An illuminating and constructive workbook for anyone involved or interested in creative administration.
Socially engaged artist Lockyer edits a collection of firsthand accounts of finding, building, and sustaining a life in the creative arts.
Emerging from the National Center for Choreography-Akron’s Creative Administration Research program, this essay collection and workbook features an eclectic mix of contributors and styles, including stories, essays, case studies, and interviews. It’s divided into four distinct sections: “Place,” “Leadership,” “Capital,” and “Pathways.” Based on the title and the first entry—an entertaining essay on how to build an audience for contemporary dance in northeast Ohio, which is particularly difficult on Sundays when the Cleveland Browns play—the reader may initially assume that the accounts focus solely on that locale. However, the scope quickly broadens to include experiences from the dance scenes in Nashville, Seattle, New York state, and the San Francisco Bay Area. If there’s an overarching theme, it’s perhaps best expressed by choreographer and director Raja Feather Kelly, who writes, “In America, artists have to ask for permission to be artists.” The book offers particularly compelling advice on how to approach marketing, especially when dealing with local newspapers that may have limited understanding of, or space for, contemporary dance. An excerpt from a podcast interview by multidisciplinary artist Miguel Gutierrez is especially engaging, as it delves into the financial specifics with clear figures for each worker involved in rehearsal and production. At the end of each piece is an “Administrative Experiment,” which urges readers to think deeply on a topic or try out a new skill; however, not all are administrative in nature, as some involve dance exercises and other creative tasks. The final appendix includes a further “Investigative Retreat Toolkit,” featuring guided questions to provoke reflection and discussion—a helpful starting point for creative administrators after absorbing all the other advice. Although this workbook might have a limited audience, it provides a wealth of information, success stories, and unique insights for its target audience.
An illuminating and constructive workbook for anyone involved or interested in creative administration.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781629222820
Page Count: 237
Publisher: University of Akron Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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