Topic’ for this meeting was the Olympics.

Hardian Garrard, the Culture Lead for the 5 Host Boroughs (for the Cultural Olympiad) has given an informal presentation on visions and emerging plans for a major cultural festival in East London (incl. the 5 host boroughs). The idea is that it will develop during the 4 year Cultural Olympiad and leave an internationally recognised annual festival as a legacy.

For more information please download the meeting notes and a description of the Cultural Olympiad.

The next meeting will take place end of August. The date should be shortly announced.

The Cultural Olympiad is an integral part of the London 2012 Olympics, beginning the weekend of 26-28 September 2008 and running through to the end of the Games. During the Olympiad, London and the UK welcome the world in celebrating internationalism, cultural diversity, sharing and understanding.
The Cultural Olympiad will also reflect and support a number of themes, such as community projects, sustainable long-term benefits to cultural life in the UK, and excellence in the performing arts and creative industries.

Hadrian Garrard, Culture Lead for the Five Host Boroughs, comes to Arcola to explain how artists and organisations can be involved.

For more information about London 2012 and the Cultural Olympiad:

www.london2012.com and www.london2012.com/plans/culture/now-to-2012/cultural-olympiad-projects.php

Arcola Theatre, along with many others, is keen to deploy the arts as a means of brokering a new set of relationships and keeping Dalston real, by capitalising on the opportunities offered by the new indoor and outdoor spaces being. One of the purposes of this exercise is to ask the question “Must ‘adding value’ always displace the value that is already in situ?”

Please download the meeting notes and the project description.

The next meeting will be held on *Wednesday, 23rd July, 4pm* at Arcola Theatre.
We hope to see you again for further discussion about Creative Futures for Dalston.

Please circulate this information far and wide and bring your friends!

Also on display at Arcola Theatre are two new maps of Dalston. The first shows a first trawl of arts and culture in Dalston (currently 123 organisations and rising) and the second the existing Open Spaces in Dalston. The next step is to bring these maps together to illustrate the extraordinary potential for Dalston to connect cultural activity inside and out and to ensure existing cultural assets are identified, retained, enhanced, linked and recognised together, rather than displaced as regeneration of the area commences.

The maps have been produced by muf architecture/art, designers of the new library and Hackney archive for Dalston Square, and J & L Gibbons Landscape Architects, who are working on the design of the square itself with Michel Desvigne Paysagiste.

Agencies involved in this work include London Borough of Hackney, the London Development Agency, Design for London, Arts Council England, RIBA London, Central St Martins and Central School of Speech & Drama.

Friday 6 June at 2pm, Arcola Theatre: Next Steps – Local creatives invited to ‘put yourself on the map’ and contribute to a discussion of creative futures for Dalston.

For further information, download here the PR.

The 21st century programme arose from one of Arts Council England’s ambitions for the arts: ‘to work with funded arts organisations to help them thrive rather than just survive’. Like many of the organisations it funds, The Arts Council itself faces a challenge in becoming a 21st century arts organisation. Through the 21st century programme’s projects, the Arts Council aims to develop pieces of work introducing new thinking and practice.

Arts spaces of the future Project:
“Arts spaces of the future” was launched in September 2007 by RIBA London and the Arts Council. This project consisted of an architectural ideas competition to invite the capital’s architects to respond to the challenge of creating our future arts spaces.
Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design has been commissioned to design arts spaces of the future, focusing their ideas on the year 2015. These spaces had to reflect our changing lifestyles, expectations and forms of participation; to develop new arts practice and to suggest answers to climate change and issues of sustainability.

Others 21^st century projects:
Procurement: PricewaterhouseCoopers has been commissioned to work with some of Arts Council’s funded organisations, to identify potential opportunities for joint procurement by arts organisations.
Environmental sustainability: Working with the Carbon Trust, Arts Council England will lead a full carbon management programme. They aim to have a positive impact on global warming by reducing emissions from its own buildings, setting an example of best practice, and influencing its funded organisations.
ICT and the arts: a major project on ICT and its effective use by arts organisations in three ways: for business management, for communication and dialogue with customers, and for the digital distribution of artistic output.
Mapping: another major project on the different ways of mapping potential audiences for the arts.

Related links:
Arts Council England
Carbon Trust
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

From RIBA
“RIBA London and Arts Council England invite the capital’s architects to respond to the challenge of creating our arts spaces of the future; spaces which reflect changing lifestyles, expectations and forms of participation, new and developing arts practice, the need to address climate change and issues of sustainability and the move towards more flexible, publiclyengaged buildings.” (RIBA, 2007: http://www.architecture.com/RegionsAndInternational/UKNationsAndRegions/England/RIBALondon/ArtsSpaceoftheFuture/ArtsSpaceoftheFuture.aspx)

From ACE
“The winning entries to the Arts Space of the Future Competition were announced on 10 January 2008.

We launched Arts Space of the Future with RIBA London in October 2007. The competition invited RIBA’s members in the capital to respond to the challenge of creating our arts spaces of the future; spaces which reflect changing lifestyles, expectations and forms of participation, new and developing arts practice, the need to address climate change, and issues of sustainability and the move towards more flexible, publicly-engaged buildings.

• First prize: Manual Shvartzberg and Yiannis Kanakakis, with writer Fabian Faltin, for Art Spaces lead global ecology of ideas. The winning entry took the form of Financial Times news pages, addressing arts spaces, environmental issues, and challenging the concept of architectural competitions
• Second prize: David Kohn, Director of David Kohn Associates, for Heterotopia
• Third prize: Ashley Seaborne, a student at the University of East London, for Hoodies

The winners and short-listed entries to Arts Space of the Future will be on display in the Lyttelton Foyer at the National Theatre, along with RIBA award-winning arts buildings from the last three decades. The exhibition is open to the public from 11 January to 16 February 2008.

For more information about Arts Space of the Future and the winning entries, visit www.architecture.com/ribalondon”

(ACE, January 2008: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/pressnews/news_detail.php?rid=3&id=869)

 Related Links:
Arts Space of Future Winners
Arts Space of Future Entry Form
Building Design Website – Pictures of the Winners Designs