Openings! And a survey for you to do.
The Bash Sustainable Arts Awards and the Barbican’s Radical Nature are both holding their private views tonight so it will be a bit of a dash from one to the other.
This is the mid-point in respond! We’re conducting a piece of research to evaluate whether this has been a valuable excercise or not. Please take a couple of minutes to add your thoughts.
Take a crack at the respond! survey.
This is hopefully an idea we can improve on in the future - with your help.
How the arts came together over climate change
With over 60 events in Respond!, it’s clear that there is a huge amount of activity going on in the arts which tackles the environmental agenda.
A few key players helped nudge the arts scene towards this subject matter. In a new interview for the Respond! site, Judith Knight, co-director of ArtsAdmin, who are behind the 2 Degrees festival later this June in London that’s part of Respond! tips her hat to the arts/climate change organisation TippingPoint who were among the key players galvanising the UK arts community around the issue:
Individuals were thinking about these issues in a personal way, but it began really when some of the ArtsAdmin team went to the second TippingPoint meeting (of artists and scientists) and it was quite devastating; an extraordinary event for me on the arts side. I don’t come across scientists that often and they were very communicative. I walked out after two days in Oxford feeling 50% in despair, with another 50% of real positive energy because there were so many people doing so many amazing things, really engaging and doing stuff – scientists studying the weather on Mars, for example. Worries in the arts community often just come out as just Oh isn’t it terrible and it was encouraging to meet these science people. In general, the TippingPoint meetings have been a real inspiration, having a huge effect across the world.
Best responses on You Tube!
Check out my rundown of some of the best You Tube footage from artists responding to the environment, where amongst others you can see footage of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Some of you may be aware of the recent headlines related to this significant work when in 2008 the Canadian oil and gas company Pearl Montana Exploration and Production put forward an application to begin exploratory drilling in the Great Salt Lake with potentially devastating consequences to the work. Pressures from the public, Nancy Holt and the Dia Art Foundation (who acquired the work in 1999 and also maintain Walter de Maria’s The Lightening Field and Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oak Trees which are also included in the feature) have so far paid off in preventing this drilling though Pearl anticipate resubmitting a future application. You can find more information about this case here - http://www.spiraljetty.org/
Over 250 years of responding
As part of Respond! we invited the RSA Archive Team to put together a display of archive material that will be on show throughout the RSA House in June. However, there was so much material that we don’t have enough space to show it all at the RSA! So, to accompany the physical display we have put together a digital feature where we can showcase more of the projects, initiatives and awards that demonstrate the RSA’s commitment from a historical perspective. It will also give you a taste of what will be on show in June and not least how engaged we are as an organisation and how fantastic our archives are. Take a look at the feature here
Respond! map is now live
The Respond! map is now up and running. The exclamation marks show where events so far confirmed are happening and click through to events in the UK. Let us know if there are any glitches.
In the beginning…
Hello, and welcome to the new Respond! blog. Bookmark us or add our feed and over the next few weeks we’ll be discussing hundreds of arts events that are taking place all over the UK this June that are part of Respond!
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RSA Bookshop
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Current RSA Events- The Artificial Ape September 9, 2010
- Mindfulness: The key to a healthier society? September 9, 2010
- The RSA/ BBC Two School Season Debate - Asking the right questions September 13, 2010
- The Quest for Meaning September 15, 2010
- The End of Discovery September 16, 2010