Support for Northern Ireland's Artists Working Abroad (21/08/2012) - News - j4bGrants.co.uk. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) has announced new funding rounds the two strands of its the 2012 International Programme for Organisations, providing funding to support and raise the status of individual artists in Northern Ireland.
The programme will support early stage international development opportunities for individual, freelance and self-employed artists and organisations based in Northern Ireland. It will afford recipients the opportunity to spend time building links with artists, organisations and/or creative producers in another country. The aim of the programme is to support individual international developmental opportunities for talent and artistic excellence from Northern Ireland and, thereby, enhance Northern Ireland’s international artistic development, reputation and standing. The following two strands are in operation: The Artists’ International Development Fund Professional Arts Abroad Application deadlines are as follows: Source: artscouncil-ni.org, 20/08/2012.
Photo by ryanintheus. Should “Tweeps” Be in the Dictionary? Collins Dictionary to Let the Internet Decide. OMG and amazeballs! HarperCollins is accepting social media and pop culture words for inclusion in the Collins English Dictionary, which has already welcomed LOL and other Internet-inspired gems to the fold. Starting July 17, you’ll have six weeks to nominate your favorites. Whereas sites like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary harness the wisdom of the crowds to keep an up-to-the-minute record of searchable vocabulary words, the Collins Dictionary maintains its integrity through a rigorous editorial process.
By allowing Internet users to pitch words to the editors, said HarperCollins head of digital Alex Brown, “We’re opening up that editorial process” while “staying true to what our business is about.” Brown added that during the selection process, Collins editors pass “no aesthetic judgment” on the word itself — theirs is a “research-based approach.” Participants can also get credit for submitting a word first. Image by EDHAR via Shutterstock. Building a young audience (more on the culture change) There’s a quite a lot to read on the changes in our culture, the ones I’ve been saying that leave classical music behind.
For instance: The section on nightlife from Richard Florida’s well-known book, The Rise of the Creative Class. Florida describes people whom he thinks are central to any city’s economic growth, young, smart, curious, creative people, the people corporations would most like to hire. Florida’s thesis about how crucial to economic growth they are has been disputed, but his description of them sounds exactly right to me. What do they do at night? I’ve assigned this in my Juilliard course on the future of classical music. (There’s an updated version of the book, just out.
The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce, by Fred Goodman. Japan’s Love Affair With Trains. In the United States, the train is kind of in the minority.
Compared to a lot of other places, relatively very few people in the US commute or travel via train. In the land of Henry Ford, the train is stuck playing second fiddle to cars. It’s a much different story in Japan. Trains are, and have been part of the Japanese psyche for a little over a century now. In that time, trains have gone from a faster, novel form of transportation to an essential part of Japanese culture. But it’s not just that a huge number of Japanese people ride the trains every day, but there’s also been a whole culture built around them. Train Music It might seem strange to associate trains with music, but in Japan that’s just the case. This is partially Japan’s ongoing effort to brand everything everywhere. A sampling of some of Japan’s departure melodies: But aside from the branding aspect of departure melodies, they also make riding the train really pleasant.
It’s worlds better than what I’m used to.