arts

How do you teach performing arts when there are no performances? This school is learning

By Jaime E. Love 3 hours ago

PHOENIX — For Monica Sauer Anthony, adapting to the challenge of a virtual classroom started with a reenvisioning of what it even means to teach at a performing arts school.

A choir can’t really rehearse in a virtual classroom much less give a live performance.

Neither can an orchestra.

There’s too much digital delay involved in streaming to get everybody synced up.

When Gov. Doug Ducey ordered Arizona schools to close in March because of the pandemic, Sauer Anthony was teaching Music History and Culture, and Beginning Woodwinds, Flute and Oboe Studies at Arizona School for the Arts in downtown Phoenix.

As ASA began to make the switch to online learning, Sauer Anthony, who’s since become arts director and vice principal of student services, said the faculty was trying to maintain as much of a sense of normalcy as it could.

Teachers changed their focus

They did some virtual

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We need to fight systemic inequalities in the arts to create a diverse talent pool

By Jaime E. Love 4 days ago
Arts need to be invested in all over Britain – not just London (Getty Images)
Arts need to be invested in all over Britain – not just London (Getty Images)

At the beginning of 2020, Arts Council England set out bold new plans with the potential to kickstart a radical shift in the cultural fabric of our country. 

The ten year strategy focused on creativity and diversity and heralded a welcome shift from lofty “great art” language. It emphasised “everyday creativity” and moved away from elitist views of arts and culture, which made the arts inaccessible for so many – especially young people. 

However, arts, culture and youth services have taken a real hit, with a decade of funding cuts and the impact of Covid-19, meaning many organisations face threat of closure. 

This cannot happen – arts and culture are the soul of our communities and central to our lives, improving wellbeing and connecting people. We know that music-making, as an

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COVID-19 is taking a ‘frightening’ toll on Miami-Dade’s arts and culture groups

By Jaime E. Love 1 week ago

For the Frost Museum of Science, the first of Miami-Dade’s major cultural institutions to reopen in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, a salvaged summer season was supposed to be something of a grace note in a lost year. It didn’t quite work out that way.

When the museum opened in June, administrators were hoping to recapture enough summer traffic, usually the highest of the year, to steady its capsizing finances. But a resurgence of infections in July and August, strict capacity limits and many families’ continued reluctance to risk exposure — even with well-publicized safety protocols — kept ticket sales at just a quarter of the level of the summer before, CEO Frank Steslow said.

Now, if Congress fails to approve a second hefty federal bailout along the lines of the multi-billion aid program that helped the Frost ride out three months of total closure, Steslow said, the

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We need all hands on deck to save America’s arts and culture economy

By Jaime E. Love 2 weeks ago

The outdoor stages are silent. There are no art fairs or gallery walks, no concerts in the parks. The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated arts and culture in America, wiping out as many as half of all jobs for performing artists and musicians, and nearly a third of jobs for all those who work in the creative economy broadly spanning arts, music, theater, design, entertainment and media, according a study we did for the Brookings Institution.

Between April and the end of July, some 2.7 million jobs and $150 billion in revenues were lost. As the crisis took hold this spring, the average income of American artists and creatives plummeted to just about $14,000 a year.

While Broadway’s darkened marquees stand as the most prominent symbol of the crisis, the damage is being felt across the nation. Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, Austin, Orlando, Las Vegas and Miami lost an even

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