From the Kentucky Arts Council:
FRANKFORT, Ky. — The Kentucky Arts Council has been awarded a $12,000 grant to produce statewide activities promoting careers in the arts for artists with disabilities. The arts council will partner with other statewide organizations and agencies including VSA Kentucky, the Kentucky Center and the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Throughout 2012, the arts council, along with partnering organizations, will plan and produce activities to identify artists with disabilities and provide professional development and entrepreneurial skills to those artists. The activities will culminate with a Statewide Forum on Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities in October. Since 2002, 26 state arts agencies have conducted similar statewide forums.
Kentucky individuals and organizations that would like to become involved in creating careers in the arts for people with disabilities can contact Kentucky Arts Council’s arts access director, Sarah Schmitt at sarah.schmitt@ky.gov or 502-564-3757, ext. 492.
The Statewide Forum on Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities is a joint program of the National Arts and Disability Center at UCLA and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Also, you can now purchase advance tickets at a discount for Kentucky Crafted: The Market, which this year will be held March 1 – 4 at the Lexington Convention Center, 430 West Vine Street. TR will be there.
Fringe has extended the deadline for their “Remnants” theme issue to March 15. See guidelines here.
qarrtsiluni‘s Worshp issue is now complete and you can read the issue summary from editors Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita Thompson here. They say in part:
We particularly enjoyed the many pieces of work that took something worldly and showed us something sacred about them.
The standard of submissions was overwhelming high, and the number of submissions were high as well. Right from the start we recognised how subjective a process editing is, and we also recognised that not everything that was good was going to make it into the issue (unless we wanted to take a whole year’s worth of posts).
Looking back on how we did choose the pieces in the issue, we can see that we were looking for something which brought form and spirit together. Some of the writing we received was beautifully crafted but felt in some way hollow. Some of the poems were full of heart, but clumsily executed. (There weren’t many of these, as it happens.) We were looking for writing that was both full of something and beautifully written. We think the writing and the images included in the issue do just this.
I encourage you to go and browse through the issue, which contains my poem “Doxology,” as well as poems from some of my favorite poets, including Andrea O’Brien, Penelope Scambly Schott, and a video poem from James Brush.
Loose and Leafy is going to do a second Tree Year with a new tree,
My affection for ‘last year’s’ tree (a Sycamore) began long before I gave it a special place on Loose and Leafy – so there’s no way I’d let it out of view. However, it has the disadvantage of being so tall, all the ‘action’ happens high up. At ground level, shade and location mean its not a good place for other plants to grow . . . what little there is that struggles into life between its toes tends to get nibbled as soon as it shows its head above ground.
So a shift of focus might be a good idea.
A long time ago, I decided to ‘follow’ several trees and several patches of ground. All sorts of things went wrong – branches were lopped, the undergrowth was cut back, little plants died in drought or were trodden on – other plants caught my attention! In other words, it didn’t work. None the less, there’s an elder that has kept my interest all the way through. It’s a scraggy thing – hardly a tree at all and only specially noticeable because it’s bulked up by being part of a small clump. And the clump is both extra-noticeable and extra-easily-ignored because it is almost enveloped in blackberry and ivy. (Some of the recent photos of ivy berries were taken there.)
So, without abandoning the sycamore, let’s shift focus and keep a little more of a conscious eye on the Elder – Sambucus Nigra.
It will be an incredible contrast.
I am tempted but I think I will let it go, make room for another project.
