Festival Focus, a festival development initiative spearheaded by CIDA the Cultural Industries Development Agency, is hosting a networking opportunity to help Londons community-run festivals prepare to participate in London 2012. The event, on 14 March at the Barbican in London, will include a panel discussion on the theme Working together: avoiding friction between funders and the festival sector in the run up to 2012. Support providers including the British Arts Festivals Association, Arts Council England and Arts & Business, will be providing information and advice to those attending.
e: contact@cida.co.uk; t: 020 7247 4710.
A rural Suffolk primary school which took part in the year-long Soil Dances project, linked to farming, has helped produce a resource pack containing the tools required to build effective dance classes at Key Stage Two. Aimed at teachers with and without dance experience, the teachers guidelines include warm up and cool down exercises, observation points and possible learning outcomes such as art, poetry, music, farming, geography and history as well as dance. For details contact DanceEast.
t: 01473 295230.
A new web-based event management and ticketing service for arts venues, known as Celebratio, has been launched, claiming to offer solutions to problems created by ticket touts and credit card fraud. The system enables barcoded tickets to be issued by email, mobile phone or in the form of a special ID card, and the barcode and customer ID is checked at the door by a hand-held scanner.
w: http://www.secureticket.biz
V&A Online has subscribed to Browsealoud, a text-to-speech facility that speaks web content aloud whilst words are highlighted on screen. It aims to widen accessibility to visitors or potential visitors with mild visual impairments, reading difficulties, or for whom English is not their first language.
David Staples, Managing Director of Theatre Projects Consultants since 1985, has been awarded the Patrick Hayes Award by the International Society of Performing Arts Foundation (ISPA). The award is named after the founding president of ISPA and recognises achievements in arts management that are deserving of special praise and recognition.