to shops, businesses are scrambling to adapt to this shift

It was an audacious plan for an unloved bit of Manchester. A 25m arts centre to be built on a derelict plot that had not felt a cultural pulse since the closure, 15 years earlier, of the legendary Haienda nightclub. It would be called Home, formed by the merger of two proud but financially imperilled institutions the Cornerhouse cinema and gallery, and the Library Theatre Company and would, its backers hoped, revive a forgotten corner on the citys southern edge.

There was confidence from the city leadership that it would work, but a lot of my peers and colleagues in the arts were saying to me, Whos going to go there? says Sheena Wrigley, executive director of Home, which includes two theatres, five cinema screens, an art gallery and a restaurant and bar. It was a very unprepossessing area with a big car park and one large office block. It wasnt visible or on a main thoroughfare.

Programming would swim far from the mainstream, too. The centre opened in May 2015 with a challenging play about two thwarted lovers trying to survive a recession in a city like Manchester. This week the cinema is showing Lady Macbeth, a subversive Shakespearean noir, and The Handmaiden, an erotic Korean period thriller. The free gallery includes an exhibition of vibrant art from post-Franco Spain and an exploration of the role of vogueing in gay black culture.

Wrigley admits to having been nervous when she and her team set an ambitious target of 550,000 visits for the first year. But we smashed that in six months and did just shy of a million, she says. And they kept coming: as Home approaches its second birthday, it is about to welcome its two-millionth visitor. Its fascinating to me that you can open a venue of this kind and size and it can find its audience straight away in a difficult period, Wrigley adds. Of course, I would like to say its all about good artistic choices, but something else is going on.

Wrigley is right. A series of studies is revealing strange things about our spending habits. They call it the experience economy, which gives it the sense of a grand theory. And there is science behind it, but its also very simple: regardless of political uncertainty, austerity and inflation, we are spending more on doing stuff, choosing instead to cut back on buying stuff.

The restaurant at Home, a major new arts centre in Manchester. Photograph: Alamy

The latest figures come from Barclaycard, which processes about half of all Britains credit and debit card transactions. Figures for April show a 20% increase in spending in pubs compared with the same month last year. Spending in restaurants went up 16%, while theatres and cinemas enjoyed a 13% rise. Meanwhile, department stores suffered a 1% drop, vehicle sales were down 11% and spending on household appliances fell by 2.5%.

Barclaycard says the trend began to emerge about a year ago. And retailers are feeling it. In March, Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next, blamed the clothing chains first fall in profits for eight years on the move from buying things to doing things. More startlingly, Ikea, the worlds biggest furniture retailer, told a Guardian conference last year that consumption of many goods had reached a limit. If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff, said Steve Howard, the companys head of sustainability.

It would be easy to assume that contemporary influences are at work here. The world is a bit of a depressing place right now, so lets have a nice evening out rather than buy a sixth pair of shoes. But theories abound of a much broader shift. And Ikea is arguably late in calling peak stuff. In 2011, Chris Goodall, a British environment writer, used government data called the UKs Material Flows Account to track consumption of stuff, and identified 2001 as a tipping point, long before the 2008 recession and everything that followed. He believed we had decoupled economic growth and material consumption.

And as we consume less, we are doing more. If you think about the 20th century, the big dominant value system was materialism, the belief that if we had more stuff wed be happier, says James Wallman, a trend forecaster and the author of Stuffocation: Living More with Less, in which he charts the move from possessions to experience. The big change to what I call experientialism is more about finding happiness and status in experiences instead.

The happiness bit perhaps stands to reason, but studies suggest the anticipation of an experience has a crucial, additional value. In a 2014 paper called Waiting for Merlot, psychologists Amit Kumar, Thomas Gilovich and Matthew Killingsworth showed how people report being mostly frustrated before the planned purchase of a thing, but mostly happy before they bought an experience. That feeling lingers longer, too, tied up as it is with memory. We call it hedonic adaptation, says Colin Strong, the head of behavioural science at Ipsos, the market research group. And the hedonic payoff of experiences is much greater.

We are also less likely to compare experiential purchases than we are products, in a way that means we are all happy with what we buy, regardless of what we can afford. So if you have a Nissan and your neighbour has a Porsche, theres no doubt who has the better car, and if you ask the Nissan driver to swap, they will, Wallman says. But if you ask people who went on holiday to the Seychelles or south Wales, its clear who had the fancier holiday, but surveys show the person who went to Wales wont swap because they had an equally good time.

If the experience economy has a levelling effect, research also suggests that part of the reason for its rise is its greater potential as a status booster.This supports the idea, questioned by some (and not backed up by Barclaycard, which does not account for age), that younger people namely millennials are driving the consumer shift. It used to be that our car, or handbag or wallet showed our status. Now we post Facebook pictures from a chairlift in Chamonix or the latest music festival, Wallman says. Social media is supporting this change. Posting pictures of what you just bought is gauche; posting pictures of something youre doing is fine. Strong also thinks the slightly impoverished nature of millennials is compelling them to get out more.

It used to be that our car or handbag showed our status. Now we post Facebook pictures from a chairlift in Chamonix or the latest music festival. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty

At Home, however, Wrigley says that while students and young professionals are pouring through the doors, the venues appeal is crossing generations. A lot of arts organisations peak at around age 45, but ours is very flat, she says. We have a lot of older explorers people who worked in professional services or local government, say, and are looking for a quality experience. And baby boomers who have been able to stop work in their 60s and have pensions to spend.

Restaurants are capitalising fast, opening at a record pace in cities all over the country. In London, restaurant guide Hardens counted 200 new openings in its 2017 edition. Cities including Manchester and Glasgow have seen similar or even greater booms. Russell Norman, founder of the Venetian-inspired Polpo restaurants, is about to open his 12th outpost in Bristol, having taken the chain to Brighton, Exeter and Leeds since it landed in London in 2008. The restaurants are as busy as ever, but Norman has been surprised by booming recent demand for gift vouchers and private party requests. When we opened in Exeter we expected it to be an all-day offering, but were really finding that people are coming for special occasions, as an event, or an experience, he says.

Businesses already dealing in experiences are enhancing them to benefit from the shifting economy. Theatres would once never have considered putting a restaurant downstairs, but now youd be mad not to. The restaurant at Home in Manchester is taking 2m a year, Wrigley says, almost double what was expected. At the Chichester Festival Theatre, where ticket sales are up 12% on last year, the restaurant is booming, too. We dont have to be just excellent theatre-makers, but excellent business people, says Rachel Tackley, the executive director at the venue in West Sussex. Its about creating theatres as destinations where you can spend more than two and a half hours watching the show.

Marstons, one of the countrys largest pub groups, with more than 1,500 pubs, is racing to meet demand for more than pints of beer. Traditionally people use pubs, but go to restaurants, says the Wolverhampton-based firms managing director, Pete Dalzell. The group has shed hundreds of wet-led traditional pubs in recent years, and opened more than 150 pub-restaurants since 2009. Last year revenues were up 7% to 905.8m, and the average pub profit has doubled since 2012. Were opening up a new range of offers for consumers who are choosing to spend disposable income doing something with friends rather than buying something, Dalzell adds.

If the writing is on the wall for the purveyors of things, their response is to make the walls more appealing. Were seeing a fundamental shift in pretty much all categories to retain being much more experiential, Strong says. Increasingly, this means using technology to create the feeling of a meaningful relationship between brand and buyer, online and offline. High-street clothing stores are deploying shop assistants with tablet computers on which they can call up your previous purchases and tastes based on online browsing. And with smart marketing, even the dullest essentials are being sold as part of a brand experience. In the US, one Los Angeles TV producer, frustrated by the high price of razor blades, launched an online subscription service in 2012. Dollar Shave Club began posting blades for as little as $3 a month and, with the help of a viral ad campaign, earned 12,000 orders in the first two days. Deliveries come with an irreverent magazine. Customers felt part of something, free from the cut-throat corporate economics of brands such as Gillette, which is owned by Procter & Gamble. It soon had more than three million subscribers, and in 2016 Unilever, P&Gs big rival, bought the Dollar Shave Club and its members for $1bn. People have got that we can move from a transactional relationship mediated by big-scale advertising to much more of a one-to-one relationship with the customer, Strong adds.

That relationship is strong in Manchester, where Wrigley says she has been surprised by the scale of Homes success. The venue is already being overshadowed by rising office and apartment towers, and a new hotel. It has become the beating heart of a neighbourhood that was a wasteland only four years ago. Thats the magic of experientialism, Wallman says. Its not anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist. Money is still going into the economy and creating jobs were just spending it on experiences. Wallman, 43, has been following the trend for more than 10 years, and has seen it transform his own life. At his wifes prompting, he has just acquired a second pair of trousers, but is holding out with his one pair of shoes and five holey T-shirts. Id rather do things, he says. I took the kids to the Natural History Museum on Sunday. We went camping recently, I go climbing, play football. And it makes us happier.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/21/just-do-it-the-experience-economy-and-how-we-turned-our-backs-on-stuff/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/164439815042

[beginagain--]

Clownssmasheverything Announce UK Tour

Clownssmasheverything Announce UK Tour

Time for an insane tour, I’m just assuming. Cownssmasheverything are bringing their shows to some select cities around the UK next month.

Here are the dates.

2018

October

25th – London New Cross Inn

26th – Hastings Crowley’s

27th – Stockport Blossom’s

28th – Newport Le Pub

29th – Milton Keynes Craufurd Arms

  November

1st – Norwich TBC

2nd – Cambridge Cornerhouse

4th – York Fulford Arms

[samanthasroberts]

Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’

New figures show we are continuing to spend less money on buying things, and more on doing things and telling the world about it online afterwards, of course. From theatres to pubs to shops, businesses are scrambling to adapt to this shift

It was an audacious plan for an unloved bit of Manchester. A 25m arts centre to be built on a derelict plot that had not felt a cultural pulse since the closure, 15 years earlier, of the legendary Haienda nightclub. It would be called Home, formed by the merger of two proud but financially imperilled institutions the Cornerhouse cinema and gallery, and the Library Theatre Company and would, its backers hoped, revive a forgotten corner on the citys southern edge.

There was confidence from the city leadership that it would work, but a lot of my peers and colleagues in the arts were saying to me, Whos going to go there? says Sheena Wrigley, executive director of Home, which includes two theatres, five cinema screens, an art gallery and a restaurant and bar. It was a very unprepossessing area with a big car park and one large office block. It wasnt visible or on a main thoroughfare.

Programming would swim far from the mainstream, too. The centre opened in May 2015 with a challenging play about two thwarted lovers trying to survive a recession in a city like Manchester. This week the cinema is showing Lady Macbeth, a subversive Shakespearean noir, and The Handmaiden, an erotic Korean period thriller. The free gallery includes an exhibition of vibrant art from post-Franco Spain and an exploration of the role of vogueing in gay black culture.

Wrigley admits to having been nervous when she and her team set an ambitious target of 550,000 visits for the first year. But we smashed that in six months and did just shy of a million, she says. And they kept coming: as Home approaches its second birthday, it is about to welcome its two-millionth visitor. Its fascinating to me that you can open a venue of this kind and size and it can find its audience straight away in a difficult period, Wrigley adds. Of course, I would like to say its all about good artistic choices, but something else is going on.

Wrigley is right. A series of studies is revealing strange things about our spending habits. They call it the experience economy, which gives it the sense of a grand theory. And there is science behind it, but its also very simple: regardless of political uncertainty, austerity and inflation, we are spending more on doing stuff, choosing instead to cut back on buying stuff.

The restaurant at Home, a major new arts centre in Manchester. Photograph: Alamy

The latest figures come from Barclaycard, which processes about half of all Britains credit and debit card transactions. Figures for April show a 20% increase in spending in pubs compared with the same month last year. Spending in restaurants went up 16%, while theatres and cinemas enjoyed a 13% rise. Meanwhile, department stores suffered a 1% drop, vehicle sales were down 11% and spending on household appliances fell by 2.5%.

Barclaycard says the trend began to emerge about a year ago. And retailers are feeling it. In March, Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next, blamed the clothing chains first fall in profits for eight years on the move from buying things to doing things. More startlingly, Ikea, the worlds biggest furniture retailer, told a Guardian conference last year that consumption of many goods had reached a limit. If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff, said Steve Howard, the companys head of sustainability.

It would be easy to assume that contemporary influences are at work here. The world is a bit of a depressing place right now, so lets have a nice evening out rather than buy a sixth pair of shoes. But theories abound of a much broader shift. And Ikea is arguably late in calling peak stuff. In 2011, Chris Goodall, a British environment writer, used government data called the UKs Material Flows Account to track consumption of stuff, and identified 2001 as a tipping point, long before the 2008 recession and everything that followed. He believed we had decoupled economic growth and material consumption.

And as we consume less, we are doing more. If you think about the 20th century, the big dominant value system was materialism, the belief that if we had more stuff wed be happier, says James Wallman, a trend forecaster and the author of Stuffocation: Living More with Less, in which he charts the move from possessions to experience. The big change to what I call experientialism is more about finding happiness and status in experiences instead.

The happiness bit perhaps stands to reason, but studies suggest the anticipation of an experience has a crucial, additional value. In a 2014 paper called Waiting for Merlot, psychologists Amit Kumar, Thomas Gilovich and Matthew Killingsworth showed how people report being mostly frustrated before the planned purchase of a thing, but mostly happy before they bought an experience. That feeling lingers longer, too, tied up as it is with memory. We call it hedonic adaptation, says Colin Strong, the head of behavioural science at Ipsos, the market research group. And the hedonic payoff of experiences is much greater.

We are also less likely to compare experiential purchases than we are products, in a way that means we are all happy with what we buy, regardless of what we can afford. So if you have a Nissan and your neighbour has a Porsche, theres no doubt who has the better car, and if you ask the Nissan driver to swap, they will, Wallman says. But if you ask people who went on holiday to the Seychelles or south Wales, its clear who had the fancier holiday, but surveys show the person who went to Wales wont swap because they had an equally good time.

If the experience economy has a levelling effect, research also suggests that part of the reason for its rise is its greater potential as a status booster.This supports the idea, questioned by some (and not backed up by Barclaycard, which does not account for age), that younger people namely millennials are driving the consumer shift. It used to be that our car, or handbag or wallet showed our status. Now we post Facebook pictures from a chairlift in Chamonix or the latest music festival, Wallman says. Social media is supporting this change. Posting pictures of what you just bought is gauche; posting pictures of something youre doing is fine. Strong also thinks the slightly impoverished nature of millennials is compelling them to get out more.

It used to be that our car or handbag showed our status. Now we post Facebook pictures from a chairlift in Chamonix or the latest music festival. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty

At Home, however, Wrigley says that while students and young professionals are pouring through the doors, the venues appeal is crossing generations. A lot of arts organisations peak at around age 45, but ours is very flat, she says. We have a lot of older explorers people who worked in professional services or local government, say, and are looking for a quality experience. And baby boomers who have been able to stop work in their 60s and have pensions to spend.

Restaurants are capitalising fast, opening at a record pace in cities all over the country. In London, restaurant guide Hardens counted 200 new openings in its 2017 edition. Cities including Manchester and Glasgow have seen similar or even greater booms. Russell Norman, founder of the Venetian-inspired Polpo restaurants, is about to open his 12th outpost in Bristol, having taken the chain to Brighton, Exeter and Leeds since it landed in London in 2008. The restaurants are as busy as ever, but Norman has been surprised by booming recent demand for gift vouchers and private party requests. When we opened in Exeter we expected it to be an all-day offering, but were really finding that people are coming for special occasions, as an event, or an experience, he says.

Businesses already dealing in experiences are enhancing them to benefit from the shifting economy. Theatres would once never have considered putting a restaurant downstairs, but now youd be mad not to. The restaurant at Home in Manchester is taking 2m a year, Wrigley says, almost double what was expected. At the Chichester Festival Theatre, where ticket sales are up 12% on last year, the restaurant is booming, too. We dont have to be just excellent theatre-makers, but excellent business people, says Rachel Tackley, the executive director at the venue in West Sussex. Its about creating theatres as destinations where you can spend more than two and a half hours watching the show.

Marstons, one of the countrys largest pub groups, with more than 1,500 pubs, is racing to meet demand for more than pints of beer. Traditionally people use pubs, but go to restaurants, says the Wolverhampton-based firms managing director, Pete Dalzell. The group has shed hundreds of wet-led traditional pubs in recent years, and opened more than 150 pub-restaurants since 2009. Last year revenues were up 7% to 905.8m, and the average pub profit has doubled since 2012. Were opening up a new range of offers for consumers who are choosing to spend disposable income doing something with friends rather than buying something, Dalzell adds.

If the writing is on the wall for the purveyors of things, their response is to make the walls more appealing. Were seeing a fundamental shift in pretty much all categories to retain being much more experiential, Strong says. Increasingly, this means using technology to create the feeling of a meaningful relationship between brand and buyer, online and offline. High-street clothing stores are deploying shop assistants with tablet computers on which they can call up your previous purchases and tastes based on online browsing. And with smart marketing, even the dullest essentials are being sold as part of a brand experience. In the US, one Los Angeles TV producer, frustrated by the high price of razor blades, launched an online subscription service in 2012. Dollar Shave Club began posting blades for as little as $3 a month and, with the help of a viral ad campaign, earned 12,000 orders in the first two days. Deliveries come with an irreverent magazine. Customers felt part of something, free from the cut-throat corporate economics of brands such as Gillette, which is owned by Procter & Gamble. It soon had more than three million subscribers, and in 2016 Unilever, P&Gs big rival, bought the Dollar Shave Club and its members for $1bn. People have got that we can move from a transactional relationship mediated by big-scale advertising to much more of a one-to-one relationship with the customer, Strong adds.

That relationship is strong in Manchester, where Wrigley says she has been surprised by the scale of Homes success. The venue is already being overshadowed by rising office and apartment towers, and a new hotel. It has become the beating heart of a neighbourhood that was a wasteland only four years ago. Thats the magic of experientialism, Wallman says. Its not anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist. Money is still going into the economy and creating jobs were just spending it on experiences. Wallman, 43, has been following the trend for more than 10 years, and has seen it transform his own life. At his wifes prompting, he has just acquired a second pair of trousers, but is holding out with his one pair of shoes and five holey T-shirts. Id rather do things, he says. I took the kids to the Natural History Museum on Sunday. We went camping recently, I go climbing, play football. And it makes us happier.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/21/just-do-it-the-experience-economy-and-how-we-turned-our-backs-on-stuff/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/just-do-it-the-experience-economy-and-how-we-turned-our-backs-on-stuff/

[allofbeercom]

Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’

New figures show we are continuing to spend less money on buying things, and more on doing things and telling the world about it online afterwards, of course. From theatres to pubs to shops, businesses are scrambling to adapt to this shift

It was an audacious plan for an unloved bit of Manchester. A 25m arts centre to be built on a derelict plot that had not felt a cultural pulse since the closure, 15 years earlier, of the legendary Haienda nightclub. It would be called Home, formed by the merger of two proud but financially imperilled institutions the Cornerhouse cinema and gallery, and the Library Theatre Company and would, its backers hoped, revive a forgotten corner on the citys southern edge.

There was confidence from the city leadership that it would work, but a lot of my peers and colleagues in the arts were saying to me, Whos going to go there? says Sheena Wrigley, executive director of Home, which includes two theatres, five cinema screens, an art gallery and a restaurant and bar. It was a very unprepossessing area with a big car park and one large office block. It wasnt visible or on a main thoroughfare.

Programming would swim far from the mainstream, too. The centre opened in May 2015 with a challenging play about two thwarted lovers trying to survive a recession in a city like Manchester. This week the cinema is showing Lady Macbeth, a subversive Shakespearean noir, and The Handmaiden, an erotic Korean period thriller. The free gallery includes an exhibition of vibrant art from post-Franco Spain and an exploration of the role of vogueing in gay black culture.

Wrigley admits to having been nervous when she and her team set an ambitious target of 550,000 visits for the first year. But we smashed that in six months and did just shy of a million, she says. And they kept coming: as Home approaches its second birthday, it is about to welcome its two-millionth visitor. Its fascinating to me that you can open a venue of this kind and size and it can find its audience straight away in a difficult period, Wrigley adds. Of course, I would like to say its all about good artistic choices, but something else is going on.

Wrigley is right. A series of studies is revealing strange things about our spending habits. They call it the experience economy, which gives it the sense of a grand theory. And there is science behind it, but its also very simple: regardless of political uncertainty, austerity and inflation, we are spending more on doing stuff, choosing instead to cut back on buying stuff.

The restaurant at Home, a major new arts centre in Manchester. Photograph: Alamy

The latest figures come from Barclaycard, which processes about half of all Britains credit and debit card transactions. Figures for April show a 20% increase in spending in pubs compared with the same month last year. Spending in restaurants went up 16%, while theatres and cinemas enjoyed a 13% rise. Meanwhile, department stores suffered a 1% drop, vehicle sales were down 11% and spending on household appliances fell by 2.5%.

Barclaycard says the trend began to emerge about a year ago. And retailers are feeling it. In March, Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next, blamed the clothing chains first fall in profits for eight years on the move from buying things to doing things. More startlingly, Ikea, the worlds biggest furniture retailer, told a Guardian conference last year that consumption of many goods had reached a limit. If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff, said Steve Howard, the companys head of sustainability.

It would be easy to assume that contemporary influences are at work here. The world is a bit of a depressing place right now, so lets have a nice evening out rather than buy a sixth pair of shoes. But theories abound of a much broader shift. And Ikea is arguably late in calling peak stuff. In 2011, Chris Goodall, a British environment writer, used government data called the UKs Material Flows Account to track consumption of stuff, and identified 2001 as a tipping point, long before the 2008 recession and everything that followed. He believed we had decoupled economic growth and material consumption.

And as we consume less, we are doing more. If you think about the 20th century, the big dominant value system was materialism, the belief that if we had more stuff wed be happier, says James Wallman, a trend forecaster and the author of Stuffocation: Living More with Less, in which he charts the move from possessions to experience. The big change to what I call experientialism is more about finding happiness and status in experiences instead.

The happiness bit perhaps stands to reason, but studies suggest the anticipation of an experience has a crucial, additional value. In a 2014 paper called Waiting for Merlot, psychologists Amit Kumar, Thomas Gilovich and Matthew Killingsworth showed how people report being mostly frustrated before the planned purchase of a thing, but mostly happy before they bought an experience. That feeling lingers longer, too, tied up as it is with memory. We call it hedonic adaptation, says Colin Strong, the head of behavioural science at Ipsos, the market research group. And the hedonic payoff of experiences is much greater.

We are also less likely to compare experiential purchases than we are products, in a way that means we are all happy with what we buy, regardless of what we can afford. So if you have a Nissan and your neighbour has a Porsche, theres no doubt who has the better car, and if you ask the Nissan driver to swap, they will, Wallman says. But if you ask people who went on holiday to the Seychelles or south Wales, its clear who had the fancier holiday, but surveys show the person who went to Wales wont swap because they had an equally good time.

If the experience economy has a levelling effect, research also suggests that part of the reason for its rise is its greater potential as a status booster.This supports the idea, questioned by some (and not backed up by Barclaycard, which does not account for age), that younger people namely millennials are driving the consumer shift. It used to be that our car, or handbag or wallet showed our status. Now we post Facebook pictures from a chairlift in Chamonix or the latest music festival, Wallman says. Social media is supporting this change. Posting pictures of what you just bought is gauche; posting pictures of something youre doing is fine. Strong also thinks the slightly impoverished nature of millennials is compelling them to get out more.

It used to be that our car or handbag showed our status. Now we post Facebook pictures from a chairlift in Chamonix or the latest music festival. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty

At Home, however, Wrigley says that while students and young professionals are pouring through the doors, the venues appeal is crossing generations. A lot of arts organisations peak at around age 45, but ours is very flat, she says. We have a lot of older explorers people who worked in professional services or local government, say, and are looking for a quality experience. And baby boomers who have been able to stop work in their 60s and have pensions to spend.

Restaurants are capitalising fast, opening at a record pace in cities all over the country. In London, restaurant guide Hardens counted 200 new openings in its 2017 edition. Cities including Manchester and Glasgow have seen similar or even greater booms. Russell Norman, founder of the Venetian-inspired Polpo restaurants, is about to open his 12th outpost in Bristol, having taken the chain to Brighton, Exeter and Leeds since it landed in London in 2008. The restaurants are as busy as ever, but Norman has been surprised by booming recent demand for gift vouchers and private party requests. When we opened in Exeter we expected it to be an all-day offering, but were really finding that people are coming for special occasions, as an event, or an experience, he says.

Businesses already dealing in experiences are enhancing them to benefit from the shifting economy. Theatres would once never have considered putting a restaurant downstairs, but now youd be mad not to. The restaurant at Home in Manchester is taking 2m a year, Wrigley says, almost double what was expected. At the Chichester Festival Theatre, where ticket sales are up 12% on last year, the restaurant is booming, too. We dont have to be just excellent theatre-makers, but excellent business people, says Rachel Tackley, the executive director at the venue in West Sussex. Its about creating theatres as destinations where you can spend more than two and a half hours watching the show.

Marstons, one of the countrys largest pub groups, with more than 1,500 pubs, is racing to meet demand for more than pints of beer. Traditionally people use pubs, but go to restaurants, says the Wolverhampton-based firms managing director, Pete Dalzell. The group has shed hundreds of wet-led traditional pubs in recent years, and opened more than 150 pub-restaurants since 2009. Last year revenues were up 7% to 905.8m, and the average pub profit has doubled since 2012. Were opening up a new range of offers for consumers who are choosing to spend disposable income doing something with friends rather than buying something, Dalzell adds.

If the writing is on the wall for the purveyors of things, their response is to make the walls more appealing. Were seeing a fundamental shift in pretty much all categories to retain being much more experiential, Strong says. Increasingly, this means using technology to create the feeling of a meaningful relationship between brand and buyer, online and offline. High-street clothing stores are deploying shop assistants with tablet computers on which they can call up your previous purchases and tastes based on online browsing. And with smart marketing, even the dullest essentials are being sold as part of a brand experience. In the US, one Los Angeles TV producer, frustrated by the high price of razor blades, launched an online subscription service in 2012. Dollar Shave Club began posting blades for as little as $3 a month and, with the help of a viral ad campaign, earned 12,000 orders in the first two days. Deliveries come with an irreverent magazine. Customers felt part of something, free from the cut-throat corporate economics of brands such as Gillette, which is owned by Procter & Gamble. It soon had more than three million subscribers, and in 2016 Unilever, P&Gs big rival, bought the Dollar Shave Club and its members for $1bn. People have got that we can move from a transactional relationship mediated by big-scale advertising to much more of a one-to-one relationship with the customer, Strong adds.

That relationship is strong in Manchester, where Wrigley says she has been surprised by the scale of Homes success. The venue is already being overshadowed by rising office and apartment towers, and a new hotel. It has become the beating heart of a neighbourhood that was a wasteland only four years ago. Thats the magic of experientialism, Wallman says. Its not anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist. Money is still going into the economy and creating jobs were just spending it on experiences. Wallman, 43, has been following the trend for more than 10 years, and has seen it transform his own life. At his wifes prompting, he has just acquired a second pair of trousers, but is holding out with his one pair of shoes and five holey T-shirts. Id rather do things, he says. I took the kids to the Natural History Museum on Sunday. We went camping recently, I go climbing, play football. And it makes us happier.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/21/just-do-it-the-experience-economy-and-how-we-turned-our-backs-on-stuff/

[jacobnsteel84]

Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’

New figures show we are continuing to spend less money on buying things, and more on doing things – and telling the world about it online afterwards, of course. From theatres to pubs to shops, businesses are scrambling to adapt to this shift

It was an audacious plan for an unloved bit of Manchester. A £25m arts centre to be built on a derelict plot that had not felt a cultural pulse since the closure, 15 years earlier, of the legendary Haçienda nightclub. It would be called Home, formed by the merger of two proud but financially imperilled institutions – the Cornerhouse cinema and gallery, and the Library Theatre Company – and would, its backers hoped, revive a forgotten corner on the city’s southern edge.

“There was confidence from the city leadership that it would work, but a lot of my peers and colleagues in the arts were saying to me, ‘Who’s going to go there?’” says Sheena Wrigley, executive director of Home, which includes two theatres, five cinema screens, an art gallery and a restaurant and bar. “It was a very unprepossessing area with a big car park and one large office block. It wasn’t visible or on a main thoroughfare.”

Continue reading... from Trading Tips http://ift.tt/2qCj9xC

[stickyyouthstudent]

Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’

New figures show we are continuing to spend less money on buying things, and more on doing things – and telling the world about it online afterwards, of course. From theatres to pubs to shops, businesses are scrambling to adapt to this shift

It was an audacious plan for an unloved bit of Manchester. A £25m arts centre to be built on a derelict plot that had not felt a cultural pulse since the closure, 15 years earlier, of the legendary Haçienda nightclub. It would be called Home, formed by the merger of two proud but financially imperilled institutions – the Cornerhouse cinema and gallery, and the Library Theatre Company – and would, its backers hoped, revive a forgotten corner on the city’s southern edge.

“There was confidence from the city leadership that it would work, but a lot of my peers and colleagues in the arts were saying to me, ‘Who’s going to go there?’” says Sheena Wrigley, executive director of Home, which includes two theatres, five cinema screens, an art gallery and a restaurant and bar. “It was a very unprepossessing area with a big car park and one large office block. It wasn’t visible or on a main thoroughfare.”

Related: The way we shop now: the revolution in British spending habits

Continue reading...

[the-hindu-times]

January 2017 Reviews Roundup

After some first time visits to The Cornerhouse Theatre in Surbiton (for the Outside the Box comedy club, with full work in progress shows from Diane Spencer and Milo McCabe) and the BBC Radio 2 Theatre (for tapings of two more full shows from Ivo Graham and Sara Pascoe), we returned to the Wyndham Theatre in London on the second Tuesday of the month. Once the home of ‘The Truth’, Christopher Biggins and X Factor finalist, Rhydian Roberts, were amongst us for, Californian university lecturer, Matthew Spangler’s haunting adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel ‘The Kite Runner’. Complete with a live Tabla player, the seriousness of the storyline reflected on our own society just as much as that in Afghanistan, with Hollyoaks regular, Antony Bunsee, taking on a more serious role along with 90210/Game Of Thrones actor, Emilio Doorgasingh, American Idiot songstress, Natasha Karp, David Ahimad, Bhavin Bhatt, Andrei Costin, Nicholas Karimi and Ezra Foroque Khan’s outstanding performances leading to a standing ovation. 

A couple of days later and we were at the Soho Theatre for the first time, where Nick Mohammad had a residency for his ‘Mr Swallow: Houdini’ show. With a number of shows going on; one straight after the other, both above and bellow as well as in this space – the main theatre, where you should avoid sitting in the second row due to restricted viewing. Nick’s played many small TV parts in shows such as ‘Uncle’ and ‘Drifters’, yet has managed to gain more success as the lead in theatre runs more so than any of the actors he has supported on the telly. Tonight he is joined by David Elms and fellow Drifters actor, Kieran Hodgson, with live piano, fittingly similar to the Tommy Cooper Show, providing the backing in this musical/comedy/magic mashup. 

The Mr Swallow character can be seen on Sky’s comedy shorts doing Romeo and Juliet, but tonight’s play within a play has even more depth. There’s everything here that a theatre goer could ask for, and with some improvised parts, no two nights will ever be the same. 

Back at the New Victoria Theatre, we were getting excited to see Andy Ford’s stand up show. He’d been in the pantomime here, and had mentioned it enough during its run that a sizeable amount of fans returned to almost sell out the stalls. ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ finalist, Steve Hewlett, was opening the night with his ventriloquist act. Packed with his own original characters and routines, he also shares the genius of Nina Conti’s sharp mind when masking members of the public. He’ll be back for his own full show in the Rhoda McGaw Theatre within the complex, as part of his headline UK summer tour.  

Andy Ford must have been sorely missed in Bristol – the town he appears in year after year in  their pantomime -  for taking on his role here with Warwick Davis in Snow White. This 2 solo show run would see him return to both destinations, with his Lee Evans’ mannerisms making him one of the most unique comics around. It’s hard to see why he isn’t a house hold name over the whole country… until you buy his DVD; the quality of the production doesn’t do him any justice and not having an industry standard product may have held him back. With moments of genius shinning through on film, you have to see him live to get the real deal.  

On the Thursday, we attended Simon Amstell’s work-in-progress show upstairs at the Oxford Arms pub in Camden, in the tiny Etcetera Theatre, with the night after heading to Wimbledon for Uncle Frank at Tunnel 267. Uncle Frank is best known as the drummer of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals but tonight he is fronting his own band with his younger brother behind the kit. With fantastically produced videos and albums, the live show has a lot to live up to, which it doesn’t quite do so. Mainly due to the lack of people in attendance, with the show not being heavily advertised, it is hard for it to be a brilliant gig from the off. There’s a  football table in the bar of the venue to keep you entertained until the band takes to the stage, and ticket holders are invited to stay for the club after, but I can’t see why you would want to.

After seeing The Flaming lips at Brixton Academy the night after, and You Me At Six at The Rose Theatre (Banquet Records show) in Kingston the night after that, we returned to see Mr Swallow: Houdini the next night ahead of Tim Burgess in the Elgar Room in the Royal Albert Hall. Playing with a band that may have only had a few rehearsals, Mark Collins (Tim’s long term guitarist with The Charlatans) was on acoustic guitar to help guide them through it. Songs from his most recent solo album with new versions of ‘North Country Boy’ and ‘The Only One I Know’ made for a great Independent Venue Week gig.

The next night we were back at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking for the thought provoking 1938 minimalist play ‘Gaslight’. With ‘Eastenders’ star, Kara Tointon, and Lilly Allen’s dad, Keith Allen, who’s starred in everything from ‘My Mad Fat Diaries’ and ‘Uncle’ to ‘Eddie The Eagle’, ‘24 Hour Party People’ and ‘Trainspotting’, the recognisable pair are joined by talented ‘Shamless’ actor, Rupert Young’, ‘Extras’ actress, Helen Anderson, and theatre regular, Charlotte Blackledge. Kept in its original form, without the use of amplification, it’s a play that will stand the tests of time without the need to change.

On the last Thursday of the month we caught the end of The Skints at the Fighting Cocks (Banquet Records) in Kingston after a lengthy acoustic set from Ryan Adams a Rough Trade East, and before a pure acoustic set from Greywind at St Pancras Old Church. The best show of the month came the night after that from Lisa Hannigan at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm. 

On a Saturday night – the worst night of the week for Camden, in my least favourite venue – surely this wasn’t even worth going to? Finding out that it was an all seated show upon entering the Roundhouse, already raised our spirits – and what a difference this transformed set up had on the sound! A strong opening from Jay Johnson was unbelievably clear, before a stunned crowd watched on in amazement as Saint Sister performed their interestingly unique take on how to use their instruments – something that would have been lost on an all standing audience. The atmosphere transposed us into a much superior setting - it didn’t feel like the Roundhouse and it didn’t feel like a Saturday, with the bars closing in time for the headline act. I’ve always loved Lisa Hannigan’s voice from her work with Damien Rice… and then with Glen Hansard. Another artist I discovered through a Glen Hansard concert at the Union Chapel was John Smith, and tonight he was on guitar and vocals as part of Lisa’s band. His unique voice made the songs more like duets than just adding some backing  – a lot like Lisa’s role on ‘9 Crimes’, ‘I Remember’, ‘Cold Water’ and ‘Unplayed Piano’ from her time with Damien. Lisa and her band were astonishing, with so much variation from song to song – it  even topped Norah Jones at the Palladium!

Nic Bennett

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

Lo Luglio Ludico

Bentrovati amabili frequentatori di questa sudaticcia webbettola che nonostante “la caldazza” prepara un giorno si e un giorno no, le sue effervescenti fregnacce per sollazzarvi lo spirito tutto come solo qui si sa fare.

Iniziamo il mese, secondo tradizione, con il resoconto del ludico intrattenimento al tavolo da giuoco. Hai rischiato fino all’ultimo di far saltare l’appuntamento con questo post…

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

Mercurio Loi 12. Una Settimana Come Tante.

Mercurio Loi 12. Una Settimana Come Tante.

  Bentrovati ragassuoli, anche quest’oggi si continua a ciarlare con il solito stile cazzarone a proposito della serie Bonelli che segui con maggior interesse ossia colui che più, è abile nell’arte del sacro ozio, Mercurio Loi.

Siamo giunti con qualche inciampo al dodicesimo numero, numero che per te è estremamente significativo poiché rappresenta, di solito, il numero in cui prendi la decisione…

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

Lo Agosto (con ferie) ludico

Lo Agosto (con ferie) ludico

Bentrovati ragassuoli in questi primi giorni di settembre, che ancora si fatica a prendere il ritmo, ricordiamo con un po’ di nostalgia l’agosto appena concluso ripercorrendo le ludiche serata (poche ma con gusto) che hanno sollazzato lo spirito tutta della famigghia.

Pronti Noi Zi Va

  Ad agosto sono successe alcune cose interessanti la prima che passerà agli annali è che Suocero (evviva evviva)…

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

La Casa Di Carta. Parte 2

La Casa Di Carta. Parte 2

Bentrovati ragassuoli, giusto qualche sera fa tu e carlotta nella classica modalità spapanzati sul divano (marchio registrato) avete finito (e meno male) di vedere la seconda parte della serie Netflix La Casa Di Carta, una produzione spagnola che ha riscosso (ma che davvero?) molti consensi tra gli appassionati di serie tv.

Data che abbiamo iniziato un percorso una quindicina di giorni fa, oggi…

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

Le Leggende Di Andor. L'Ultima Speranza. Il Foto Unboxing

Le Leggende Di Andor. L’Ultima Speranza. Il Foto Unboxing

Buon lunedì estivi ragassuoli, iniziamo questa settimana con un post leggero di quelli più da guardare che da leggere. Infatti, torna la rubrica dei Foto Unboxing con il post dedicato al terzo e ultimo capitolo di una serie di giuochi da tavolo fantasy che ti ha davvero conquistato.

Oggi guardiamo cosa c’è dentro la scatola de Le Leggende Di Andor. L’Ultima Speranza.

Pronti Noi Zi Va

Vivete Il…

[cornerhousenerdblog-blog]

La Casa Di Carta. Parte 1

La Casa Di Carta. Parte 1

Buon lunedì ragassuoli lavoratori o vacanzieri, il Cornerhouse non chiude mai, così ovunque voi siate, potrete sempre trovare qualcosa di sgrammaticato ma di vostro gradimento per riempire quel minuto di vuoto della vostra giornata. Sorryper l’assenza (non programmata) di venerdì scorso, ma purtroppo, non hai fatto in tempo a preparare nessun post, quindi piuttosto che scrivere due righe a caso…