Walk down the stret in Swedish district Drottninggatan this week (yah. in our dreams maybe!) and you’ll see this tidy little marketing initiative by uber cool clothes store Pub.
Archive for April, 2009
This would make us happy.
Stuart Semple at Salon Mobile
My colleague went to Salon Mobile and all I got was this lousy photo… Ok, so the photos are pretty cool, especially the ones from skitsch.it – a new multi brand design shop in Milan that opened during the fair. Still would have rather been at the party.
The highstreet of the future is likely to be a very different beast from the highstreet of today. No sooner than Hazel Blears announced the government’s plan to animate recession-hit highstreets by bringing artists into empty spaces(something we wrote about in AI Magazine the week before the initiative was launched incidentally), then HMV announces plans of its own to to team up with Curzon Cinemas. The idea is they’ll launch a ‘chain’ of ‘arthouse’ cinemas above its stores across the country. Not sure how arthouse will work in chain format but nevertheless its an interesting initiative to bring some much needed diversity back to the high-street. And some much needed art into people’s lives.
We were very pleased to be recently asked to contribute to ‘After the Crunch’, a new book launched this week by Creative & Cultural Skills and Counterpoint, the British Council think tank.
“In the last ten years the creative industries have become one of the most fashionable and talked-about components of the global economy. Are they just froth on the surface of exuberant capitalism, about to be blown away by global recession?” – so ask the editors, who include Shelagh Wright, John Newbigin, John Kiefer, John Holden and Tom Bewick.
In the book, 42 artists, entrepreneurs, commentators, analysts, policy-makers, policy-sceptics, academics, financiers – and citizens – set out their hopes and fears for the future and ask you to join the debate about what kind of world you want, After The Crunch.
Visit www.creative-economy.org.uk to download a copy and join the debate
Ted Baker and the London Transport Museum – not two brands that you might necessarily think have a natural affinity. However, step into the museum’s impressive new retail outlet in Covent Garden and you release there is nothing cosmetic about the changes the organisation has undergone over the last few years, which go well beyond the dramatic £22 million physical refurbishment. One symbol of the mind and brand shift is the institution reaching out to a new generation of partners.
Wells Bombardier has just confirmed its second year as the official beer of English Heritage and the supporting website has a raft of activities for the time-rich to test quite how English they are. Is it just me, or does anyone else find the pictures of England (user generated content) oh so slightly depressing?
A manually-operated wooden railway crossing which marked the gateway to the genteel Essex seaside resort of Frinton-on-Sea has been ripped out under cover of darkness by railway authorities.
In a move branded “cowardly” by campaigners who wanted to keep them, the 19th-century railway gates were demolished at about 2am on Saturday following a three-year battle with residents keen to preserve their town’s spirit of independence and history.
The Mayor of Frinton, Henry Allen, who has lived in the seaside town for more than 20 years, said: “Paris has its Eiffel Tower, London has Tower Bridge and in Frinton we have the gates. All over the world people talk about them.”
The historic structure features on the town’s crest and, as it was on the only road into the town, came to exemplify Frinton’s traditionalism.
Now it will be replaced with a modern version, complete with flashing lights and sirens which will be operated by CCTV camera from up the line in Colchester.
“They came under the cover of darkness by stealth at 2am in the morning,” said David Foster, 63, chairman of the Frinton Gates Preservation Society.
“They knew we were going to be there in the morning to express our dissatisfaction as a community at the way we have been treated. The gates are an important symbol, not only iconic and the best-known gates in the country but they are known throughout the world. Network Rail don’t care about heritage.”
We are losing some of the IN editorial team next week – they’re going on a selfless mission to Milano for the annual Salone Internazionale del Mobile furniture fair. Although we love posh tables, what we really love the growing list of cultural events that comprise the fair fringe – including new work by Cerith Wynn Evans
SalonSatellite promises to bring together emerging young designers with trend scouts and the established elite of the design world. Not dissimilar to a competiton that runs annually here in the UK, called RELEASEONEDOTZERO that looks for up-and-coming designers to create merchandise for museums and galleries. See here for details of last year’s competition. One of last year’s judges was Ambra Medda, director of Design Miami, profiled in The New York Time’s excellent new supplement T Magazine.
More details on this coming soon.
In a strange but somehow very satisfying example of how the digital era sometimes brings things full circle, one of the world’s oldest novels has just become one of the newest.
“The Tale of Genji,” an 11th-century Japanese romp that is sometimes called the first true novel, is among about 1,250 books, maps, artworks and other cultural items that went on display online Tuesday in an international library supported by Unesco and the U.S. Library of Congress.
The project, called the World Digital Library, aims to “promote international and intercultural understanding,” said James H. Billington, the U.S. librarian of Congress, speaking as the website was introduced at Unesco headquarters in Paris.
Meanwhile, Google has embarked on a mission to scan millions of books into digital form, some of which are also included in the public sector digitisation projects. Google has supported the World Digital Library with a $3 million grant — part of $10 million in funding from a variety of organizations — and Dr. Billington said the goals of his project differed from those of Google Book Search. Much of the material in the World Digital Library is of historical interest and, unlike Google Book Search, it does not include copyrighted works.
The Royal Festival Hall has never seen anything quite like it: thousands swarming through its doors to listen to a rehearsal — and one by an amateur orchestra at that. Yet as its fanatical supporters would testify, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (SBYO) is not just another group of part-timers and the session yesterday morning was not just any rehearsal.
This was the cultural equivalent of the adoring crowds who turn up to gawp at dazzling footballers of Barcelona or Manchester United on the training ground. The SBYO is the most exciting, most joyful, most exotic orchestra in the world today. YouTube footage of the euphoric Proms appearance that crowned their last visit to Britain two years ago has been viewed more than a million times.
The rehearsal marked the opening of a five-day residency on the South Bank. Tickets for the main events — last night’s performance of Bartók and Tchaikovsky and a romp through Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and various Latin American works on Saturday — sold out ten months ago. One resold on eBay for more than £400.
A large part of the attraction is their pioneering social role. The orchestra is the standard bearer for El Sistema (The System), a radical scheme that has, over 34 years, used classical music tuition to build the self-confidence, skills and discipline of more than 300,000 young Venezuelans, many of them from the grimmest, most dangerous barrios in their country. Similar programmes are being introduced across the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe, including at least four in Britain — in Stirling, Liverpool, Lambeth and Norwich.
Read more at The Times
