Friday, March 19, 2010

“Ithaca schools conference day delves into cultural ... - Ithaca Journal” plus 3 more

“Ithaca schools conference day delves into cultural ... - Ithaca Journal” plus 3 more

Ithaca schools conference day delves into cultural ... - Ithaca Journal

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 06:09 PM PDT

A day-long conference for teachers, administrators and parents in the Ithaca City School District Friday focused on matters of family participation, creating inclusive, respectful and bias-free classroom environments, and developing cultural competency.

Called a superintendent's conference, the day full of workshops and speakers helped fill the New York State Department of Education requirement for teachers to take professional development hours. But this one was different, said Director of Staff Development and Research Kim Fontana, because of its narrow focus on how to close gaps through cultural sensitivity and inclusion.

Keynote speaker Mary Montle Bacon, a teacher, counselor and psychologist, spoke to elementary and secondary teachers and ran a workshop for administrators and Board of Education members.

Addressing secondary education teachers and administrators filling half of the Ithaca High School gym, Bacon said educators must understand a child's personal journey in order to be effective.

"People say, 'I don't notice skin color because we are all the same inside,' " she said. Putting a finger on her nose she said, "Look at this! (Skin color) not only shapes how the world responds to you, after a while it shapes how you respond back."

However, cultural difference means more than race, she said -- "That's only one way of being different."

Schools that produce excellent students alongside an equal number of poor or failing students are not excellent, Bacon said.

"Excellence without equity is a hollow prize indeed, but so, too, is equity that only encourages mediocrity," she said.

Bacon said that while many people look at the successes of a school to determine its quality, the students within it who are not thriving are the ones who require more thought.

"We need to look at the school environment from the perspective of those for whom it is not yet working," she said.

Superintendent's conferences are planned three times a year in the district, Fontana said. More than 100 workshops for small groups of less than 30 were planned, including several that included community members. The conference will provide tools for educators to develop the skills to best educate all students, she said.

"People have different ways of addressing the educational gap," Fontana said. "People tend to fall into whatever is their most comfortable method... This particular conference day really focuses on collaboration and cultural competence."

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In direct appeal, Obama tells Iranians US wants ... - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:08 PM PDT

WASHINGTON - In a fresh appeal directly to the Iranian people, President Barack Obama says in an online video that the United States wants more educational and cultural exchanges for their students and better access to the Internet to give them a more hopeful future.

In the video, the second of his presidency directed at Iran, Obama said that the United States' offer of diplomatic dialogue still stands but that the Iranian government has chosen isolation. He said the U.S. believes in the dignity of every human being.

The White House released the video late Friday, timing it, as it did last year, to coincide with Nowruz, a 12-day holiday celebrating the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new year on the Persian calendar. The video comes as the United States has hit a rough patch in its relationships in the region, particularly with Israel.

"The United States believes in the dignity of every human being and an international order that bends the arc of history in the direction of justice — a future where Iranians can exercise their rights, to participate fully in the global economy and enrich the world through educational and cultural exchanges beyond Iran's borders," Obama said in the video, which had Farsi subtitles.

Even though the United States and Iran continue to have differences, Obama said, "we will sustain our commitment to a more hopeful future for the Iranian people — for instance, by increasing opportunities for educational exchanges so that Iranian students can come to our colleges and universities and through our efforts to ensure that Iranians can have access to the software and Internet technology that will enable them to communicate with each other and with the world without fear of censorship."

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The man with the key to Ireland's international ... - Irish Times

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 06:31 PM PDT

The Irish Times - Saturday, March 20, 2010

ROSITA BOLAND

This week in the US, the Taoiseach appointed actor Gabriel Byrne as Ireland's Cultural Ambassador. So, what will he be doing?

THIS WEEK, actor Gabriel Byrne was appointed to the new position of Cultural Ambassador for Ireland, with the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, making the announcement in Washington on Tuesday. Based in the US since 1987, it's a role the award-winning actor has been informally carrying out for some years now, promoting Irish culture abroad. The new, formal, role is for a three-year term. It carries no salary, but expenses incurred will be covered.

Byrne will be working closely with Eugene Downes, chief executive of Culture Ireland, a State agency that promotes Ireland's arts and culture internationally and advises on the development of the country's international cultural relations. "For some time now, we've been looking at new opportunities to promote Irish culture abroad," Downes explains. He sees Byrne's appointment as helping to "redefine Irish culture in the world," pointing out "most Americans now encounter Ireland through culture. It's a crucial way of developing an awareness of Ireland. Culture is a real asset a country has in times of recession, because it's unique; it can't be replicated by other countries."

One of the challenges Byrne faces is that of updating the often-clichéd generic American perception of Ireland. The most recent high-profile example of this is Leap Year , an American-made rom-com set in Ireland, and recently derided by critics for bounding from one terrible cliché to the next. This is a film purporting to be set in contemporary Ireland, yet it includes the line "Top of the mornin' to you" as a sample of ordinary conversation.

"We see the role of Cultural Ambassador being an endorsement of the practical work Gabriel has already been doing; publicly advocating and privately developing a new stage to present Irish culture in the broadest possible sense," Downes says. "For example, next year, Culture Ireland will be organising a season of Irish arts in the US", including New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia. While the programme won't be announced until later in the year, Culture Ireland sees Byrne's role as helping it to define a new strategy for its cultural platform abroad.

"We need to look at how we can use new technology – whether web based, live streaming, or social networking – to magnify the presence of Irish art abroad. If we are investing in touring in the US by playing to people in a 300-seat theatre, then we'd be looking at how can we stream the performance, or send it out into the virtual ether to hugely multiply that experience. There is an artistic challenge in capturing the real experience, but if we can crack that, the audience could be in Shanghai or Moscow or Chicago or Omaha. It would never replace live performance – and nor would we want it to – but we could gain new audiences. The US will be a real proving ground for that. Gabriel is helping us with the overall concept, and he is also curating specific elements within the programme, including film projects."

Niall Burgess has been consul general in New York for three years, and is a consistent advocate for the arts. "Ireland is still one of the most recognised brands in the US but we have to work hard to keep it that way," he stresses, pointing out that "culture is very competitive in New York".

He sees culture "as one of our largest and fastest-growing industries. There is a very large and partially untapped market for it in the US. As an export industry, it has great potential growth. Culture is one of our most important attractions for bringing tourists to Ireland. It is one of our greatest assets, and Byrne knows that."

Burgess speaks of Byrne's "vision" for the role of Cultural Ambassador. "A lot of it is around helping to promote a vision that is inclusive of the Irish diaspora. It's only in the past few years with Culture Ireland that we've been able to put resources into getting our best performers out on the international stage."

Byrne's specific suitability for the role, as Burgess see it, in addition to the fact that he has a long-term interest in promoting the arts, is quite simply, that his name "opens doors." It's probably difficult to put a monetary value on the number of contacts and the type of access that the Irish-born, Golden Globe-winning actor has. Byrne has access to an influential network far beyond the range of virtually any Irish State employee, no matter how politically well-connected they might be. "In terms of working on a programme with premier venues, he can be extraordinarily helpful in guiding us," Burgess stresses.

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David Lister: A false start for the Cultural Olympiad - The Independent

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 07:28 PM PDT

Viewers of the BBC News at Ten on Wednesday night will have seen an odd item. Huw Edwards announced at the start that the BBC would "reveal" details of the Cultural Olympiad. Later in the bulletin the corporation's new arts editor Will Gompertz, surrounded by trapeze artists and jugglers, gave his report on the Cultural Olympiad. It contained nothing about trapeze artists or jugglers and revealed absolutely zilch. Ruth Mackenzie, the new director of the Cultural Olympiad, did tell Gompertz that the 12-week festival must be "about getting absolutely fantastic artists to do extraordinary events".

Revelations aren't what they used to be. But I can cast a little light on how this surreal news report came about. On Wednesday morning there was a press briefing from the head honchos of the Cultural Olympiad, the chairman Tony Hall, who is head of the Royal Opera House, the director Ruth Mackenzie, who has held numerous high-profile arts jobs, and Alex Poots, who runs the Manchester International Festival. That must have given the BBC high hopes, as it did me. But in the event, they announced that there would be a festival in 2012, the London Olympics year, and it would be called Festival 2012.

One can't argue with the name, though I hope not too much time and money went into dreaming it up, as it isn't that amazingly original. They failed to give a single detail about what will be in the festival, apart from the fact that there will be "a commitment to Shakespeare". By way of explanation they said repeatedly that it is only week seven of planning for the Cultural Olympiad. It may be week seven for some of them, who are newly appointed, but the Cultural Olympiad planning began, as they admit, when the 2008 Beijing Olympics ended. It's actually about week 80, and a lot of public money has so far produced precious little in the way of concrete ideas, apart from commissions for a parallel cultural programme by disabled and deaf people.

More than £15m of lottery money will be going into the jamboree, and the Arts Council and British Council will also give cash at a time when arts funding looks likely to drop, so Festival 2012 and related events are really going to have to prove their worth anew. We should remember that while there is a tradition of having Cultural Olympiads, there is no law that makes them mandatory. The whole notion is debatable. People will be focusing on London in 2012 for matters sporting, and it could have been as useful as a cultural festival (and an awful lot cheaper) simply to highlight the wealth of culture already available in the capital and around the country.

It's also a pity that the Cultural Olympiad has no input into the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, surely a key showcase for culture and watched around the world. I worry even more that the country's top artists tend to get booked up years ahead. If there is nothing ready to announce in March 2010, is a wealth of top talent suddenly going to be available for July 2012?

Still, let's be positive. The commitment to Shakespeare is encouraging, and we can all at least chip in with our own ideas of what other elements of British culture to show the world. It could work. It could be a new Festival of Britain that will be remembered for decades. But time is running out, and the start has not been auspicious.

Drag yourself into the 21st century, Irek

In an interview this week in The Independent, the great ballet dancer Irek Mukhamedov spoke about the controversial ballet The Judas Tree, which is being revived at Covent Garden. Mukhamedov danced the central role in the first production 18 years ago, and is now coaching Carlos Acosta in the role. The ballet features a gang rape, which follows the main female character teasing a group of men. Mukhamedov told the interviewer: "This is how I understand men. Most of the time if they had a chance, they would think about it. It's how the situation happens. She's making the situation come to that."

Er, what?! "Most of the time if they had a chance they would think about it." Is that really the philosophy expounded by the male dancers of the Royal Ballet? Mukhamedov was a wonderful dancer, but he should change his friends.

Lessons in keeping things private

The marriage break-up of Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes provoked the same reaction in me as the earlier split of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. I couldn't help but think how in Hollywood, New York and around the world, thousands of reporters, photographers and magazine editors have their sights on the comings and goings of superstars. Yet, in the case of Winslet and Mendes, just as with Kidman and Cruise, the marriage split of one of the most famous couples in the world takes everyone completely by surprise. Indeed, with Winslet and Mendes the couple actually separated some months ago, and no one seems to have noticed.

I don't know whether to be shocked that my ignoble profession has missed a story again, or relieved to learn that, for all the paparazzi and reporters, the biggest stars in the world can keep their private lives private any time they really want to. It's probably the latter.

More from David Lister

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