Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Working in two languages - at least

One of the interesting aspects of The Value of Presenting work, is that  we are working bilingually in English and French. The site we've built is a single bilingual site, based on WordPress with very extensive bilingual label customization.

I and one of my francophone consulting colleagues co-wrote the literature review; we have just posted the French version. It covers the same territory and we draw on the same sources as the English one but it is not meant to be a translation.

There has been some excellent work in the USA that has not been translated into French; we translate some insights in the French literature review. There has also been some profound reflection in Quebec on the role of performing arts presenting which only exists in French, so that English Canadian presenters are unlikely to have consulted that excellent material. Again, in our English literature we reference that thinking.

By adopting this mode of working, I hope we are helping advance the thinking and working across the two languages for the sector as well. There is so much richness when engaged people come together across languages, cultures and experiences.

www.diffusionartspresenting.ca

Friday, July 15, 2011

Literature review for review

We have posted a concise review of literature on the value and impact of performing arts presentation created to help see the landscape for the Value of Presenting Study.

What we find, to the most part, is that the research is focussed on performing arts in general terms and does not specifically address the function of the performing arts presenter. Still, there is some excellent work in existence that shows the role of the arts in our lives. As this project offers opportunity for public dialogue, anyone interested is invited to participate.

In the document section of that site we have started to collect links to the relevant literature. The value of the arts and their contribution to Canadian economy and society is beyond doubt, even though attacks on the creative, cultural sector persist in some corners.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Value of Presenting site launched today

With this project, performing arts presenters are embarking on a reflective journey to define their role as part of the creative chain, in communities and in society. Today's launch extends our work  into the digital realm. I hope the site turns into an active dialogue and collaboration space for people who present live performing arts in Canada, everyone they work with and anyone who is interested in the performing arts.
The Value of Presenting Site
This public dialogue has the great potential to advance a vibrant and active performing arts landscape for years to come.
The site wants to be shared: using a highly customized WordPress set up, we have added Twitter and Facebook integration, in particular for account creation but also sharing back to those platforms, a bilingual interface to enhance dialogue across languages, a blog post RSS feed, of course, a Twitter roll - we are using #ArtsPresenting and #DiffusionArts as study specific hash tags. There are a pair of initial discussion topics ready for discussion - come check out the project.
A big thanks to Mike of  Little m Design for his superb and awesomely timely technical implementation of the site.