- James North Art Crawl: A June Observation
While I can’t claim to have done so with perfect consistency, I have been attending and writing coverage of the James North Art Crawl since October 2007. Looking back on that first distant report from the days when Hamilton Artists Inc. was on Colbourne and I was, amazingly, even more jaded than I am today […]
- The Bigger Picture
Last night some eighty artists, cultural organizers, politicians and buskers converged upon the newly renovated City Hall for The Bigger Picture, a forum following up on last November’s The Big Picture Revisited at the Workers’ Arts and Heritage Centre. Hosted by the Arts Advisory Commission for the City of Hamilton, the purpose of the evening […]
- Tivoli Theatre - a treasure worth preserving
My customary report on the most recent James North Art Crawl will be pending in the next day or two, but while I’m sorting through my myriad photos and notes (it was a busy one), I’d like to give a bit of extra attention to one of the unexpected highlights of the night.
Near the end […]
- Update: Sky Dragon Community Meeting
In the interests of viral proliferation, I’d like to throw down a quick update on the Sky Dragon Centre’s mission to save itself from foreclosure - and in turn, to save our arts community from the loss of a uniquely valuable institution among our number.
As promised, the people at Sky Dragon have announced a second […]
- Sky Dragon Centre Facing Foreclosure
I hope to post my report on the James North Art Crawl later today, but before that I feel obliged to draw attention to some recent bad news that threatens to change the shape of Hamilton’s downtown arts community.
The Sky Dragon Community Development Co-operative at 27 King William has occupied a considerable niche in the […]
- Prescription for a Healthy Art Scene
Not for the first time, I’m going to let Art Fag City do the heavy lifting on this post while I try to get some real work done. They’ve been a bit busy this week too, but made up for reduced content with a lovely smorgasbord of links today, including a dip into the SFMOMA […]
- Excerpt: An age of austerity for the arts
A side-effect of my recent love affair with Adrian Searle’s Private Views has been an expanded interest in the other cultural podcasts offered by The Guardian’s website. While the critical heft doesn’t quite compete with CBC’s Ideas (a long-standing favourite of mine), the series of recordings from the 2009 Cambridge Festival of Ideas have been […]
- The Big Picture Revisited Part Three: Engaging City Hall
My third and final post in this week’s series reporting on ‘The Big Picture Revisited’ addresses the discussion around Engaging City Hall. As this whole event was hosted by the City of Hamilton’s Arts Advisory Commission with the intention of forming an action plan within the means of municipal government, this was a topic that […]
- The Big Picture Revisited Part Two: Sustainability of Arts Organizations
Continuing from yesterday’s report on The Big Picture Revisited with a focus on Support for Individual Artists, today’s post will cover the forum’s discussion surrounding Sustainability of Arts Organizations.
In his introductory remarks on the topic, Ivan Jurakic cited an exceptional quality in the James North landscape that has intrigued me for some time now […]
- The Big Picture Revisted Part One: Support for Individual Artists
There’s something cruel in talking about artistic survival in Hamilton, particularly when the event kicks off at 9:30 in the morning and artists are made to mill about the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre dolefully slurping coffee and wondering why they’re awake, upright and wearing pants this early in the morning after an art crawl. […]
