Rethinking grassroots campaigners in the digital media: The ‘grassroots orchestra’ in Italy

The diffusion of digital media allows the emergence of new types of relations between grassroots campaigners and organisers. This article presents the results of a comparative qualitative study of two Italian cases of grassroots online participation: a local electoral campaign and a single-issue social movement. The first case is ‘Tell your Milano’, a project that took place during the electoral campaign for Mayor of Milan in the spring of 2011. The second case is the ‘Purple People’ (Popolo Viola), an Italian social movement started in 2009 to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The article introduces the concept of a ‘grassroots orchestra’: a grassroots campaign aimed at a short-term objective, coordinated by a non-grassroots political actor and performed by a community sharing a uniform and coherent context.

Adapting musicology for commercial outcomes

Recent claims that orchestras around the world are facing new financial pressures threatening their survival, suggest that it is critical to investigate the potential for musicology to adapt to commercial outcomes. This paper takes the Australian music industry as a case study to prototype a new and sustainable orchestral model appropriate for twenty first century audiences. The paper includes a review of musical and social innovations from previous and current orchestral models, a review of arts marketing strategies developed for the new consumer, the identification of successful new performance modes including distribution methods and developments in acoustic and digital instrument design, and the documentation of the implementation and testing of such a model to live audiences.

Between traditions : the villa and the country house

Sir Leslie Martin wrote in 1983, “The formal composition used by Lutyens is something totally related to the problems and culture of his time”. to reinforce this point Martin included a plan of Heathcote (1905) next to an illustration of one of Palladio’s final commissions, the Villa Rotonda (1566). Comparing the planning and symmetry strategies of the two architects, Martin was able to demonstrate how Heathcote embodied an eclectic yet fundamental link between two traditions - the irregularity of an Edwardian planning arrangement, and its containment within the symmetry demanded by the “full classical orchestra of a Doric order” (Hussey, 1950 p128). “Once inside the balanced mass of the exterior, the visitor’s movement through the building is controlled by volumes and composition of a totally different kind” 1. While Palladio appears to have been a significant influence on Lutyens, as revealed in the often quoted letter about the “High Game” which he wrote to Herbert Baker in 1903, few studies appear to explore the extent to which his newfound inspiration went beyond the issue of fenestration in affecting other aspects of his work. The following paper analyses Lutyens’s relationship to Palladio with particular reference to three concepts fundamental to the work of
both architects: proportion, plan arrangement and movement.

Arts marketing : a new tool for development of the arts sector in the market context in Vietnam

Since the economic reform in Vietnam in 1986 provided more artistic and financial autonomy, the arts community has had more opportunity to develop. It has hence become necessary for arts leaders to obtain management and marketing skills to adapt to the new competitive environment. This necessity became vital when the Vietnamese government sought to tackle the problem of inadequate state funding for arts organisations through its policy of socialisation. This paper sets out to examine how performing arts organisations in Vietnam apply arts marketing strategies to adapt to the market context via empirical data from the cases studied: Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra and Hanoi Youth Theatre. Further, it identifies implications for the development of the sector. Findings indicate that Vietnamese performing arts organisations focus on the role of marketing for organisational development, although there are a lack of resources and a limited knowledge in this area. Thus, training in arts marketing and arts management is needed to maximise capacity of arts leaders in managing their organisations in the changing context.

Performing arts management in a climate of adjustment : case studies from Vietnam and Australia

This paper presents a series of empirical case studies to discuss impacts of economic globalisation on the development of performing arts organisations in Vietnam (Hanoi Youth Theatre and Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra) and Australia (Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Symphony Orchestra), and focuses on how Vietnamese organisations have adapted to these changes. The paper also identifies cultural policy implications for the development of the sector; for arts management training in Vietnam so that the sector (and more importantly, the artists) may fully benefit from the open market context. The findings indicate that Vietnamese performing arts organisations have attempted to adapt to the new market context while struggling to balance artistic quality, freedom and financial viability in the new socialist regime. The Australian case studies offered a relevant management model to Vietnamese arts management practice and training.

Evolution of the JAK-STAT pathway

The JAK-STAT pathway represents a finely tuned orchestra capable of rapidly facilitating an exquisite symphony of responses from a complex array of extracellular signals. This review explores the evolution of the JAK-STAT pathway: the origins of the individual domains from which it is constructed, the formation of individual components from these basic building blocks, the assembly of the components into a functional pathway, and the subsequent reiteration of this basic template to fulfill a variety of roles downstream of cytokine receptors.

Museums in a troubled world: renewal, irrelevance or collapse?

In the early 2000s the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM), one of Montreal's foremost cultural institutions, underwent two upheavals. First management was thrown into turmoil by the unexpected departure of the OSM's celebrated music director, Charles Dutoit, just as the orchestra and its Swiss conductor were about to mark 25 years of successful partnership with celebrations planned for the 2002-03 season. Then, in May 2005, the orchestra's management and board were faced with a strike by the orchestra's musicians. The authors describe the efforts of the orchestra's general manager, Madeleine Careau, to revive its fortunes, notably through a campaign to restore the OSM's prestige, which had been severely eroded by these two events. With the support of internal and external collaborators, Careau turned her attention to the most pressing issues, namely the choice of a new conductor, the orchestra's planned new concert hall and the creation of a foundation to ensure stable, long-term financing for the OSM. To help bring this recovery plan to fruition, Careau drew on her extensive network of contacts. An all-female leadership team was formed at the OSM, as Careau called on Melanie La Couture (CEO), Helene Desmarais (deputy board chair) and Monique Jérôme-Forget (chair of the Quebec treasury board) to use their talents, expertise and influence to give new lustre to the OSM at home and abroad.