NODA SUMMER SCHOOL 2009

Have you booked your place onto the NODA Summer School 2009?

NODA Summer School held at Loughborough University between 1st – 8th August is always a popular way to spend the summer.

If you’re passionate about theatre why not take up this wonderful opportunity to learn more about your preferred theatre craft or perhaps try something new? Come along and join many others from across the UK and overseas in their passion for theatre! 

Courses are once again filling up fast. Some of the courses with places still available are Directing Youth Theatre, Musical Directors, Choreography, Stage Make-Up and Stage Sound.

Have you ever wanted to be a Director? Well now’s your chance with a great course on offer teaching everything from the audition process to running the band on opening night.

Do you want to create the ideal youth theatre experience? Why not attend Directing Youth Theatre, featuring great ways to enhance your work with young people in theatre.

Perhaps you are a dancer but keen to develop your skills as a choreographer. NODA have a great course exploring various styles of dance and ways for you to learn chorus and ensemble numbers.

After a couple of years break Stage Make-Up is back! This course provides a broad insight into theatre make-up. A great course to show you many handy techniques and special effects created with make-up. Beards, wigs and moustaches will also be featured.  

For further details on any of the above courses please visit the NODA website www.noda.org.uk .

Alternatively please contact Antonia Johnson on 01733 865792 for any information you wish to know about the NODA Summer School.

As well as the NODA Summer School don’t forget the brand new NODA Youth Academy is now available for 12-17 year olds. Places are filling up; visit the NODA website for further details.

   The Midas Touch – turn your fundraising efforts to gold

This practical AMA workshop will be held at the Resource Centre, London on 3rd March 2009, St David’s Hall, Cardiff on 5th March, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester on 17th March and on 26th March at City Halls, Glasgow.  It is a day-long workshop from 10.00am to 5.00pm and the cost for AMA members is £129 + VAT and non AMA members £185 + VAT. 

This practical AMA workshop is for those relatively new to fundraising, those with an element of fundraising in their role and those who are interested in learning more about their fundraising colleagues' responsibilities. It will aim to dispel the mystique of fundraising and show that anyone can fundraise successfully provided they follow some simple rules.

Lead by Sarah Gee, managing partner of Indigo it will cover fundraising from charitable trusts and foundations; membership schemes and high level giving; corporate sponsorship and patronage schemes; events and other one-off projects. 

By the end of this course, delegates will have:
•       a working knowledge of the many different ways to raise funds,
•       learnt how best to apply that knowledge,
•       learnt how to plan a fundraising strategy, write applications and proposals,
•       a clear understanding of what not to do when trying to attract funds.

For further information go to www.a-m-a.co.uk (www.a-m-a.co.uk/event_detail.asp?id=249 ), e-mail anna@a-m-a.co.uk or call 01223 578078.  

     YouTube style website gives performers a platform

A team of talent producers at Graham Norton's production company, So Television, have created an online talent search called Noostar.com. Noostar provides a platform for performers (dancers, singers, actors...) to upload their video clips and receive a high level of publicity.

Once you've uploaded your clip, you can invite people to watch it and vote for you (winners are announced weekly) or just enjoy watching others. Norton and his team describe the site as 'like YouTube without the non performers'.

Find out more at www.noostar.com

                          World Community Arts Day

Get involved in the 3rd annual World Community Arts Day. Visit www.communiversity.org.uk/worldcommunityartsday.htm to find out how you can take part.

All the organisers ask is that on 17th February you do an arts project, however small or big. Be creative about an issue that you believe promotes 'caring and sharing'.

It could be a song, dance, theatre show, drawing, painting, piece of writing, photograph, lecture, walk, tour, talk, art class - anything that you feel is creative! It could even be an ongoing project you wish to highlight. Put your event on a website, mark it 'World Community Arts day 2009', then send the link to them so they can add it to their webpage.

                 BBC plans dedicated arts board

The BBC has announced it plans to establish a dedicated arts board, as part of a raft of measures aimed at improving its coverage of UK culture.

It said the new board will consist of key creative figures from the Corporation and will “maximise the programming that the BBC delivers in the arts”.

Managed by a new arts co-ordinator, who has yet to be announced, the Corporation said the new board was a response to the need to “simplify the process of getting arts and music content commissioned and available across its television, radio and online channels”.

           ROYAL OPERA HOUSE IN CINEMAS UPDATE

The Royal Opera House continues its 2008/2009 cinema season, with even more opera, ballet and concerts screened in cinemas across the UK, as one night only events, in High Definition digital cinema with 5.1 surround sound.
In February is Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Aida from Barcelona’s Gran Teatre de Liceu.  This renowned period production, filmed in 2003 against the historic paper trompe-l’oeil sets painted between 1936-45 by Josep Mestres Cabanes, stars Daniela Dessì, Elisabetta Fiorillo, Fabio Armiliato, Juan Pons and Roberto Scandiuzzi.  Aida comes to Vue, Odeon, Empire and select Independent cinemas from 22nd February (exact dates vary by participating cinema).

March and April see the additional titles of Georges Bizet’s Carmen (from 29th March), starring the very popular Anna Caterina Antonacci and Jonas Kaufmann and Tales of Beatrix Potter (from 13th April), a ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton.  A Live relay of Handel’s Messiah from the chapel of King’s College Cambridge on Sunday 5th April also marks the first ever live, simultaneous screening of an oratorio into cinemas around the world.

For a full list of participating cinemas and release schedule, please go to: www.artsalliancemedia.com/opera.

Conference 2009 – The Creative Business of Musical Theatre

Fri 6th March –         Conference 9.30am to 6pm at Leicester Square           
                              Theatre (formerly The Venue)

Optional Sat 7th–    MMD & MTM Joint Session 10.00am to Midday 
                             at Leicester Square Theatre

Agenda  tbc
9.30am Gather and introductions / Coffee Tea and making connections
Morning: Session 1 – Changing Lives, Changing World and the Power of Music
How can Musical Theatre inhabit and serve the needs of a changing world?
Can we be collaborators in social innovation and support empowering educators?

Pre-Lunch: Session 2 – Encouraging investment and business innovation
The 2008 MTM working party report back on UK and US tax systems. How can we harness these systems to attract support for new productions and new initiatives – big and small?

Lunch Break

Afternoon: Session 3 – If you want to get to there…I wouldn’t start from here!
Where is the “there” from those starting the journey now, and how can those who’ve been in the business years…and years, help them develop a future business model.
   
Final Session: Session 4 – Never the twain shall meet – or can they?
How do different business sectors & scales collaborate to create work and “do business”: Commercial, Subsidised, International, Regional, West End, Fringe/Studio, Amateur, Student, School?
6.00pm official end 

For more information go to http://www.musicaltheatrematters.org.uk/

            U26 Free Theatre - ‘A Night Less Ordinary’

As Arts Council England’s under-26 free theatre scheme ‘A Night Less Ordinary’ launches, 12 of London’s leading producing theatres are working together to offer a wide range of productions, workshops and activities for young people.

The group comprises the Almeida Theatre, BAC, Bush Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Greenwich Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Royal Court, Soho Theatre, Tricycle Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Young Vic, facilitated by Audiences London, the regional audience development agency.

Free tickets will be available for productions and events, including Duet For One by Tom Kempinski, Wrecks by Neil LaBute, Noël Coward’s Private Lives, Spring Awakening based on the play by Frank Wedekind, The Stone by Marius von Mayenburg, This Isn’t Romance by In-Sook Chappell, and Mad Blud.

London’s young people will be inspired to explore some of London’s most imaginative theatres through back stage tours, post-show debates, meet-the-director sessions and workshops on topics from playwriting to percussion, musical theatre to stage combat.

Across these theatres free tickets will be available to young people 25 and under until March 2011. This scheme is an opportunity to introduce more young Londoners to theatre through the wide-range of ongoing activity these theatres offer throughout the year. By working together, young people will be encouraged to explore the different theatres and discover the show for them from the wide choice on offer.

A Night Less Ordinary is an Arts Council England scheme in association with Metro, which will provide 618,000 free theatre tickets to anyone under 26 in more than 200 venues across England. For more information about the scheme visit www.anightlessordinary.org.uk

                                      The Space UK

Are you or your company planning to take work to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2009?

The Space UK www.thespaceuk.com is devoted to providing affordable and professionally managed theatre spaces for all kinds of artists and organisations working at the Fringe.

They have a number of established venues that have been popular for many years and are very pleased to announce the opening of a brand new, four-theatre venue on Nicholson St, just off the Royal Mile; The Royal College of Surgeons.

They have various spaces which can accommodate from 40 to 170 audience members and are suitable for all kinds of Fringe artists and budgets. They don’t have any hidden charges or take any of your box office revenue.

The Space UK has been managing venues at the Fringe for over a decade and have more than twenty years' experience producing live events.

Please see their website for specification details - www.thespaceuk.com