Posted by Audrey Iffert on November 30, 2009 at 4:54 PM MST
“Our goal is to help students launch sustainable arts-based ventures that will advance their individual disciplines and enrich the culture of the region,” says Linda Essig, director of the ASU Herberger Institute School of Theatre and Film. Theater Topics recently featured her essay, “Suffusing Entrepreneurship Education throughout the Theater Curriculum,” which discusses an integration of entrepreneurship across the arts disciplines.
“Students have some of the most exciting ideas,” says Essig. “A lot of proposals (are) for projects that could be termed “social entrepreneurship” as much as “arts entrepreneurship”—a combination I find both interesting and hopeful.”
Previous p.a.v.e. awardees include: Phoenix Fringe Festival, which showcases innovative and evocative local theater; Rehearsal Assistant, software that allows choreographers to provide real-time feedback; and Sustainable Symphony, a community-based orchestra. (read more)
“If I ever feel down about arts education, I can go back and read the…submissions to our p.a.v.e. program,” says Essig. “Reading through these proposals makes me feel that the arts are relevant, vibrant, vital and sustainable.”
The six projects awarded fall 2009 p.a.v.e. seed grants are:
Join and Cast Ventures
Catherine Akins and Jennifer Campbell, art intermedia students, are producing a handmade artist field guide to Phoenix Metropolitan Contemporary Art. The field guide will include information and educational materials about galleries, museums, artists and the artists’ process in an easy to use, pocket-sized and packaged format. This guide will be distributed annually and will include editions other than visual art like local music and venues, and dance and theater.
“As visual artists, we are all in some way, shape or form an entrepreneur,” says Akins. “We create something with risk of failure. Sometimes we show at a coffee shop or gallery and price our pieces. Sometimes they sell, sometimes they don't. We do what we love, and that is a risk in itself.”
Radio Healer
Led by Arts, Media Engineering (AME) graduate student Christopher Martinez, Radio Healer presents mediated performances that foster intercultural dialogue in Native communities. By exploring the lived implications of consumer technology in the context of indigenous cultures, Radio Healer investigates how these technologies can be tactically appropriated using indigenous media frameworks and indigenous knowledge systems.
“Our hope is that with our p.a.v.e. seed grant, we’ll be able to provide opportunities for our Arizona communities to talk about the effects of pervasive computing and other digital technologies on their daily lived experience,” states Martinez. “We also hope to partner with the Pueblo Grande Museum and offer field trip opportunities for local schools to attend performances. During these school events we want to engage our community youth in order to raise cultural awareness, and to include them in the conversation concerning the impacts of technology as well.”
Dance and Health Together Awards (DAHT)
Led by undergraduate dance major Mary Lane Porter, the DAHT Awards is an annual nonprofit dance awards show that focuses on uniting the dance world, and has a secondary focus on donating its profit to necessary health organizations. “In the future, we hope winning a DAHT Award will become one of the top merits for dancers, choreographers, teachers, and companies of all dance styles,” says Porter. The first DAHT Awards production is planned for April 2011, and its profit is being donated to Susan G. Komen for the Cure®.
“Entrepreneurship is vital within the arts. If an artist of any field does not obtain such practices as networking and business knowledge, then his or her artistic practices are dangerously useless,” Porter goes on to say. “Although a piece of art may be beautiful, or an artistic organization has great potential, the only way to establish those pieces of work is for the artist to become an entrepreneur. Becoming an entrepreneur is the way for artists to sustain their work and spread their unique and necessary skills outside their own brilliant minds.”
Co-op Film Productions
Film and Media Production/Marketing student Chelsea Ryan and her team are creating a support infrastructure for student collaboration across arts and design disciplines. Co-op Films is a student production company that will reach across campus and connect multidisciplinary areas to generate and promote the knowledge and talents at Arizona State University. The students will be able to network through a central website that will inform them of upcoming projects and positions needing assistance.
“Every artist is an entrepreneur when their passion for their project becomes their business,” states Ryan. “As a business marketing and film production major, I’ve seen the existence and extreme importance entrepreneurship plays in the arts industry.”
Different from What?
Film FestivalArts, Media Engineering (AME) graduate student Lisa Tolentino and education student Federico Waitoller are producing a film festival focused on films by, for, and about adults with disabilities. Different from What? Film Festival explores the expression and construction of ability and disability from multiple perspectives. Film buffs, social justice advocates, disability rights activists, social workers, educators and many others will be intrigued by this mélange of film, conversation, and celebration of the differences that punctuate our community discourses.
“We’d like to see this festival become an annual event that provides the Valley community with a space for engaging in conversations about the construction of difference and itsimplications,” says Tolentino. “The Festival also means to inspire filmmakers to examine their craft as a potential force for social change in its ability to influence and shape personal, as well as cultural perceptions of people with disabilities.”
Different from what? Film Festival will hold its premiere at the MADCAP Theaters in Tempe, AZ, from January 29-31, 2010. The Festival will feature productions that display a wide breadth of perspectives on disability as a life experience, an identity, and a social and political construct. The festival will also feature national and international award-winning films and directors, including our primary guest director, George Kachadorian, and his film “Shooting Beauty,” selected by Ty Burr of the BOSTON GLOBE as one of “10 films to Watch” at the 2009 Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston).
Scratch Theory
Filmmaking practices major Chris Gallego and his collaborators are developing a software/hardware interface that will first notate and then play back via synthesizer DJ scratching. By translating the movement of a record on a turntable by a DJ into MIDI information, a DJ can interpret his musical instrument (the turntable) through other, more traditional instruments (piano, guitar, violin, cello, etc.) and create visual, symbolic representation of scratching.“Artists and entrepreneurs are almost the same personality types,” states Gallego.
“Artists, like entrepreneurs, are willing to take risks and strive for the creation of things not already in existence, but whose addition to the world will touch the lives of many people.
“‘Entrepreneur’ can be translated from French as ‘adventurer,’ and I think artists are adventurers because most artists are willing to create simply for art's sake. They’re unconcerned with monetary value. It’s our society that honors art with money. What makes the p.a.v.e. grant so special is that it celebrates the arts by honoring the artist above all else. The grant helps the artist get his or her ideas out there, for others to see and appreciate.”
For more information about p.a.v.e., to view previous semester’s funded projects, and to learn how to apply for seed funding, visit p.a.v.e. online.
Submitted by Samantha Miller, University Innovation Fellow, Office of University Initiatives