The Week in Light & Sound
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Areas will be able to bid for up to £7m to help fund several projects in a particular location, in order to “help regeneration, create jobs and maximise the impact of investment”. The government said the initiative, which follows hot on the heels of Hull’s year as UK City of Culture in 2017, is anticipated to allow smaller towns and cities to replicate Hull’s success by achieving a similar local impact. Theatre and performance venues in Hull saw a 30% increase in audiences last year, with 95% of the city’s residents engaging in at least one arts activity.
Design Matters - An investigation is being launched into the barriers to becoming a lighting designer faced by people from minority ethnic backgrounds. African and Caribbean theatre company Tangle will be carrying out the research in partnership with the Association of Lighting Designers and Swindon-based company Prime Theatre.
Following the research - and subject to funding - Tangle plans to launch a development scheme within the company for an emerging lighting designer to gain the skills they need to progress their career. Through the scheme an emerging designer would be offered a fully paid role to work on a Tangle production, during which they would receive training in practical lighting. The investigative research project will begin in November, with a report published in spring 2019 detailing the findings. It will involve interviews with individuals and organisations from across the industry.
Rip it Up - A new exhibition, Rip it Up: The Story of Scottish Pop, has gone on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Items belonging to Alex Harvey, Annie Lennox, Wet Wet Wet, Lulu, Texas and Gerry Rafferty are among the 300 objects on display - many of which have been lent by the artists themselves.
Stephen Allen, exhibition curator, told Sky News: “Scotland punches above its weight in pop music. In Scotland, there’s a very strong sense of identity and social justice and that’s something that comes out very strongly throughout the exhibition."
Name Change - The original London home of Cats has been renamed after its choreographer, becoming the first West End theatre to be named after a non-royal woman. The New London Theatre was officially renamed the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Friday at a ceremony hosted by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh. Cats, for which Lynne won an Olivier, ran at the venue from 1981 to 2002. The former ballerina, now 92, was made a dame in 2014 for services to dance and musical theatre.
Chart Changes - This week, the Official Charts Company is set to overhauls its rules to include music video streams and downloads for the first time. Unofficial videos and user-generated content featuring music will not count - but official videos played on YouTube, Apple, Tidal and Spotify in the UK will.
"The way that music fans are consuming music is changing by the month," says the charts' chief executive Martin Talbot. "It seems anachronistic to be saying, 'we're only going to count the song', when it also has a video attached to it." The move, which comes exactly four years after audio streams were incorporated into the chart, has been approved by record labels and BBC Radio 1, which broadcasts the chart every Friday.
(Jim Evans)
26 June 2018
