The Cambridge Summer Music Festival is mounting the UK’s first online NoShow Prom as a fundraising initiative that allows people to get involved in a performance whilst staying at home. Tickets are being sold for a virtual concert at which participants can become members of a virtual audience, join a virtual orchestra or attend a virtual pre-concert party with a celebrity friend. Proceeds will support the Music Festival’s programme of concerts and participation events.
w: http://www.cambridgenoshowprom.co.uk
Two new reports have been published by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI). Research by Ipsos MORI examining disabled people’s participation in and access to the arts in Northern Ireland has been used to inform the ACNI’s new Five Year Plan ‘Creative Connections’ and to support policy and development work. ‘Arts and Culture in Northern Ireland 2007’ is the second recent dedicated study to collect and analyse information on consumption, behaviour and public attitudes towards the arts.
The National Disability Arts Forum, which has been in existence for 20 years, has announced its closure at the end of January and the subsequent withdrawal of its services.
w: http://www.ndaf.org
Shape and engage have selected eight galleries in the West Midlands, London and Wales to participate in a national pilot programme which provides the time and resources for them to work with disabled and deaf people and encourage them to become long term visitors. The galleries, including Space Studios, Compton Verney and the Oriel Mostyn Gallery, will focus on disabled and deaf people as audiences, participants and artists.
w: http://www.shapearts.org.uk; http://www.engage.org
Museums and Galleries Month 2008, the UK’s largest celebration of museums and galleries, has announced details of a new arts programme for 2008. The initiative is launched with a series of events and seminars, offering advice to museums on how they can better engage with the visual arts by commissioning art in response to their collections and working with artists and audiences.
w: http://www.mgm.org.uk
A new economic impact study conducted on behalf of the York & North Yorkshire Creative Industries Network by Burns Owens Partnership has revealed that arts-based creative industries are leading the new rural economy in North Yorkshire. Thirty per cent more people are now employed in the region by the creative industries than by traditional industries such as agriculture, and employment in the creative industries has risen by 16% to in the four years from 2002–2006.
w: http://www.yco.org.uk
Screen South, the strategic agency for film and media in the South East of England, is inviting organisations across the region to apply to its new Network Fund, supporting community, industry and film heritage activity at a local level.
w: http://www.screensouth.org