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falsificatore · 4 years

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introducing liam d’antona as antony

“ our courteous antony, whom ne’er the word of ‘no’ woman heard speak ” - enobarbus, antony and cleopatra (act II, scene II)

gday ! my name’s jason, i’m 18, use he/him pronouns, and live in eastern melbourne/the aedt timezone. this is my last year of mostly free time before i move to scotland to get my bachelors degree in acting - i’m insanely excited for this group, and i can’t wait to meet and write with you all! without any further ado, here’s liam!

stats

full name: liam riley santino d’antona age: 18 dob: 5th of december, 2001 gender: cis male pronouns: he/him nationality: english hometown: london, england current residence: edinburgh, scotland spoken languages: english & italian, both fluently - also knows some latin from school

history

( his full bio ended up being i-dont-even-know-how-many-thousand words long - again, kati, i’m so sorry - so for this intro i’m just gonna do my best to boil it down to the key points, but if you’d like to take a gander at the full thing you can do so here! )

tw for parental neglect, alcoholism, and death

liam d’antona was born the first and only child of an english businessman and the heiress of a historic italian winery - his parents had met in edinburgh in their early twenties, his father a student at ashcroft and his mother simply there on holiday. they kept up correspondence even when she returned home to campania, and pretty much as soon as he graduated he came down to stay with her - he won her parents affections through very quickly managing to expand their business to being more of a household name in the uk, and after they got married only a year and a half into their proper relationship they spent a few years making connections, going to lavish parties, and spending way more money than they needed to. both had already come from fairly wealthy families, but the increase in business certainly helped boost them a fair bit.

finally, for no reason that liam could retrospectively figure out, they had him - and it was fair to say they weren’t the most generously loving parents. he was more a trophy baby than anything else, and while they were never especially vicious to him, they didn’t go out of their way to make sure he was being cared for. luckily, though, he had relatives who did - those being his grandfather on his father’s side, and his nonna on his mother’s.

the two of them had only met in person once at his parent’s wedding, but they played equally important roles in essentially raising him as he grew up. his grandfather’s house was only a few minutes drive from his parent’s in london, so he spent more time there than not in his early childhood, spending most his time being read any book from his shelves that looked intriguing visually, and when it wasn’t that he would be taken to plays, galleries, museums, he’d be taught how to use a fountain pen and tie a tie, told stories upon stories about his life before his father was born. that was only for three quarters of the year, however - in the summers, liam’s family would travel down to campania to be with his mother’s family. while his nonno took care of business and entertaining his parents, his nonna would tell him about their family history, take him through the vineyard and down ancient streets, let him vent about his school life and tell reaffirm all the things he should be proud of about himself, her passerotto - she’d only ever get stern with him when his italian was off, but even then, she’d come round and forgive him within seconds.

he doesn’t have a lot of clear memories of his early childhood, but he knows one thing for sure - it was golden.

primary school is where his early memory starts to clear up, especially when it comes to how he met his best friends - distracted when they were first put together as a group for an art class, they’d ended up essentially just spending the first ten minutes throwing paint at one another to see what worked, and when they got sent out and told to wait in the hallway, they’d ended up just heading outside and spending the rest of the lesson time trying to clean their uniforms under the bubblers while they got properly acquainted. he did manage to get on the good side of pretty much everyone else in his year level over time - he could tell jokes, he could speak italian, he knew enough random bullshit to impress people, and he’d actually argue with their teachers but in a way he just couldn’t get in trouble for it - but his gang of four? they were absolutely inseparable.

when it came to actually learning, that’s where liam fell short - he’d only be able to focus if he actually cared about the subject, which was rare, and even then, liam’s always learned in conversations - all the random bullshit he’s learned, that’s all through things people have told him in discussion. he needs to be able to talk back if he wants to actually retain anything or he’ll just zone out and do something he finds more interesting - any individual studying he’s done is just to win an argument or make a point. the only extracurricular he ever did was debating - he was on his primary school team for his last two years there, but wasn’t allowed on his highschool one given how he outwardly said that the other teams points were ‘absolute bullshit’ when it was his turn to speak in the trial debates.

for his whole schooling career up until he was 16, there were only two classes he could say he did well in - latin, since it was close enough to his second language to be able to piece most things together, and english/literature, since he’d spent most of his time as a kid reading the books that would end up part of the curriculum. pretty much all of his electives were either with teachers he knew loved him, ones no one else would pick so all his friends could make it in, or simple bludge subjects - and one of the ones that fell into the last category was philosophy. he went into it with no clue what he should be expecting, but within twenty minutes he’d fallen in love - it was the one class where he was supposed to argue about nonsensical bullshit, supposed to think of out-there justifications, supposed to do all the shit he’d been sent outside time and time again for in every single other subject. it was like it was made for him - and for a teen alcoholic with an unfavourable learning style, those sorts of classes don’t come easily.

an alcoholic isn’t what liam would call himself - but the compulsive liar he is, his word shouldn’t always be trusted, especially when it comes to drinking. for him, it’s never been a risk, never an act of rebellion - his family’s fortune, his parent’s whole relationship, it was built on wine. he’s been drinking since he was five, sat up at his nonni’s dinner table with a glass of red next to his meal, and when he was finally allowed to tag along to his parent’s parties, no one seemed to mind him taking the champagne only offered by the waiters out of courtesy - some because they found it adorable, some because they were too inebriated themselves to think about it, and his parents? they simply just didn’t care. his mother had grown up with the same familiarity - it was just family custom, really. family custom that may have lead to a dependence, sure, but custom nonetheless - the passing around and judging of a new brand is the d’antona monopoly night.

for seven years since he started, his consumption was minimal - he’d have a glass at dinner, of course, and he’d take something if he was offered at a soiree, that was just polite - but it wasn’t until he was twelve when he slowly started to swim into dangerous waters. he himself wasn’t fully aware of the cause, but then, he wasn’t fully aware anything was changing other than he suddenly needed more and more to distract himself and feel anything but how he was - but the cause was there.

his grandfather’s passing was nothing less than objective - one day he’s in his library, bitching about one of the dickheads from across the city they’d debated in their tournament that afternoon, and less than a week later his father arrives home from an unusual absence, sits him down at the table, and tells him - actually, he doesn’t know what he told him. he just comes away from it knowing he’d died. he can’t remember the conversation, can’t remember anything between the talk and the funeral - only that he hadn’t cried. neither of them had cried. he treated the funeral with the same business formality he treated his parent’s parties, keeping conversations short with a polite enough smile - but then, when the service starts and people he’d never met before start coming up and telling stories about him, his whole life, a life he’d only been there for a tiny fraction of, and the sheer love they have for him, the same as his - it’s too much. he can’t carry the coffin, can’t watch the hearse drive away - he simply collapses into his mother’s shoulder when they walk past the front row, and he sobs. for the first time since he was a newborn, he goes to her for comfort, and she gives it, in murmured italian he can’t be bothered trying to understand - but it can only last a few minutes before he has to pull away, wipe his eyes, and join the rest of the crowd. he stands alone at the burial. he doesn’t go to the wake.

from then on out, he does remarkably fine. he goes back to talking at the back of the classroom, back to roaming the city with his friends, back to fancy parties - yes, he’s started topping up his own glasses more, taking a bottle with him when he and his friends go to hang out in the park, but he’s not crying, he’s not wallowing, and that, to him, is what matters. if there is one thing, though - he can’t bring himself to clear out the house with the others. when he comes home from an outing he’d organised as an excuse to get out of it and finds boxes and boxes of books in the corner of his room, he can’t touch them - can’t touch them for two more years. it’s only when he wakes up, fourteen, with one of the worst hangovers he’s ever had, that he finally turns to them - he can’t leave his room, he can’t look at a screen, so he finally grabs one at random. and he reads. and he cries, a bit, when he comes to the parts he can suddenly remember reading with him, when he’d do the voices or chime in to explain for the millionth time why what a character did was stupid - it’s cathartic, in a way. that becomes practice - whenever he’s hungover, at first, but soon it’s whenever he’s bored, whenever he’s lonely, he’ll go over and pick up another book, and he’ll read it until it’s done. soon enough, he uncovers a set of fountain pens, the ones he’d been taught to use as a kid, and he starts to use them again, properly, even if his friends give him shit for it at first. he goes down to his grave for the first time since he was buried, and though he doesn’t cry like he still feels like he’s meant to, he opens up a bottle of baileys - his favourite - and just talks. fills him in on all he’d missed, how his friends are doing, the girlfriends he’s had and lost since he started highschool, everything - and though he doesn’t stop drinking or properly clean up his act, he’s able to carry on.

as much as he would like to carry out all the wishes he doesn’t fully know, theres one thing liam knows he can’t do - and that’s go to ashcroft. both his father and grandfather went, business and literature majors respectively, and he knows full well they were both star students - but school’s not for him, especially not a school that posh, no matter how much they’d both encouraged him to apply as soon as he’s able. he’s seventeen, and he and his friends are taking full advantage of the fact that the school courtyard’s empty during their free gcse study period while everyone else is either in classes or, in their year, in the library - and then one of them comes up with the first spark of the plan. it’s simple - he knows he won’t have good enough results to get in, so to get his dad off his back, he’ll send whatever he gets off to ashcroft anyway, tucked in an envelope with a letter from his philosophy teacher - because who else - and some bullshit essay, and when he inevitably gets rejected, he’ll take as much money as he can and flee in shame. they all will - they’ll move to another part of london, or travel europe, or go to stay in campania, or wherever, and they’ll keep living their lives in opulence, only several hundred miles from where they first began. he does his exams, completely wasted all the while, and when his results come back he doesn’t even bother giving more than philosophy a glance before throwing them into the photocopier and sending the copy away to edinburgh. it’s flawless.

it should’ve been flawless.

when the acceptance letter comes, an actual letter in the actual post, the dickheads, he’s stunned. it takes over an hour for him to process it - there’s no way in hell he should’ve got in, but it’s his name on the envelope, his name at the top of the letter, he’s read it over and over and over again, there’s no mistake. he spends hours trying to find where the original copy of his grades were - on the photocopier, where he’d left them - and when he actually looks, he’s nearly paralysed where he stands. his mark for every subject, they’re all amazing. his whole life, he’s barely managed an average for most of his classes - when he asks his father, he just shrugs. he knows, he knows these can’t be his actual grades, he barely even remembers the exams - it isn’t until muckup day that he finds his answer.

they’re hidden at the back of the staffroom pigeonholes, only the ones belonging to his teachers - in each one, three bottles of wine, tied together with a ribbon, and attached, a card he immediately recognises as bearing an all-too-familiar signature.

it’s a school full of rich wankers, any family could use money as a bribe for better grades - but he knows full well how much all of this is worth.

not just any family can freely give out some of the finest wine in europe.

at first, he wants to go straight home, shout at his parents, call them out on all of their bullshit - he’s lied to get out of worked, sure, but he’s never cheated to get a ‘not exactly one in a million but pretty damn close’ position in one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and this isn’t even what he wants - but as he’s heading down the hallway back towards the main entrance of the building, he realises. he can’t. if he tells them he knows, then he’s admitting that he didn’t want to get in, he’s admitting he was trying to get rejected - he’ll ruin any chance he may have at salvaging the plan.

so he doesn’t mention it. he books a hotel he can stay in while he’s there for the campus tour, packs a bag and jumps on the 5:30am train from london to edinburgh. when his phone inevitably dies, he’s left only with the book he threw in last minute if he doesn’t want to just stare out into the countryside like he’s reenacting some kind of harry potter bullshit - it turns out to be moby dick, which is fine, not ever really a favourite, but decent enough for passing the time - but then he hits chapter 39.

‘i know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, i’ll go to it laughing.’

he’d managed to forget about it until that moment, let it sink away like basically everything else he’d lost from his childhood, but - it was the quote his grandfather had always used to reassure him, to give him confidence. the evening before his first day of primary school, he’d kneeled before him, lifted his chin, and they’d said it together, and he had, he had gone in laughing, if he hadn’t he wouldn’t have made any of his friends, gotten away with any of the shit he had - it feels like a sign, in some stupid sort of a way. and then, when he actually arrives for the tour the next day, he happens to spot a board up on the wall, and at first he’s willing to just look past it, it’s just a boring old honours board, he’d seen plenty in his time - but then a name catches his eye. his grandfather’s name, illuminated by the faintest bit of sunlight coming in through the window - and it hits him like a bolt of lightning.

he has to be here.

it only cements itself further and further as he walks around with the rest of the group, takes in the art, the architecture, everything - it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t deserve to stay, he’ll make it so he does. he’ll work hard. he’ll actually pay attention, even when he doesn’t want to. he’ll study everything he’s told, not just the things he wants to prove a point about. he won’t stop drinking, but he’ll only do it at the end of the day. he’ll be the model of a philosophy student. he’ll care. because if he doesn’t, he’ll have to leave - and if he has to leave, he has no idea what he’ll do with himself.

it may be a retrospective resolution, but he’ll do it. he’ll earn his place at ashcroft or he’ll die trying.

personality

(very, very narrowed down, only key points)

+ definitely something he’s inherited from having successful businesspeople as parents, liam is quite the charmer - he’s been able to get away with most of the shit he’d pulled at school for so long simply with a smile, a shrug, or a baffled ‘i don’t know, it wasn’t us, do you want me to try and ask around?’ + despite being largely neglected save for social situations by aforementioned successful businesspeople parents, liam is genuinely compassionate more often than not, and he tries his hardest to stay polite and civil, avoiding conflict when possible and trying to include people if they’re being left out - or at least figure out why it is they got left out in the first place. + even though schoolwork isn’t really his forte, he is naturally quite curious about the world, and loves debating questions and figuring out answers - if something intrigues him, he won’t be able to forget about it until it’s properly dealt with - even then the chance of it leaving his mind is rather small. when he wants to learn, he’ll learn, and he’s good at it - he’s a quick thinker and has a good memory. + above all else, liam is a romantic - he’s had more than his fair share of partners, but all of them he’s treated with equal adoration and respect. he falls in love with someone before even properly realising they’re in front of them, and he’ll do anything he can to make them feel cared for and like they can be comfortable around him. he has a lot of love, not just for people - old books, italy, good drinks, fountain pens - he’ll love something for the love of it, not because it’ll make him look more cultured or help him get further with those around him.

= liam is fairly matter-of-fact and objective - though this helps him get things done and does certainly lend a hand coming straight into the middle of a post-murder scene without letting emotions that aren’t really his cloud his vision, it can get in the way of him properly connecting with people he may not see as justified.

- though it did help him make his way through both primary and secondary school without having to do much work, liam is a compulsive liar, and he has very little problem with it - he’s keeping up a lie he was at first horrified by that his parents put in place to stay at ashcroft, for example. being a good bluffer isn’t necessarily a good thing, and he doesn’t fully understand that. this extends to how he acts around others, able to quickly put on a mask and discard his emotions, no matter how well he’s actually doing. he doesn’t have time to feel bad, he has a job to do.

- although he does try to avoid lashing out, his temper can quickly rise and get the better of him - he does try to handle his argumentative streak by debating about irrelevant, stupid topics, which does work a treat to stop him from yelling at people, but it can definitely be annoying to some.

- despite confidence being good in some situations, it doesn’t always lend him a hand in trying to fit in with the others - especially in the aftermath of a murder, he should have more tact when it comes to approaching members of the society, but he really has no qualms with going up and just talking to them even if they’d love nothing more but to swat him like a fly, which, in some cases, he may definitely deserve.

- unless he really cares for the subject, liam will put in as little effort as possible, if any, to try and do a good job - despite being energetic, he mostly directs it strictly away from his schoolwork. if he doesn’t want to lend a hand, he’ll simply walk away with no concern for who he’s leaving behind.

imperium

it’s fair to say that liam got into not just ashcroft, but the imperium society because of his family’s notoriety and history with the school - but his name isn’t all he has, even if he doesn’t fully see it himself. he’s a skilled debater, able to see things both objectively and have that objective be outside of the box, and this has lent more than a hand when it comes to his work in his philosophy classes. he can take a lot of knowledge in and boil it down to the things that really matter, which, given how large some of the concepts covered are, is a fairly significant skill for his subject, and he’s able to apply or retract lenses to matters at the drop of a hat to see things from another perspective. he can find an argument in anything, and until he’s perfectly sure he’ll never be 100% concrete in any one view. in short; despite being brash about it, he’s a good philosopher.

octavia

liam honestly didn’t even know that there had been a murder at ashcroft until after he arrived - when he did learn about it properly, he was already beyond the point of being put off from the school by the fact. it was only when he was invited to the imperium society that he had to properly think about it - because it didn’t take a genius to realise there’s no way he’d be in if the spot hadn’t open up. immediately it started gnawing at him, and it was only made worse when he moved into escalus house, in the empty room he quickly learned was once lysanders. he’s felt like he’s being watched since he came in, and even though he knows its ridiculous and he has no reason to feel like he’s overstepping by being there, he’s tried to avoid being in the room on his own since he arrived, much preferring to hang around the communal spaces or just stick close to ophelia. he’s tried to avoid getting involved in the other member’s feelings about octavia’s death since it’s not his place and, honestly, he has no real idea what to make of it. he knows it was a tragedy, and he know it affected them all deeply, especially his cousin who he has the heaviest concern for - but he’s never been the best griever, he knows that just carrying on with his life and ignoring it isn’t a good way to go about death even if it “worked” for him, what’s he supposed to say to those still in the throws of mourning?

he doesn’t remember when he first dreamed about her, because really, he didn’t even know it was her - it wasn’t until he saw her photo up in one of the rooms that he was able to put a person to the face, but by that point, the dreams had been numerous. at first he just brushed it off - he’d probably just seen the photo in passing, and drinking a bit too much every night to make up for not being able to do it between classes like he had in highschool probably did something to his mind. but they kept coming, relentlessly - so, slowly, he’s started looking into things. this is just a problem he needs to deal with, deal with it and he’s done, he doesn’t need to get it involved with the others - and even though he tells himself he wants it to be done with faster, truly, he’s intrigued. he can’t rule out ghosts not existing, he’s a philosophy student, he’s spent more than his fair share of time debating it in class, what happens after death - so if she is really her, and it isn’t just because he’s thinking about it a lot more now, then doesn’t that mean something’s happened to bring her back? he’s no detective - but he’ll find an answer. despite this, he’s avoided joining in on rumours of her return, and denies ever having seen her, dream or otherwise.

miscellaneous

ExTP (50/50 observant/intuitive) the debater/the entrepreneur 9w8, the referee sanguine gryffindor

- he has genuinely no idea what he wrote in his essay to get accepted into ashcroft - he was drunk while writing it, which isn’t a huge surprise given he hasn’t been fully sober at any given moment since he was about 14, but usually when he’s closer to sober than not he’s able to recall something. with the essay, though, complete blank.

- he’s never played any instrument, but he loves violin music - his first celebrity crush was alexander rybak, and he still has most of his discography on his playlists 11 years after first seeing him in eurovision.

- he’s been to italy every summer without fail since he was born, and though his mother was fluent in english, she still spoke to him in italian when they were at home.

- he is dependent on alcohol, but he’s pretty good at hiding the fact he has a few shots to wake him up in the morning and at least two glasses of wine in the evening - but he’s been drinking as a family thing since he was a kid, so you’d suppose he’s used to it. it takes a lot for him to get properly drunk.

- he’s never learned how to drive, but, again - hasn’t been sober since he was 14.

- he never watched a lot of movies or tv growing up, and still doesn’t, but he adores the truman show - he watched it for his philosophy class in high school when he was first starting out, and now it’s a go-to whenever he’s bored.

- he likes the debating aspect of his philosophy classes more than actually learning about the philosophers behind what he’s being taught.

- his handwriting is more than illegible, and it’s definitely not helped by the dual factors that he’s using easily smudged fountain pen ink and that half his notes are in italian - granted, translating helps him remember, but it’s no help to anyone else who wants to read them for revision.

- as far as his gang from school are aware, he hates ashcroft and is still trying to find a way to get himself expelled.

- he’s good at breaking things but can rarely put them perfectly back together - in his own words, he’s perfectly capable of undoing knots, but he struggles beyond shoelaces and ties and has literally no clue how people manage to tie two pieces of string together.

- despite struggling in school environments, he does still know a fair bit about history and just general random trivia, though for the most part its just things he picked up in conversations.

#spectreintro #FINALLY got this done my god #most of this is copy/pasted from his app but narrowing his bio took. so long also i didnt even shorten it that much?? very annoying #ah well #[ about ]

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sightsoundrhythm · 4 years

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JUSTIN BROWN

Justin Brown is a drummer and composer from Oakland, California. His journey so far has seen him play with a multitude of artists including Thundercat, Herbie Hancock, Flying Lotus, Esperanza Spalding, Kenny Garrett and, most recently, touring in Europe with bassist Ben Williams.

Always tasteful in his approach and execution, Justin's style is progressive and virtuosic yet extremely musical. He began playing drums at a young age and later graduated to playing in clubs by his early teens, before studying at the Manhattan School of Music.

Justin has recently returned to California after being a longtime resident of New York City, where he had initially moved as a student before becoming an active participant in the city's eclectic music scene. In 2018 he released his first album as a bandleader under the name Nyeusi which gained high accolades from both the New York Times and NPR's Simon Rentner. The album sits at the intersection of jazz fusion and hip-hop, managing to sound both vintage and incredibly modern at the same time. It features a selection of luminary musicians from the New York jazz scene including Jason Lindner (★) and Fabian Almazan and is available to download here

NYEUSI by Justin Brown

SIGHT/SOUND/RHYTHM spoke with Justin before a show in Vienna, Austria to talk about his musical background and upbringing, connecting the line between some of his many collaborations, and submitting to the music.

You just moved back to California after 13 years in New York. What prompted that move for you?

Well, two things. The main thing was family. My mother is getting older, plus I also have a fifteen year old nephew and I really want to be more involved in his life.

There's no place like New York as far as the music scene, which is what drew me there, but it was just the day to day living that I tapped out on. Just the thought of getting on the train and dealing with all of those energies in a compact space... I just needed a bit more balance, for my own sanity.

So those were the main reasons, but I also have a ton of friends in LA, too, that were pulling me there.

L.A. is the type of place where you can't really beat the quality of living. I might be spending the same amount as far as rent goes but I have more time and I'm able to balance out my day a little bit more. Plus the sun is always out so it's easier on the body and brain.

What are the things that you've valued the most by being between New York and L.A.? Does one feel like a better fit than the other?

That's a good question. Well, I've mainly valued the music. Being in New York I feel like I developed faster, just because it's 24/7 and a lot of the guys that I looked up to and wanted to be around were in New York. By being there I found out who I was and what I actually wanted to do. Also, I always wanted to be involved in more than one thing and New York was the place for me to do that. Whether I wanted to play gospel music, or jazz, or hip hop, it was all happening in that space. I feel like New York made me a little stronger.

L.A. has a beautiful music scene. It's a little more close knit because you have a lot of people who are from there and who grow up with each other. It's almost like these little pockets of families who grow up with this musical journey.

It feels as though it's a little more open now, especially with a lot of the younger dudes, where you get into playing more jazz and experimental music. Although it is still a part of it, it's just not as studio focused. On the flip side of that, L.A. is teaching me a lot about the studio because it's sort of the mecca for that. I'm learning lots about mics and EQs.

I do feel like the two places are still connected. I used to say that if you wanted to become a hardcore musician then you move to New York, and if you wanted to have more stability then you'd move to L.A., but it's changing, mainly because of the younger generation and having access to the internet.

What was your experience like growing up as a kid?

Well, being in the Bay Area, there was a vast amount of artistry, from Tower of Power, to Sly and the Family Stone, from the Black Panther movement to the Hawkins Family. It was really cool to be in an environment where art was prominent.

I was fortunate to go to Berkeley High School where I met Thomas Pridgen and a lot of other amazing musicians. Even though it was a public school, the school band was really good and it had this stature for being one of the best in the country. That school was just a bunch of creatives.

I was there with Daveed Diggs, who was in Hamilton, as well as Chinaka Hodges. There were a bunch of different creatives there and that was really cool to be around. There were also outreach programs like the Young Musician's Program, which is a summer school at the University of California, Berkeley for kids under eighteen and they're basically teaching you at a college level. From being there, and being around the people that I grew up with, I knew what I wanted to pursue. I knew as a kid that I had a talent but I didn't start to exude in it until after I left the Bay Area.

I was very active in music, plus my mother is also a gospel musician, so I was learning a lot. I was fortunate enough to have good parents who helped me to cultivate my craft and I'm very thankful for having been in that environment. I had opportunities to play small gigs. I really commend my mother because from the ages of thirteen to fifteen, she used to let me play at late night clubs and she'd come pick me up at two in the morning. I'm very fortunate that she allowed me to have that outlet.

That's some good parenting.

Yeah! She's a musician as well so she saw an opportunity for me to go in a direction that she didn't really go in. She would go out on tour but it was a struggle because she wanted to be at home with the family. Whenever I wanted to practice or hang out with musicians or go to shows, she was always there to take me. At a young age I got to see a lot of guys playing who would be coming through the Bay Area, like Dennis Chambers and Brian Blade.

youtube

You've been friends with Thomas Pridgen for a long time.

Yeah, we grew up together. I met Thomas when I was 8, and I think he was 9. I actually just talked to him earlier. To this day he's like my brother. I'm fortunate enough to have grown up with a guy like that, especially with playing drums.

Were you learning from each other?

Man, he was at such a high level that I was learning from him, for sure. He had access to a lot of the guys that we were watching and he was exposed to the instrument at a very young age. I think the most that I gained from Thomas was how to find yourself through the instrument and how to really dedicate yourself to the craft. We used to cut high school together to go shed the whole day. We'd meet up at school, go to his house to play drums, and then go back to school for band. (laughs)

I also met Ronald Bruner through Thomas. I remember that Thomas would call Ronald and they would play drums over the phone! Those two are my brothers for sure.

Is Ronald still playing with Kamasi Washington?

Yeah, he is. I'm not sure what Thomas is doing right now but he does everything. I know that he was playing with Residente and before that Trash Talk. He's playing a lot in the bay area and he's always super active. I got to see him play with The Mars Volta and that was unreal.

Yeah. All of the drummers who have passed through that band have been phenomenal.

Yeah! Jon Theodore, Deantoni Parks, Thomas, Dave Elitch. All special dudes, for sure.

When you left the Bay Area, did you go straight to New York?

Not right away. I ended up auditioning for the Dave Brubeck Institute, which is at the University of Pacific, in Stockton, California. So I studied there for two years before moving to New York, which was actually a smart move because when I look back on myself at eighteen, I wouldn't have been ready for New York, as a human and as a musician.

It was cool to still be somewhat closer to home and to still be able to take the time to really figure it out. Eric Moore also lived in Stockton, California so I became really good buddies with him. He was my shed partner and we played drums every single day. Being there allowed me to really focus in on the instrument and that's where it hit me that I wanted to do this.

I learned that in order to be good you had to put in the time and the work. So that put me in a really good space and it became a habit of me just trying to get better.

Was it after studying in California that you went to the Julliard School for Music in New York?

I auditioned for the New School and Julliard, where I ended up getting a full scholarship. Once I saw the curriculum though I realised that it wasn't for me. Their curriculum was something that I had already been through, with all of my studies at high school and also at the Brubeck Institute.

I actually dropped out on the first day of school. I woke up and just thought, 'I can't do this'. I didn't even go to class, I went straight to the Dean and told him that it wasn't for me.

At the time there were so many musicians that I looked up to, from Steve Coleman to Yosvany Terry to Josh Roseman... I mean, Steve Coleman had a workshop every Monday at the Jazz Gallery and I used to go there and study. Then it was really about playing and learning what that experience was like, so I dropped out of school. It was the best thing for me because I was just ready to play.

That was a smart move.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes I look back on it and it probably would've been easy to go back to school and to get a degree and get my masters but I wasn't in that headspace. I was ready to play and I was on a mission to try to get better. So I dropped out of Julliard and spent one year in New York working. I got a day job at Guitar Centre just so I could survive. After six months I thought, 'if I'm really going to do this, I just have to fall face first'. I had to be involved in anything and everything that I could, from a restaurant gig to a jazz gig. I knew it was going to be really hard but I had to do it.

After that first year there I ended up going back to school. I went to the Manhattan School for Music and that's when I met other cool musicians and started to build a name for myself. While I was in school I got the call play with Kenny Garrett and after that I started touring.

After leaving Julliard and taking a year to work, do you feel like you benefitted from not fully going down the academic route at that point?

Absolutely. It felt like a better move for me to do that.

I still consider myself to be a jazz musician, and in New York you still have the masters there who are the great practitioners of this music. I was going to shows and sitting right up under the drums and watching everyone from Brian Blade to Billy Hart, and I even got see Max Roach when he was still around. So it was about going to check out the masters, asking them questions and really learning about the culture.

If I was doing a hip hop gig, I was going to the hip hop clubs and asking Rich Medina what albums to check out. CBGBs was still around, so I got to and see what that was like and to experience that. So it was about learning the culture of each music and I feel like that's something that they aren't going to teach you in school. It's something you have to find for yourself.

What would you like to see implemented in music education that wasn't present when you were studying, or that you feel is just absent?

That's a really good question. I think allowing more students the opportunity to check out the masters. They need to be bringing in people who have the real experience and not just a teacher who went to school, learned the methods and then says, 'here's how to be a jazz musician'. That's not the way to do it.

Colleges bring in master musicians but it's only a minuscule part of the thing. It'd be great to be able to call someone like Billy Hart and to take students to them, to see the show. Also, it's an economic game. Berkley and the Manhattan School for Music have the money to do it but I think it's really about grabbing a hold of the experience. You're not going to really grow unless you're out there doing it. You can be taught a bunch of theory but to be in the moment and playing is where it's at.

You've collaborated with a multitude of different artists including Flying Lotus, Thundercat and Esperanza Spalding, How have you found it adapting to all of those different situations?

It's all about connecting the line. They're all unique individuals but they're also very like-minded. They're vessels submitting to this music and they're all willing to grow. I feel like the more music you go and check out, the easier it is to connect the dots and be able to adapt.

I learned that I would play differently in certain situations, whether I was playing with Esperanza Spalding or Thundercat, but it was really all about submitting to the music and setting a foundation to make things feel good. It's all music and I just want to be able to bring out the characteristics of what the artist is trying to say. At the end of the day it's about having the mindset that it's really not about me. It's about a bigger picture and to be a vessel in a way that gives someone hope or inspiration throughout their daily life.

The physical aspect between the people I play with can also be different. Once I started playing with Thundercat, I knew that I could play in that style but I knew that I didn't have the physical capability and stamina to do it. So I had to go back to the drawing board in some ways. I even went to Thomas (Pridgen) and asked him, 'how do you not get tired playing these gigs?' He told me that not only do you have to play like that in your practice but you have to take care of yourself by getting proper sleep, drinking a lot of water and stretching. Over time it became easier.

I had a regimen within my practice where I would work on independence and groove, but then it just became about playing and getting my body in the flow. It takes a lot of patience to understand what works and how your body reacts to certain things, like when you play from fast to slow. Trying to relax the mind and body within that. It really comes down to submitting to it.

So it's mainly been the physical changes between gigs that I've had to adapt to more than the musical ones. I guess there are stylistic things which are different. I mean, with Esperanza it'll be sort of samba and bossanova, but with Thundercat it's more backbeat rock. Essentially it's about grooving, making the music feel good and always being open to learning. I try not to be single-minded in music, because the more things you're able to expose yourself to, the greater the musical language is that you can draw from. It's about always being 100% in it. Always checking out music and going to shows. Always talking about music, and just being a musical nerd. The more experience you get the more natural it becomes.

You played with Herbie Hancock. What was it like getting that call?

Bro. That was crazy. Playing with Herbie was a surreal experience. He's been a major influence on me throughout my musical journey so it was a dream come true.

I think it was Terrence Martin that recommended me. I got the call and did the rehearsal... I rarely get nervous but I was starstruck. I couldn't believe it was happening. For the first few days of the tour, it took me a little while to get over the hump. Like, 'oh, man, I'm on an airplane with Herbie Hancock! I'm eating with Herbie Hancock!' (laughs) On the third or forth day he walked up to me and said, 'Yo, Justin! You've been killing it these last few days!' And it just kind of took a load off me, because he was cool and he was feeling what I was doing.

I got to ask him a bunch of questions about Miles (Davis) and Tony (Williams). He actually told me that Tony played with John Coltrane, which was mind boggling to me.

What period would this have been in?

This would have been in the '60s. Herbie was really good friends with Tony, so I asked him: 'Man, did Tony ever play with Coltrane?' and he said that, yes, he did. There was a week at Birdland where something had happened with Elvin (Jones), where I think he might have got arrested, I believe. So Coltrane asked Tony to play that whole week. I asked Herbie, 'Are there any recordings of it?' and he said, “Yeah. I believe his wife has the recordings.” So it was documented.

Herbie never heard the recordings but he saw Tony afterwards and he said that Coltrane was the reason why Tony switched to playing with bigger sticks. Coltrane had so much stamina from playing as much as he did that Tony wanted to get on that same level. This was in the '60s, so already early on he was trying to get more energy and more power after playing with Coltrane. So that was a really cool moment that he shared with me.

Herbie's full spectrum, on a musical level and on a human level. He's extremely open and is very technically minded. We were all sitting at the dinner table one night and we're taking pictures on our phones. Herbie walks up and says, “you guys want to see something? You ever seen a 3D camera phone?” A company called Red made the first 3D camera phone and they sent him the first one. He was like, “yeah, they sent me the aluminium one. I asked for the titanium one, so that'll be waiting for me when I get back!” He's always been that guy. When Sony first started making CDs, they called him. When Midi was first starting to be used, he was one of the first guys to know about it. So it was just really cool to be in that space. I got to chat to him everyday.

He's not going back but he's moving forward into the beyond. I'll definitely cherish that moment [of playing with him] for the rest of my life. I knew going into it that I had be humble; to be thankful and learn as much as I could from Herbie. It definitely made me a better musician and a better human, just from that one month on the road with him. Just seeing how focused he is... it was unreal.

What have been some of the milestones in your playing that have pushed you creatively?

Meeting Herbie was definitely a milestone for me. Anytime I get to talk to one of the masters, I feel like that makes me a stronger human and a stronger musician. It makes me more confident in what I want to achieve. Playing with Kenny Garrett... as well as being able to play with my peers, you know. It's really cool to just be able to grow together.

The day I heard Caravan by Art Blakey when I was ten years old blew my mind. Just hearing how he played the drums and how much authority he had over the instrument was one of those moments where I thought, 'oh, so that's how you do it!'

For me it's about adapting to the energy of the room and being open in that sense as to how I can inspire someone. It goes back to submitting to the music. All of the practice, as well as checking out videos and seeing drummers live definitely helps, but I also want to be a musician that is completely in the moment. I don't ever want to go onto the bandstand thinking that I know what's going to happen. I want to have a mindset that is ready to expect the unexpected and to always play what is called for in the music. You have to be able to open yourself up to what's going to come out naturally and not try to force anything to come out.

All of those things have made me a better musician.

What's something that you've been paying attention to recently that's been inspiring you, either musically or non-musicially?

Well, I'm not really political but I am paying more attention to issues in the world, because as a black man, I feel like I have no choice, you know? I have no choice but to find a way to dumb down the bullshit. So I'm trying to pay more attention to what's going on in the world; to try and inspire someone to get through, because these are tough times.

I've been given a gift... in church you learn at a very young age that it's not about the accolades or being seen, it's about being a spiritual vessel, to give back and to give praise to the most high.

I guess musically I'm really paying a lot of attention to the drum community and seeing how social media is having an affect on it. I saw the transition with my generation, so it's a little harder for me to go all in and just post things up all of the time. I don't want to over expose myself, but I also just want to be a positive example for someone and to inspire the next generation of younger players, to show them that it's possible. I'm also paying more attention to my health, because with the older I get and the more I'm touring, my health is key to staying strong.

You put out the Nyeusi record a little while ago. Are planning on doing anything more with that project?

I'm still trying to figure it out. I am starting to hear the music and I am starting to get the inspiration to do another album, but I'm not sure if I'm going to call it Nyeusi, because I'm in a different space. With where my life is moving, and all the things I draw inspiration from, there might be a different message.

I wanted Nyeusi to be a theme of who I am more than anything. Even though it's my music it's still not about me whatsoever, and I wanted room for all the other musicians to speak in that project. I mean, I might do a Nyeusi II, just because it was well received and people gravitated towards it, which gave me the push to keep going.

It took a lot of energy and a lot of time to put that album out, and once it was out I didn't really do much touring. There was another side that I had to learn about which was how to be an artist and to present the music. Now, I'm more in a head space of wanting to play and wanting to get the music out live and create more content. So it's very loose and in the air, but I will say that for 2020 I'll be doing more shows with Nyeusi and I'm going to have more live content out, so that's where I'm at with it.

Any European dates for 2020?

Yeah, in the fall, and maybe even later on, and then just doing some shows in New York and L.A..

If you could give three albums to a drummer, which would you choose and why?

This is really difficult. Man.

Ok, I would say:

James Brown – Funky Drummer, or The Payback. Why James Brown? Because that's where hip-hop is coming out of, with backbeats and breakbeats. So it can provide a good foundation for someone wanting to become a hip-hop drummer and to have an understanding of the language. Not just James Brown but soul and funk music.

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. Just because that's a quintessential record for jazz. You can hear where it's coming from and where it's going.

Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life. He's an amazing songwriter and he plays every instrument. Being a drummer, you can get so caught up in the drums that you lose sight of what the message is, and Stevie Wonder is a beautiful storyteller. The music is killing but there's also a message which makes you want to investigate the lyrics. You get a sense of purpose and what music is actually meant for; what your role is as a drummer, too.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you, either as a musician or just on a human level?

On a human level, learning to love and respect everyone for who they are and what they do. To never knock another person's path. To always be encouraging and spread love, if you will.

As a player, and this is going to sound crazy, but playing louder and faster. (laughs)

I mean, that's a really hard thing for me so I'm really trying to develop and get my phrases and musical statements to be a lot stronger, so that it becomes a part of a language and not just a lick or a fill. So I really want to keep developing and getting better as a person.

Good answer. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and do this.

Man, no problem! Thanks for asking!

Interview & live photo by Dave Jones.

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artofdigression · 5 years

Text

I’m 23 years old. The 2 years leading up to now have been a complete whirlwind, but somehow, in this time, an actual music career has begun. I’m a composer, a producer, a singer, a songwriter, a visual artist - among many labels.

I sit in front of my piano. I know how to play all of 2 pieces - Gnossiennes 1 & 2 by Erik Satie. I learned them by ear 4 years ago while working the reception desk of an art gallery that had two baby grand pianos hidden underneath the stairs. I would get bored when no one else was in the gallery and venture down.

In my studio, I have piles of introductory music books, minuets and ballads laying around - some given to me at a young age, some passed down by dead relatives who knew I had a ‘good ear’ - or were maybe too dead to give a shit about where their old sheet music went by the time I got my hands on it.

I decide, for what feels like the 100th time, that I will learn how to read music.

I had my first piano lesson when I was 10 years old. My piano teacher was nice - a young, lanky, 20-something music student who wore beanie hats and played electric guitar in a rock band. I thought he was pretty much the coolest and wanted to be him. Unfortunately, I don’t think he was particularly ‘stoked’ in the same capacity to work with me. I had very little enthusiasm for any of the mind-numbingly boring rudimentary theory curriculum, the limited repertoire I had to choose from (away in a manger or… the other version of away in a manger) made me want to rip my hair out, and reading sheet music would send my mind into kaleidoscope-vision.

I would also have kaleidoscope-vision in school. I struggled with school. I was a rambunctious little human. My attention span was uncontrollable (unless we were reading or drawing, then I absolutely paid attention). Looking over old report cards, there was a lot of ‘needs to stay on task’ and ‘could use help with organization’ - anecdotal pieces of advice I heard so much, I think the meanings eventually became hollow to me (or maybe the meanings were just hollow to begin with).

Getting me to sit still for 30 minutes was an excruciating feat for any adult in my life, so 2 hours? 3 hours? 6 hours? Good god, I wanted to climb the walls. When the teacher would start talking, I would look past their gaze - into Lala Land as adults disdainfully called it. (I still deeply hate calling it Lala Land, but, for continuity purposes, we’re going to reclaim the name in neon lights.)

Lala Land was great. Real life? Not so much. In real life, from third grade until high school graduation, my teachers (with the exception of 3 gems) were blatantly judgemental of me. They’d think nothing of admonishing me in front of my peers if I fidgeted or looked out a window.

Because the amount of physical energy I had was not conducive to a classroom environment, I learned to dissociate from my body. Because looking out a window meant I was not looking at a chalkboard, I learned to look past the chalkboard to find Lala Land, its neon letters burning behind my absent gaze. Past the letters, there would be a window. I could look out the window and its glass panes could evaporate and autumn’s leafy gusts of wind could sweep me away and I’d never have to worry about a messy desk or a missed assignment or classroom of judgemental eyes looking at me again. The next day’s fantasy would be the same, but different.

Children’s imaginations are often playful and fantastical. Take a kid with a traumatized brain, however - and imagination can give them a seemingly supernatural ability to create, in their mind, what they need for emotional survival. That was me.

There were parts of my childhood that were truly blissful, gorgeous, hilarious and nurturing. But I’d be denying you, dear reader, important context if I didn’t tell you that a significant part of my young formative years was steeped in grief, chaos and abandonment. I assure you need not build castles in the air in understanding that I was a child with a traumatized brain. And though I was surviving, trauma had created a faceless, nameless internal chaos for me that I didn’t truly even recognize until adulthood. Trauma changes the way brains function. That’s a lot for a kid to be dealing with.

In piano lessons, my teacher would sit with me and we would go over the theory of a piece of sheet music - that was my brain’s cue to look past the kaleidoscope paper, nodding “yes, mhm, got it.” But then, when he’d clap the rhythm of the piece, my brain would engage and I’d clap the same rhythm back, no problem. After that, he would play the piece for me as an example - this was where my brain would hyper-focus. I would retain, retain, retain, and I would play the piece back, not reading a note, but looking past the page all the same. This wasn’t a ploy to dupe him. This was a system of which neither of us were consciously aware. I was just 10, and playing piano.

Outside of school, I was different. I was encouraged to sing, I would go to my parents’ choir practices every week and sit in the pews of Saint Mary’s Church and listen to 30 voices reverberate through it. I would shoot the shit with adults and carry around books about Roman mythology and Egyptian hieroglyphs and I would talk about how I wanted to travel the whole world and I would make 1-page comics and I would dress up my dog and I loved the ballet costumes from Stravinsky’s Firebird and… I digress.

Outside of school, I was different. Music calmed my internal landscape enough for me to be myself. No - actually, music calmed my immediate surroundings enough for me to make sense of my internal landscape… Actually, both.

On a borrowed piano, I would sit and endlessly ear out songs (Carmen, movie soundtracks I liked, songs my mom sang, etc). I would walk into my Saturday lesson and proudly showcase the self-taught triumphs of Sunday through Friday for my teacher, only to be met with a brief pat on the back and the god-damn sheet music to 'away in a manger’ - which I still hated and still couldn’t read, but played anyway. After 5 months, I eventually made it clear to all parties involved that I was done with piano, and my parents finally gave into my weekly protests.

When I was 7th grade, I started playing french horn in the school band and, for whatever reason, continued for 6 and a half years. I still saw through a kaleidoscope when I got a piece of music, but there was one other french horn player in my class so I usually copied what she did - Unless we had different parts in which case I fumbled constantly through band practice until I finally figured out what I was playing. Band, generally, had a negative impact on my relationship with music. I think the only reason I stuck with it was because the feeling of playing music with such a large group of people triggered some kind of dopamine rush that my brain loved. I would get ASMR - auto sensory meridian response - also known as “that fuzzy, warm, calm feeling in the centre of your brain” - some folks experience it and some folks don’t.

A lot of changes in my home life happened in that 6-and-a-half-year period. After years of week-on, week-off pivots between my mother and father’s separate homes, my father permanently moved to Sweden when I was 13. My mother became my primary parent while dealing with the loaded blows of bankruptcy and multiple reckonings around her own life challenges. We moved into a home that had completely gutted walls and plywood floors (left unfinished by previous tenants with renovation goals too ambitious to finish). The situation was chaotic. So, so chaotic. But, from that time up to now, my mother was (and continues to be) an incredible support to me. She could see that I was struggling, and did everything in her power to advocate for me when I couldn’t advocate for myself. I can only imagine the feeling of knowing something is not right with your child and being told by everyone around you that your child is fine. Her support was integral.

When I was in 9th grade, she and my homeroom teacher (also a phenomenal support to me at the time) pulled some strings to have an initial psychological assessment performed on me - not technically “official” - as it was conducted by a student of psychology, I recall - nevertheless, it provided enough insight to validate that there was an underlying dissonance between what most of my teachers were saying about me (lazy, bad attitude, etc) and what was actually going on in my head, and that a formal assessment would be necessary to help me. My name was put on the waiting list for a psychologist that year. But, the entire island had only 1 or 2 psychologists available (Totally appalling). And so I waited... And waited... And waited... And while I waited, I continued to find refuge in my visual art practice, as well as learning other instruments on my own terms.

I refuse to say something cliche like “art and music saved my life” because creativity isn’t a sustainable singular lifeline for anyone, and believing so feeds into the highly problematic mental health stigma as it pertains to those who create for a living... But art and music did play key roles in tempering my inner storms. Now, as a musician, I allow my craft to be a teacher, not a therapist.

When I was 16, I went to my first voice lesson. I kept at it for a year, and… excelled? I totally excelled - personally and musically. This did wonders for my confidence (I attribute a lot of that to my voice teacher at the time, who had a really supportive and receptive approach to my weird energy levels and the idiosyncratic ways I learned). I did festivals, took a Royal Conservatory exam - and I was still excelling, which honestly shocked me at the time because I was so used to failing everything.

Oh, also, I could still barely read the music. Kaleidoscopic forever.

Many classically trained musicians describe the experience of being overwhelmed when they get a new piece of music (especially if it has theory components they may not be familiar with or something) - totally normal. But then, they concentrate, deconstruct it from the page section-by-section and eventually learn to play it with neurotypical grace. Deconstructing written music on the page to understand what was happening became a little bit less nauseating as I was exposed to it more. I WORKED at theory and understood parts of it, but only… theoretically. Being able to transcribe that (limited) understanding into playing? That never happened for me. The page would remain kaleidoscopic until it felt like my brain was just going to short-circuit and cave in on itself. It was weird, and trying to describe to anyone in band class (teachers and students alike) made me feel like I was on a different planet. So, when the heat was on (whether that was in performance or in private lessons or “sight singing”) I kept relying on my ears and refined my ability to hold my own in band concerts, private voice lessons, choirs, musical theatre productions.

Meanwhile, in high school, my academic life was still basically the worst. I had adversarial relationships with nearly all of my teachers. I barely passed each year. Emotionally, I also had a lot of anger seething below the surface of my consciousness. I had internalized so much of what so many teachers had told me - that I was smart but lazy, that I had a bad attitude, that I was disruptive, distracted, manipulative etc. - and having gone through some pretty drastic events that effectively destabilized my home life, this all had a profoundly negative impact on my self-worth.

One year later, I was 17, in 12th grade and school issues had not gotten any better (still muddling through - grades between 40% and 60%). I had just given up at this point… Except now, instead of having the teachers before, who were mostly unhelpful, but at least straight-up about being judgemental of me based on my “laziness” diagnosis, I had a haul of teachers that were giving me these new weekly out-in-the-hall John Keating-wannabe-motivational speeches, telling me how much “potential I have” and how “I’m wasting it away” by “not trying” in class (every hollow pull-up-your-socks/nose-to-grindstone idiom in the book. It was infuriating at the time). I’m sure most of them just wanted to help. But I needed someone to listen more than I needed someone to talk at me.

A helpful thing that DID come out of 12th grade (4 years after my name had been put on the list… shoutout to our provincial government for still not caring about investing in public mental health) was that I finally got access to a provincial psychologist. She came during the second semester of grade 12 and did extensive testing on me to find (surprise! but… not really) ADHD - which explained the colossal difficulties I was having in my academic life due to my chaotic brain not letting me get my shit together in the ways I was being told by neurotypical folks around me to get my shit together.

For those that aren’t informed about ADHD - it’s a form of neurodivergence that can manifest in too many ways to name here, but to fit an elephant in a minivan: There’s that part of the brain that naturally helps you regulate your attention/concentration/sleep/energy levels/appetite/feelings/working memory/pretty much anything remotely involving executive functioning… That’s nice, right? I wouldn’t know because apparently mine’s broken. There is also extensive research that directly links ADHD to childhood trauma, as well as biochemical imbalances in the brain.

I could get all in-depth about ADHD science right here, but this is my story, not an essay, and it would make for an even longer and more digressive tangent that would likely overshadow THE OTHER SIGNIFICANT THING the psychologist noted in my evaluation.

Amidst a bunch of my brain skills that were, statistically, above average for my age - like my working vocabulary and ability to retain auditory information - many of my visual processing skills - meaning, things like reading something and copying it down accurately or following written instructions without constantly needing to reference them - were shockingly below average for my age. The tests showed that this was something my brain had immense difficulty doing.

What’s an example of a visual processing issue in school? Well, I was always the last kid to finish copying text from the board (and I mean, like, multiple paragraphs behind my peers) before the teacher could move on to the next page.

What’s an example of a visual processing issue in music? Reading written notes and playing them on an instrument. When I heard a piece of music, however, I could learn it very quickly.

Knowing what was going on in my brain brought me a whole world of clarity and validation. I knew that I was going to lead an unconventional life because of it (whatever “a conventional life” means these days). I knew that most post-secondary education would be inaccessible to me as a result of my grades and probably be, at that point, more harmful than helpful.

Knowing what was going on in my brain helped me to understand what I didn’t need anymore. I didn’t need the validation of my teachers or my peers. I didn’t need a number on any piece of paper to determine my competence or ‘work ethic.’

Letting go of school was the best thing I’ve done for myself.

I graduated high school with nothing but a 64% average, and an ADHD diagnosis as my only tools in understanding how to get on a path to thriving as an adult human. liberating. frustrating. terrifying - but not really. mostly liberating.

Then, my ADHD became manageable and my life got easy and I had no self-esteem issues ever again.

… No. That’s not how life works. I’m 23 years old. I’ve been out of the school system for 6 years. I have deeply instilled productivity guilt (ie. I take on way more tasks than humanly possible to finish in ridiculously tight deadlines), I struggle with anxiety in thinking that friends and coworkers are saying negative things about my personality or quality of work behind my back (maybe my exes and high school math teachers are hanging out?? THE HORROR), my heart sinks into my stomach anytime any human watches me work over my shoulder (I’m a music producer, so if I’m working on songs with people, I become a blundering internal wreck when they understandably want to see what I’m editing). School did those things to me - which leads me into the accountability part of this long-winded ADHD realtalk.

I’d be withholding the truth from you if I didn’t say my teachers played key roles in aggravating my behavioural/emotional/learning difficulties by disputing them as personality flaws. My frustration in learning would be met, at worst, with punishment and put-downs (I remember not having recess for nearly an entire week somewhere in the first half of 4th grade - which I think is a cruel thing to do to any child, let alone one with energy levels like mine). I would be met, at best, with more hollow, invalidating advice - more ‘need to stay on task’ with a twist of ‘gotta give it yer all’ and ‘well, maybe if you actually tried…’

None of these messages sent to me were helpful. I’m still working to unravel those knots.

This is not a dig at those teachers who saw me as the problem child (rather than seeing me as a kid who just needed support and a different work environment. There were about 3 teachers in 10 years who understood that, and did everything in their power to help. They know who they are and I’m grateful for them.) I understand how frustrating it is to be pushed to your limit - especially within the bounds of a job that requires you to keep your shit together in some capacity. I understand that we that we all do our best with the tools we have at the time. There are no hard feelings - But, I encourage self-reflection and future accountability for your impact on the way you treat any child in your life - because they are just that: a child. Your impact can be profoundly helpful or harmful. You will never know what a child is going through until they feel safe enough to tell you. I didn’t feel safe with many adults - which is why most of my relationships with authority were adversarial ones. I’m not offering a solution. I’m just offering a glimpse into my experience. That’s all this is. Take it or leave it.

When a child is told again and again by the daily authoritative figures in their life that they have an attitude problem, that they are disruptive, lazy, manipulative, attention-seeking, a liar, a cheater (the list can go on but I won’t let it) - I guarantee you, the child will eventually believe it. And I did. I deeply internalized these labels to the point of identifying with them. I’m still working hard as an adult to remind myself that while many of my teachers accused me of causing chaos in my learning environment, I was simply (and unknowingly) mirroring my own internal chaos. The chaos I had created around me was a cry for help, not admonishment.

To further the accountability segment of this experience I’m sharing with you, though I can’t offer a solution to “fix” the institution of public education (because institutions generally don’t function unless they’re flawed to begin with), I think a set of solutions may lie somewhere within trauma-informed and neurodivergence-informed teaching and the public school system being provided with the adequate resources to embrace neurodivergent students - to embrace traumatized students, not accommodate them. I think a set of solutions may lie somewhere within mental health being taken seriously (with FUNDING, not lip service) by the Government of Prince Edward Island. That’s all I’ll say for now.

I don’t think my experience is special - far from it. In fact, I know that my experience is not, and never will be one-of-a-kind. I started writing this when I sat in front of a piano and tried to do what my brain would never let me do. I looked past the page and saw this part of my life staring back at me. I’m not even a writer, but I felt like I had to write it down. Looking back, I realize that I didn’t even begin to understand my own story until someone else told me theirs.

So - whether you’re a teacher or a student or both - if you’re struggling in the school system, this is dedicated to you. If you have been turned away and invalidated by those supposed to help you, you need to know that the labels placed upon you only hold as much power over you as you allow. Being pained by what you can’t control doesn’t make you weak, it makes you a survivor. Surviving is hard. Surviving is so hard, but you will begin to heal.

I’m 23 years old. I’m many things. I read music with my ears. I’m mastering the art of looking past what’s in front of me.

- Russell Louder

#adhd #music #neurodivergence

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ssunjupiter · 2 years

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rumandtimes · 3 years

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Halloween Reviews — 2001: A Space Odyssey

Ségolène Sorokina

Assoc. Fiction Editor

A visual tapestry and musical opera, but devoid of interesting characters or a mature story structure.

Heather Downham (as Miss Simmons) in the Opening Scene of Act II in “2001: A Space Odyssey”

This is a film that fits into every director’s, film student’s, and every critic’s education of the film medium. It is a prerequisite on the syllabus of every curriculum for movie makers. 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the most influential works of science-fiction and cinema to come out of the Cold War period, yet it would be entirely wrong to call it a movie. In fact, it is a terrible movie — but it is a remarkable film.

Because every film studies wonk and their mother has an opinion on the film, I will be brief and remain true to the purpose of reviewing it, not lavishing over it. That is to say, I don’t give a flying hoodah what the “deeper meaning” or “wider vision” of 2001: A Space Odyssey is interpreted to be by bandwagon film critics who are too afraid to feel like they’re missing out on the punchline to be honest and objective about the Clarke’s and Kubrick’s failings.

A movie is not meant to be something that has to be discussed afterwards. A movie is not something that requires the viewer to read the book, or take a class to understand. A movie is not something that forces people to sit through 85 minutes of dead air, offering no explanation, and is entirely devoid of any scintilla, any semblance, of a storyline, character arc, or plot.

Containing horror elements, “2001” fits closely enough into the Halloween line-up of reviews, as (#5), if not only because of its inspiration on other horror genre motion pictures.

Quite frankly, 2001: A Space Odyssey is boring as hell. And it is a horrible movie. To give an illustration of how empty the film “2001” is, the original script had about 17,000 words in it. Most of this is description of the sci-fi elements and screen directions. In the end, the film had about 5,000 words of dialogue in it, total. That comes down to about 20 minutes of speech. . . The movie is 139 minutes long.

The film’s defenders are quick to claim that its emptiness and barren quality are an allegory for the emptiness of space. They never seen to stop for a moment however, perhaps in one of the film’s 30-minute long stretches of drawn out ‘alternative’ content, to consider why the film needs such a defence. People do not like it. Quite plainly, it is a bad movie. Defining why it is bad, using words like “allegory,” “metaphor,” and “artistic vision” doesn’t change the fact that it is unwatchable, it just explains how a production crew could look at 5 minutes of black screen in a major motion picture and think to themselves, “The audience will understand why they spent 5 minutes of their life looking at a dead screen. Because it says something about what it means to watch, blah, blah, blah.”

This movie is a film critic’s movie. It gives people plenty to analyse. And it has exceptional cinematography. For a film maker, it’s easy to see why the writers and directors did what they did, and how good it turned out — especially for an audience in the heat of the Cold War-era Space Race, who had quite literally never seen anything like it before. The long, operatic sequences probably mean a great deal to people who were born in the 1950’s and for them 2001: A Space Odyssey was Kubrick putting the last half-century on the silver screen, in colour film, for the first time.

Cinematically, it is exceptional at what it is and what it wants to do. But as a movie — and just a movie — it is quite poor. The entire plot of the film is that all-powerful aliens have been observing life on Earth since before life humanity came into existence, and during the Space Age people discover one of their relics, which leads to the capture of one human being in Jupiter’s orbit, who is killed and reborn as an alien himself. . . That’s it.

What the hell that has to do with the elementary notions of a beginning, middle, and end — a rising conflict, a climax, and a resolution — is anyone’s guess. There is no plot to speak of. Kubrick himself said the picture was more of an exploration of different concepts than a straight forward story. When I watch a film, I’m kind of looking for a storyline; That’s the whole point. A movie is not an art gallery of stills and frames juxtaposed together through editing, it is a cohesive and contained world onto itself: A story.

A movie is a casual experience, not a class requirement or a way to coerce the viewer into writing some kind of thesis. A viewer needs a reason to watch a film, and not because other people watch it or because it’s a cultural phenomenon. In this way, 2001: A Space Odyssey is no different than a trashy boyband, since they both have merits to justify their fame, but only get continued fame and discussion as a previous result of existing acclaim. But that is not enough to idolise a failed film. Reading Stanley Kubrick’s name on the playbill is not enough. Staring at Heather Downham’s ass is not enough.

This film does not deserve to use the title “Odyssey” at all, not more than some cheap gladiator flic would, because the Odyssey had a clear progression of characters, and themes, and resolutions which Homer was capable of creating over a long oracle tradition, and which Clarke and Kubrick fumble to represent on-screen. They should have stuck to long, narrative fiction, because whatever “2001” is trying to be — and even it doesn’t know — this doesn’t work as a movie. The film is polished on the surface, but entirely experimental, and therefore superficial, but above all boring, dull, and dragging on too long.

And nothing in that plot is ground-breaking or new at all. The visuals might be first-of-their-kind on big-budget films, but the ideas of aliens, aliens linked with the Cold War, and computers being evil are old and hackneyed ones. Anyone deluded enough to unwavering call the directors ahead of their time need only to look at the abysmal depiction of women in the film: Pink-wearing, skin-tight, ass-in-the air stewardesses and receptionists, completely subservient to male control and design. Perhaps the film is making a statement that Russian women are liberated and American women are oppressed, yet even the female Soviet scientists do not speak for themselves, but elect the singular male doctor to ask the difficult questions of Floyd instead.

Consider Star Trek, which was released 10 years after 2001: A Space Odyssey, and draws heavily from it, yet Star Trek is also capable of making social commentary. Unfortunately, Star Trek as well, for all its preachings about ascending beyond economic struggles and societal biases, still echoes them. Star Trek shifts the focus from societal bias of the system to implicit bias of the individual, which is a human trait that follows the theme into the future, creating the conflict of the franchise, yet the franchise also has a serious problem with the depiction of women all the way from the Original Series, through the Picard saga, and into the later sequels and spin-offs like Voyager, and current reboots. There’s a major difference between being a liberated woman who still has needs, and being an intergalactic sex toy. Most of my friends are sex-crazed lunatics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t choose to be, and it doesn’t mean they view themselves as second to men or their actions to benefit men generally at all, just as a man chasing several women is hardly doing it for their benefit.

The social commentary is absent in “2001.” The purpose of this might be to make the point by ‘feeling’ rather than telling, but the problem of gently nudging people in a pompous way to feel something instead of sincerely telling them directly is that people will interpret things as they want, and are very resistant to change. If a viewer thinks that lying to Russians because their foreigners is okay to do, then watching Kubrick make a passive aggressive statement about how duplicity can backfire is not going to change their minds — it will only embolden those who disagree with him more, and for those who already agree with him he’s just preaching to the choir. And if someone did take away the wrong message, who’s to say it’s the wrong message anyway, if it’s all “open to interpretation,” ie. an evasion by the writers from making their true feelings known.

And as a small note, the Russian dialogue in the film is horrible. The actors have poor pronunciation, the words they are speaking are incorrect, and the grammatical structure was erroneous. Clarke, Kubrick, and MGM had $10 Million Dollars, and the time to film 30-minutes of people running around in ape suits fighting pig puppets, but they couldn’t do a simple grammar check? They couldn’t cast a single Russian actor?! The four Russians are played by: Leonard Rossiter, French-English, British; Margaret Tyzack, German-English, British; Maya Koumani, Greek-English, British; Krystyna Marr, Polish-German, American.

These tropes were used in different ways, such as not seeing an alien until the very end, and after being pioneered by Kubrick became easy fodder for space movies and the science fiction genre to copy, but don’t actually have any deeper substance. It is a well known fact that Stanley Kubrick did not like the Cold War, so people going into drawn out arguments for why the first 25 minutes of the film was literally thrown away just to make some esoteric statement about how backward and barbaric the Cold War was, are really just gluttons for punishing themselves and inflicting that bias on others.

A fourth (25%) of the runtime of a 2-hour long movie, the first 25 minutes, is completely unwatchable, AND, frustratingly so, it has absolutely nothing to do with the remaining 115 minutes of the film. How in the hell the editors did not cut this garbage out of the movie for its major release debut is incomprehensible. Pulling this kind of raw poor taste is exactly the kind of thing that gives a bad name to ‘artistic freedom.’

The only semblance of a plot is the part everyone thinks about when they think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the deep space voyage with the supercomputer HAL-9000, pronounced initially as “H.-A.-L.-Niner-Zero-Zero-Zero,” then later, obviously just as “Hal Nine Thousand.”

This minor sequence in the movie saves the film, as far as popular culture and the average person are concerned. HAL-9000 is a perfect and incorruptible machine, tasked with guiding the mission to Jupiter, along with a two-man crew, and payload of three cryo-sleep scientists.

Immediately to the audience, it seems like a stupid idea. Why would anyone go to a gas planet like Jupiter? Why would the AI be put in charge of everything? Why is half the crew in hibernation? All these questions added together make a catastrophe inevitable. HAL mentions as much to one of the crew members himself, asking him if he, too, thought the mission was “odd.” It is explained later that the reason for all these difficulties are the result of a specific miscalculation by the American command structure back on Earth.

HAL tells the crew that communications will fail in 72 hours, but he does not know why, and he never gives an explanation for why he knows this in the film. The crew check that nothing is wrong, and phone NASA (or its fictional equivalent), and NASA tells them HAL is malfunctioning. It is possible that NASA is lying to the crew, or it is possible that HAL got something wrong.

Because HAL was designed to be a perfect robot, this possible malfunction worries the crew, who conspire in secrecy to destroy HAL and take control of the ship. HAL, in true machine fashion, wastes no time in shooting one of the crew out into space, and as his crewmate goes to retrieve the body, HAL kills the rest of the crew and locks him out.

At this point, HAL appears to be acting irrationally and emotionally like a human would. After the last surviving crew member kills HAL, he finds out that the reason HAL killed the crew is because he was programmed by the Americans that under no circumstances whatsoever is he to be shut off.

So what appeared to be self-preservation was actually just the mechanical process of fulfilling his commands. What makes HAL a complex character is that his human caretakers take care of and are taken care of by him. HAL is in total control of the ship, but only because the humans told him to be, as the crew waste their days away drawing sketches, and playing chess, and watching videos. The audience is left to wonder if decommissioning HAL is any different from killing a servant who has gotten sick and is therefore no longer of any use.

When HAL discovers the crew’s plot to take over the ship, HAL is aware that the crew want to ensure they make it to Jupiter and fear HAL would get in the way of that. HAL, however, is also aware that the USAA or NASA or whatever wanted HAL to give the crew a secret message about the aliens after reaching Jupiter. HAL is put in a difficult position, because he believes it is important to get the crew to Jupiter to deliver the message to them, but it is also important to keep the message from them and stay in absolute control of the ship until they get there.

HAL at this point has a logic break and malfunctions, killing the crew, and thereby inadvertently destroying the mission he was acting to protect. When Bowman resets HAL’s memory banks, HAL admits to Bowman that he knows he malfunctioned in killing the crew, and tells him that he/it is afraid to die. This leaves the audience to interpret whether HAL is lying to stop himself getting shut off, so he can compete the mission himself with no crew, or if HAL genuinely broke down and malfunctioned when he murdered the hibernating crew members because he was afraid that the crew would destroy him after the found out what he had done.

There is also something to be said about the fact that Bowman risked his life to retrieve Poole’s dead body, but after it becomes an impediment that threatens his own life, he throws it back out into dead space. It is in this moment that Bowman becomes a dead man himself, since HAL has killed everyone else and damaged the ship for human habitation, making a return trip impossible even if HAL is defeated.

HAL is known to lie to the crew, but it could be influenced by self-preservation and dilemmas, causing something called confusion. But then again, HAL is programmed to lie, so to HAL lying would be a form of truth, because it was told that doing the wrong thing was the right thing, for a greater purpose. And yet, again, HAL cruelly murders the crew when he could have left them frozen, even if it was necessary for it to kill Poole and Bowman, which is as much malfunctional as it is emotional.

HAL-9000 is the strong point of the entire movie. But that being said, HAL does not have a character arch, since HAL never changes over the entire course of the film. The crew only learns about HAL’s motives after they kill him, and despite HAL acting irrationally and inexplicably several times, the movie gives a superficial explanation that HAL has human-interface protocols built-in to sound more palatable to users, nullifying the question of HAL’s possible growth.

HAL did everything it did because humans told it to. Not once did HAL contravene the human directive in it’s own interest. The tragedy of the HAL character is a misinterpretation and accident of logical data. Additionally, the single most important point of HAL’s character — that it doesn’t make mistakes — is severely undercut when HAL makes three mistakes: incorrectly predicting the communicator would break when it didn’t, killing the crew thus undermining the mission, and ultimately being unable to stop itself being erased by Bowman. Part of that discrepancy has to come down to poor writing.

The idea of HAL is great writing. HAL is not a human character, and it’s the robot’s distinct lack of humanity that makes it the most human character of the film.

Bowman, Poole, and Floyd are not characters. They believe nothing, they say nothing, they do nothing. The audience feels nothing for them. When HAL threw Poole out of the spaceship, careening into space, I burst out laughing because of how absurd the image of him getting comically, cosmically tossed out of the veritable window was. When Bowman sees this, he doesn’t even react, but robotically and emotionlessly asks HAL what went wrong, and HAL lies to him by telling him it doesn’t have enough information to know.

After the HAL storyline ends, Bowman receives a transmission that reveals to him that HAL was given a message to lock down the crew and control the ship because the U.S. Government wanted to keep the aliens a secret, even from their own crew who ultimately died because of the mistake. The original script has Bowman re-establish contact with America (I say “America” and not “Earth” because the film makes clear that the U.S. is not cooperating with other countries), and NASA sends him the message. That is cut in the final film, with Bowman just discovering the message, either because HAL gave it to Bowman as a final act of protecting the mission, or much more likely that HAL being deleted removed a barrier from accessing the message. This further makes the point of why HAL could not allow the crew to ‘unplug’ it, since guarding the message was HAL’s personal mission.

The HAL chapter is marred with long pauses, like waiting literal minutes for the stupid space popcorn balls to turn around and move back and forth, or watching Bowman stare silently into a screen. Many people like the music, but the music usage is paradoxical. Since space is silent, to use ballads of music is just as much a choice as to use dialogue — music is no more “pure” or “non-human” than speech is — and watching entire scores of music play out of a static backdrop would be interesting at the live orchestra, but this is a stereo recording underplaying a film, so it hardly has the same effect. This is a limit, and choice to pursue that limit, which was weak on the part of the writers. A soundtrack is not supposed to take centre stage; people can buy the CD later, but they want to see the movie now.

The movie makes the decision to skip over the rest of the journey to Jupiter, cut out all the dialogue and character exploration between Bowman and NASA, and jumps right to the end of the movie — a twenty-minute-long session of meaningless strobe lights.

All the storyline and extra HAL content that could have been included, and they made the decision to, again, burn the whole film continuity down as a middle finger to the audience and the producers — to balk conventional ‘expectation.’ It is a horrible choice. The writers said they wanted to create something alien and never imagined before about what a different world would be like. They said they had some difficulty translating the idea: And they decided on rainbow lights and lava lamps. Twenty. Straight. Uninterrupted. Minutes of it.

This is made even more BS that the directors put a title card right in the middle of the HAL sequence, in front of this, called “Intermission.” Is this what audiences were returning for? One unhappy movie-goers said, “People call this movie genius: There are 5 minutes of black screen in the film. No music. No picture. Just an empty frame of dead air. How genius can that be? Is my turned-off television screen also a genius of cinema? Is a blank piece of paper now some artistic statement? The last half hour of the movie is flashing light in people’s faces for 30 minutes, with no dialogue. A complete bore and an insult. One of the most overrated films in history.”

Skipping over about an hour of rubbish in the film, it starts to become compelling. There probably exists a fan edit out there somewhere that recut the film, trimming it down to 45 minutes. The monkey scene — “Dawn of Man” — could be 2 minutes. (As a side point, it shoud be pointed out that humans are not descended from chimpanzees, but that chimpanzees and humans share a common origin, much like whales and elephants do.) The space stewardesses fumbling to walk and carrying lunch trays can go. Floyd’s daughter plays no role whatsoever. Floyd can meet the Soviets, talk about the virus, then give the Moon presentation about the virus being a cover story, and then they go to the alien artifact, and then it cuts to HAL-9000. After HAL dies, there is a 60-second sequence of ‘light gates’ to convey the ship was abducted, and then the screen fades to black. The End. What happens? Who knows. Not much different from the original.

I’ve read some of the commentary on this film, such as by Roger Ebert (or Robert Egert, or whatever his name is) and the always come off as snobs and pricks, even suggesting audiences should requires some minimum score on an entrance exam to see the movie in theatres. That is exactly the problem with 2001: A Space Odyssey, snobbery. The snobbish idea that it means something more when it needs to, and that it doesn’t when it doesn’t need to. There is a reason people find it “annoying. . . confusing. . . infuriating. . . frustrating. . . crazy. . . unwatchable.” These are not people who hate movies or Kubrick, these are the same people who like the HAL story and the Moon voyage parts. But a movie, even about aliens, cannot be alien itself. The movie is supposed to be the viewer’s friend, and guide the viewer through the experience of the alien and the unknown. Alienating the audience is counterproductive in every measure.

Everyone — every single person you ask — calls 2001: A Space Odyssey a work of “art.” Art. Not movie, art. Not entertaining, art. Not good work, but good art. Well, just what the hell is art? I don’t want obstinate art, I want a good film. I’ve seen films that are artistic and compelling. I’ve seen films that are interesting but shallow. A Bruce Lee movie doesn’t have much in the way of plot, but you get to see Bruce Lee do some real-life kung fu and amazing stunts, and it’s still fun. But “2001” more subtle and ‘lava-lampy,’ so much so it is impossible to get lost into the experience without becoming aware of yourself at certain moments and wanting to either turn the show off, or just suffer through it because everyone else seemed to. Film critics might get paid to watch 10 minutes of dead air, but the directors don’t have the right to waste people’s time. At the end of the day, 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t really intellectual at all; Anyone who’s actually interested in learning something or seeing something new would be better off going to the bookshop or a city gallery, this is still just a movie, and no one can claim they are smart for just sitting there and passively consuming a piece of popular media, not even haughty sci-fi fans. There is a difference between watching a science-fiction movie and being a real scientist!

Film snobs and fusty critics who rewatch the damn thing 10-times don’t get to just designate the whole package as good. Maybe the reason such contrarians like the film is just because so many people don’t, and they feel cultured or superior for pretending they’re ‘in on’ the experience. The movie has some high points and innovative structures, but fails as a cohesive unit. It’s a meticulously crafted bomb. Anyone studying the film has to focus on the camera angles, the underlying themes, and the audience reception more than the plot — because there is no plot.

This is a film which, if you like esoteric and avant-garde, you can watch this film and then spend the rest of your time reading the book and the script notes and the celebratory review articles and the academic theses and watching the director and cast interviews, to actually understand what the hell is going on. That is certainly its own kind of experience, but it is not a movie experience. That is to say, it’s not fun.

If you want to watch a good movie, skip over everything except the HAL arch, watch a 3-minute synopsis on what you missed over the other 90 minutes, and then move on with your life doing more important things, or watching better movies. Even Kubrick’s other movies are drawn-out and slow, but at least they have established characters and a point, as well as a clandestine “moral of the story” under the surface. If that seems like to much of a hassle, just give 2001: A Space Odyssey a hard pass; it’s not worth seeing. This is one of those trailblazing films where the innumerable imitators actually picked up the gauntlet, evolved the themes, and did it better.

Overall Score: 2 out of 5

#Review #2001: A Space Odyssey #Film Criticism #Science Fiction #Cinematography

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anniversary-magazine · 3 years

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Fragile Machines — Q&A with Award-Winning Director Derek Johnson

Fragile Machines is an independent art film depicting the story of a married couple and the affairs that make their relationship irreparable. The film walks through a non-linear, gestural narrative - shifting with fluidity between seasons, homes, women's bodies, and water. The movement direction follows a form of contemporary dance with improvisation. Because of this improvisational quality, the film began utterly formless. It was born out of the cast and Derek's discoveries, which evolved over two years. Also central to the work is a muddling of the line between the organic and the inorganic: the question of the extent to which our seemingly-innermost desires—most notably, our longing for human contact—is stilted.

The co-director of Fragile Machines, Derek Johnson, is a New York-based filmmaker focused on creating films with a fresh editorial sensibility within the grey area between still image and feature film. His work spans fashion campaigns, editorials, galleries, and commercial beauty work with clients such as Zaha Hadid, Derek Lam, Pace Gallery, and Jmg. Derek continues to push boundaries within the burgeoning genre of fashion film as the industry moves into a new age of imaging.

We recently took the time to ask Derek about his life as a filmmaker, where he reveals precious and inspiring insights about his creative process. Here is a glimpse of his thoughts.

Nela Riessova: NR Derek Johnson: DJ

NR: Before we dive into your work and career as a filmmaker, could you please put us back in time and tell us more about the actual moment or event that triggered your interest to become a filmmaker?

DJ: I was studying photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York and found myself almost immediately searching for ways to work outside of the curriculum. I was creating 3D landscapes in Maya and VUE and also doing these massive composited works made up of thousands of self-portraits. I think that I was honestly so intimidated by the subject-based photographic work I was consuming in school and didn’t feel I was able to find my own voice within or expand upon the medium. I remember I was very struck by fashion images early on and after being asked to do some behind-the-scenes work for a photographer I interned for, I learned that I could sort of re-contextualize much of what I loved about those pictures into moving image. My first real jobs were with modelling agencies creating these fashion videos of all the girls on their board. I would find ways to composite all the individually shot models into these group scenes. I look back and cringe a bit at them now but at the time it really felt so new and exciting. Those were very early days in fashion film, so everything really did feel fresh.

NR: What does your creative approach to filmmaking look like? Does your creative process follow specific patterns, or is it slightly different for every project?

DJ: My body of reference is quite photographic so things always seem to evolve from still images. In my last film, Fragile Machines, the movement direction stemmed from a form of contemporary dance called contact improvisation—so my direction became very much about finding starting points, restrictions, challenges, and motivations for the movements. I love when I can really trust the talent and I’m just curating a set of elements more so than directing a linear narrative.

NR: A large number of garments used in your films have an architectural shape. How did you come across collaborating on the Spacer film in association with the Zaha Hadid Foundation? What did the creative process look like?

DJ: My friend and collaborator, Peter Do, reached out to me to create the film as a way to show the collection he’d created for "The Extraordinary Process" exhibition with Maison Maison Gallery and the Zaha Hadid Foundation. It was an incredible experience working with Peter and his team. Also, getting to direct Maggie Maurer, who is the most fascinating and elegant model I’ve ever worked with, was very special. Peter’s design talent is indisputable and I think he’s the only designer of his kind in NY.

NR: In your recent work, Fragile Machines, water is the pivotal element that flows through two people's intimacy. What does it represent to you?

DJ: We were drawn to water as this sort of equalizer between our lead actresses, Kari Jensen and SamSam Yung, who have a big height difference and different physical tolerances. We used it as a way to have them dance on the same physical plane and share a more effortless intimacy. But beyond its utility, water very much became a symbol of transformation and fluidity.

NR: When it comes to your fashion films, the choice of garments seems to play a significant role in your work. What do you set in focus when arranging a picture?

DJ: Fashion comes naturally because It’s the world I live in and I am surrounded by so many talented designers. There’s nothing unique I’m doing. The garments just need to be in balance with the rest of the picture—if they overwhelm the action then it becomes absurd for the wrong reasons. Fashion film is already absurd, especially when it’s brave enough to take itself seriously.

NR: A fair amount of scenes in Fragile Machines are composed of contemporary dance moves. Could you elaborate on how you approached the film's direction and narrative

DJ: We were in production for two years to create a six-minute film. In part, this was due to the fact we were funding it by ourselves. But it was also because we were learning what the film was as we went. When we began, we thought we’d shoot the whole thing on a weekend but immediately after that first shoot, we knew the film was so much bigger. The entire thing was a process of discovery from the improvisational movement direction down to the loose narrative we arrived at. It certainly wasn’t efficient and in many ways, it was downright stupid and naive—but it also led to some brilliant moments, the kind you can only capture through that sort of raw, unwritable and unarchitected exploration.

NR: Which books would you recommend reading to understand your values better?

DJ: My mother is a professor of education specializing in children’s literature. She has written about and teaches her students the book, “Baby” by Patricia Maclachlan. I’ve always loved this passage:

They read books, Sophie talking and turning the pages and pointing. Byrd’s voice was smooth, like the velvet of her hat.

“so much depends upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens .”

“That’s William Carlos Williams,” Byrd said to Sophie. “She doesn’t understand,” I said. “She doesn’t need to understand, dear,” said Byrd. “She likes the way the words sound.”

NR: What is next for Derek Johnson?

DJ: I’m not sure, but I’m guessing something along the lines of fame and fortune.

NR: Any film or book recommendations?

DJ: I read, “On Turning Ten” by Bill Collins anytime I’m determined to cry and watch The Anna Nicole Smith Show Christmas Special anytime I’m determined to laugh while crying.

Watch

Fragile Machines

#Derek Johnson #Luke Smithers #New York #Art Film #Director #Featured

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essayoncow224 · 4 years

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garp20-oliviaspencer · 4 years

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Art in Early Childhood: Curriculum Connections

By Jill Englebright Fox, Ph.D., and Stacey Berry, M.Ed.

Art has traditionally been an important part of early childhood programs. Friedrich Froebel, the father of kindergarten, believed that young children should be involved in both making their own art and enjoying the art of others. To Froebel, art activities were important, not because they allowed teachers to recognize children with unusual abilities, but because they encouraged each child's "full and all-sided development" (Froebel, 1826). More than a century later, early childhood teachers are still concerned with the "all-sided" development of each child. Our curriculum includes activities that will help children develop their cognitive, social, and motor abilities. As Froebel recognized, making art and enjoying the art of other people and cultures are very important to the development of the whole child. The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of art in young children's learning and development and to describe elements of an art program within a developmentally appropriate early childhood curriculum.

Art and Socio-Emotional Development

Young children feel a sense of emotional satisfaction when they are involved in making art, whether they are modeling with clay, drawing with crayons, or making a collage from recycled scraps. This satisfaction comes from the control children have over the materials they use and the autonomy they have in the decisions they make (Schirrmacher, 1998; Seefeldt, 1993). Deciding what they will make and what materials they will use may be the first opportunity children have to make independent choices and decisions.

Making art also builds children's self-esteem by giving them opportunities to express what they are thinking and feeling (Klein, 1991; Sautter, 1994). Sautter (1994) stated that when children participate in art activities with classmates, the feedback they give to each other builds self-esteem by helping them learn to accept criticism and praise from others. Small group art activities also help children practice important social skills like taking turns, sharing, and negotiating for materials.

Art and Cognitive Development

For very young children, making art is a sensory exploration activity. They enjoy the feeling of a crayon moving across paper and seeing a blob of colored paint grow larger. Kamii and DeVries (1993) suggested that exploring materials is very important because it is through exploration that children build a knowledge of the objects in the world around them.

Activities centering around making art also require children to make decisions and conduct self-evaluations. Klein (1991) described four decisions that child artists make. First, they decide what they will portray in their art—a person, a tree, a dragon. Second, they choose the media they will use, the arrangement of objects in their work, and the perspective viewers will take. Children decide next how quickly or how slowly they will finish their project, and finally, how they will evaluate their creation. Most often, children evaluate their artwork by thinking about what they like and what other people tell them is pleasing (Feeney & Moravcik, 1987).

As children grow and develop, their art-making activities move beyond exploring with their senses and begin to involve the use of symbols. Children begin to represent real objects, events, and feelings in their artwork. Drawing, in particular, becomes an activity that allows them to symbolize what they know and feel. It is a needed outlet for children whose vocabulary, written or verbal, may be limited (de la Roche, 1996). This early use of symbols in artwork is very important because it provides a foundation for children's later use of words to symbolize objects and actions in formal writing.

Art and Motor Development

While making art, young children develop control of large and small muscle groups (Koster, 1997). The large arm movements required for painting or drawing at an easel or on large paper on the floor build coordination and strength. The smaller movements of fingers, hands, and wrists required to cut with scissors, model clay, or draw or paint on smaller surfaces develop fine motor dexterity and control. With repeated opportunities for practice, young children gain confidence in their use of tools for making art and later for writing.

Making art also helps children develop eye-hand coordination (Koster, 1997). As children decide how to make parts fit together into a whole, where to place objects, and what details to include, they learn to coordinate what they see with the movements of their hands and fingers. This eye-hand coordination is essential for many activities, including forming letters and spacing words in formal writing.

Art Experiences in Classrooms for Young Children

Although art activities help children develop in many areas, teachers must recognize that art also has value in and of itself. Fostering the development of children's aesthetic sense and engaging children in creative experiences should be the objectives of an early childhood art program.

Activities that involve children in both making and enjoying art are essential if programs are to meet the needs of the whole child. The challenge for early childhood teachers is to provide these activities in an art program that is developmentally appropriate and that can be integrated throughout the curriculum. Such a program should include:

using reproductions to expose children to masterpiece art

taking field trips to local museums to provide opportunities for art appreciation

providing access to a classroom art center in which children choose their own topics and media

displaying children's artwork in a classroom gallery

involving families in the art program.

To integrate an art program into a developmentally appropriate curriculum, adults must recognize that children express their ideas through art, just as they do in writing. Creative teachers find ways to support children's learning across the curriculum through activities in which children make art and enjoy the art of others. The following elements form the basis of an art program to be integrated into a developmentally appropriate curriculum for young children.

Using Masterpiece Reproductions

Posters and smaller reproductions of masterpiece art can be purchased at most art museums or through teacher supply catalogs. Less expensive reproductions can be obtained from calendars, stationery, magazines, and newspapers. Teachers can use these reproductions in many ways to support children's learning throughout the classroom and curriculum.

Reproductions may be used on signs to designate learning centers or label parts of the classroom. For example, Jacob Lawrence's Builders #1might be displayed in the woodworking center, or Jean Simeon Chardin's Soap Bubbles could be hung over the water table. Reproductions could be used to indicate gender on the restroom door or where children line up to go outside. Reproductions could also be used on bulletin boards to accompany displays related to thematic units. The work of Piet Mondrian might be used to illustrate a focus on primary colors or shapes, that of Claude Monet might accompany a unit on spring, while the works of Maurice Utrillo might go with a study of communities. Masterpiece art would not, in either learning centers or group discussions, replace the use of real objects or photographs as visual aids, but would provide children with another way of seeing and thinking about the concepts they are learning. Reproductions help children to make the connection "between reality and art—someone's interpretation of reality" (Dighe, Calomiris, & Van Zutphen, 1998, p. 5).

Museum Field Trips

Taking young children to an art museum can be a challenging experience for any adult. Museums are designed for grown-ups who engage in thoughtful reflection, not for active children who want to point and exclaim. With a little preparation, however, a museum field trip can be an enjoyable experience for all.

Many museums schedule special times for children's tours and family visits. During these times, the museum staff and other patrons expect children to visit, and special tours and support personnel will be available. If the children will not be participating in a tour planned specifically for them, it is important that the teacher select a few key items on which to focus during the visit. Artwork done by artists featured in the classroom or portraying objects related to thematic units will be of interest to the children. They will have a context for thinking about and discussing what they see. Because the attention span of young children is short, museum field trips should not be lengthy. Thirty minutes is probably long enough for children to view the pieces pre-selected by the teacher without getting tired or frustrated in the museum setting. Other exhibits can be saved for future field trips.

Classroom Art Center

The art center should provide opportunities for child-centered activities. Although teachers might suggest themes, too much direction or assistance interferes with the creative process. Adult models for children to follow are also frustrating because most children do not have the fine motor and visual perceptual skills to replicate adult efforts. Instead, teachers can encourage children to design and complete their own projects by recognizing that the same themes may be repeated many times as children explore ideas and practice skills.

Open-ended materials such as paint, crayons, markers, scissors, glue, clay, and assorted paper support child-centered activities. Although having too many choices can be overwhelming for young children, making a selection from two or three options at a time is an excellent way for children to practice decision-making. Lowenfeld and Brittain (1975) also "cautioned" teachers not to change materials or introduce new materials into the center too often. Children need time to practice and develop skills with materials if they are to use them to express their ideas and feelings.

Finally, it should be noted that the creative process takes time. Although some children will complete their artwork within a short time, others will need large blocks of time to design and make their projects. The design of the art center and the class schedule should encourage children to return to a project and work until they decide it is completed (Edwards & Nabors, 1993).

Displaying Children's Art in a Classroom Gallery

A classroom gallery exhibiting children's art highlights the work for the children themselves and for classroom visitors. A large bulletin board or wall space provides a backdrop for the gallery. Children should take the responsibility for mounting their work and selecting its placement in the gallery. Labels, including a title for the work, name of the artist, medium, and year of creation, can be dictated and will provide a meaningful experience with print. Children can also serve as curators and lecturers, giving tours of the gallery to classroom visitors.

Involving Families in the Art Program

Keeping families involved in the life of the classroom is an important responsibility for early childhood teachers. Sharing with families the role of art in the curriculum and the activities in which their children are participating will encourage their support of the program and of their children's learning. Family involvement can be encouraged in several ways. Inviting families to participate in museum field trips and classroom art activities provides the opportunity for shared experiences and discussion between children and their parents.

Teachers may also suggest at-home art projects for children and parents to participate in together. These projects should always be optional and teachers should provide any special materials that might be needed in a packet which includes explanations and directions for the project. Brand (1996) suggested linking art projects with book themes as a way of encouraging parents with differing skill levels to feel comfortable in working with their children at home. For example, after reading Lucy's Picture(1995) by Nicola Moon, children and parents might work together to create a collage depicting activities they would like to participate in together from materials found at home and/or supplied by the teacher.

"Artists' knapsacks" for children's use at home are another way to involve families in classroom art activities. Four to five knapsacks, each featuring one medium such as paint and paper or modeling clay, can be available for children to check out and share with their families. Although the general purpose of the knapsacks should be shared with parents, specific directions for each knapsack need not be provided. The goal of the knapsacks is to encourage the same creative use of materials at home as in the classroom.

Conclusion

Through the art activities described in this article, young children will develop abilities and skills that have application in many other areas of the curriculum. Most importantly, however, children will also develop an appreciation for the art of other people and cultures, and the confidence to express their own thoughts and feelings through art. Far from creating individual prodigies, this integration of making and enjoying art in the early childhood classroom will result in the "all-sided development" of the children participating.

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yahan105 · 5 years

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Evaluation

It is believed that people who often visit museums and galleries have experienced the situation of children shouting and running in the open and quiet spaces. Weiner (2004) noted that Children under ten years of age experience art in a physical way; they are loud, run in the open spaces, and are curious and interactive. This means that for children, it may be their unique way of participating and experiencing. Most of the user experience that traditional museums and galleries bring to children is lack of interest and interaction. Bennett (1995) considered one of the effective elements of the bad experience of visiting museums for the schoolchildren is that children were a conundrum for early art museums because they were often too young or ‘untutored’ to engage effectively with their pedagogical aims and technologies (of labels and guides).

Today, children's use of mobile App is becoming more and more common. In China, many primary and secondary school courses are required children to participate through mobile App. Some children's proficiency and learning speed for mobile applications often exceeds the middle-aged and older people in a family. Kaye (2017) argued: “Therefore, children's scientific and technological experience will have a significant impact on their future life.” And Augmented reality technology, because of its strong interactive characteristics, has the potential to be widely used in children's life and learning in the future.

A definition given by Ding (2017) of how Augmented Reality effect museum experience is that AR is a mobile technology that is receiving increasing attention from museum professionals, researchers, and educators because of its capacity to increase engagement and add value to the learning experience. Museums facilitate schoolchildren’s experiential learning, and when combined with Augmented Reality (AR) applications, schoolchildren can beneﬁt from interactive, engaging learning experiences. Considering the increased importance of learning as part of the museum experience, how AR can be used in order to create novel, interactive and highly motivational learning environments.

As a designer, I need to think about how to use new digital technology to enhance the experience of the art gallery or exhibition in such an era background. The children as the generation grew up in the digital age which are the group of most sensitive and closely connected to technology is chosen for my target audience.

I define the target audience and potential users of my mobile apps as school children, probably aged between 6 and 14. They are a large number of people who need to learn in museums, galleries and other places. And art education is indispensable for them. Children routinely visit art museums as part of their educational experience and family time. Museums are ideal environments for facilitating children’s experiential learning. Morentin and Guisasola (2015) noted that Museum ﬁeld trips are consistently integrated into many primary schools’ curriculum because they are considered a powerful learning resource given their recreational and educational potential.

The traditional museum experience is too boring and dull for children of this age range.

Because children of this age are generally active and curious about things, it is difficult for them to receive knowledge calmly and attentively by quiet content. I began to think about how interaction and guidance can make schoolchildren more focused to complete the whole tour.

I added 4 highlights in my App, which are:

01 Colorful interface display: Simple UX guide design, as well as cute UI design which to make the users learn with more fun.

02 AR Narrator: When the user scanning the artworks or exhibits, there will be AR narrator which is a cute 3D avatar to make children feel more interested to better understand artworks. (Optional avatars make users feel more ineractive)

03 Dialog box form: The text narrative is divided into dialogue forms. Make reading easier and smoother

04 Reward system: After browsing the content of an artwork, user will get a small reward in the App, which make users more interested in reading content.

However, after Alpha testing and some feedback from 2 schoolchildren, I also see that my works are full of inadequacies.

Firstly, the design of the characters used as a narrator is too simple, and there is not enough background and story to make it have personality characteristics. The number of characters is enough to have a choice, but still can be more. In the future, the design of characters and the of animation of the characters can be further improved to make them more vivid and lovely.

Secondly, there are only six of the artworks can be successfully recognized and applied by the App. Some school children think that it is better a certain range of works in the exhibition hall could be applied to this App, in order to have a more exploratory sense like a game. There are two reason that I didn’t achieve that: One is the image recognition method of Vuforia could not be well applied to paintings. Another is I was unable to go to the exhibition hall because of the accident, which made it difficult to collect and test the images of artworks.

Another thing sometimes is it can’t be smoothly recognized because the problem of the Vuforia platform itself. There is a way to avoid the recognizing problem which is : When testing, please don't focus to the image directly when open the camera. If recognize fail, please move the camera to focus on other things or block the camera then open the camera and move the focus on the image again.

In the future, I will further improve this work if I have the opportunity. Research on other recognition methods and try to add the three-dimensional recognition of sculpture and other works. Further adding map function makes the whole tour experience more perfect.

Third, the reward system in my application is incomplete. My original idea was to randomly provide different rewards and accumulate them. Cumulative to a certain number of the rewards, there are animations can be generated accordingly. However, due to the urgency of time and lack of technology, it was not achieved in the end. Now the reward system seems too simple and monotonous.

In the future, if there are opportunities, I will further improve my work. The Museum and gallery experience of schoolchildren will be further improved. Maybe I can work with artists, galleries and schools. To further improve the experience of schoolchildren using digital technology (AR, VR and others) for learning and in life. Enlarge as much as possible the interactivity, fun and the corresponding positive effects brought about by digital technology.

Reference & Bibliography:

Bennett, T. (1995) The Birth of the Museu. London: Routledge.

Ding, M. (2017). ‘AugmentedRealityinMuseums.’ ArtsManagement and Technology Laboratory.

KAYE, L. (2016, 2017). Young children in a digital age: supporting learning and development with technology in early years. London: Routledge.

Loïc, T. and Kevin, W. (2008). Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media. Culture-AltaMira Press.

Lynn, D. (1989). ‘The Family Museum Experience: Implications from Research.’ Journal of Museum Education. 14 (2).

Moorhouse, N., tom Dieck, M.C. & Jung, T. (2019). ‘An experiential view to children learning in museums with Augmented Reality’. Museum Management and Curatorship.

Morentin, M., and J. Guisasola. (2015). ‘The Role of Science Museum Field Trips in the Primary Teacher Preparation.’ International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education 13 (5).

Moorhouse, N., tom Dieck, M.C. & Jung, T. (2019). ‘An experiential view to children learning in museums with Augmented Reality’. Museum Management and Curatorship.

Lai, C. H., J. C. Yang, C. F. Chen, C. W. Ho, W. T. Chan, and J. S. Liang. (2009). ‘Mobile Technology Supported Experiential Learning.’ International Journal of Instructional Media 36 (1).

Lee, H., M. Billinghurst, and W. Woo. (2011). ‘Two-handed Tangible Interaction Techniques for Composing Augmented Blocks.’ Virtual Reality 15 (2).

Piscitelli, D., and D. Anderson. 2001. ‘Young Children’s Perspectives of Museum Settings and Experiences.’ Museum Management and Curatorship 19 (3).

Sungkur, R.K., A. Panchoo and N.K. Bhoyroo. (2016). ‘Augmented Reality, the Future of Contextual Mobile Learning.’ Interactive Technology and Smart Education, 13(2).

Weiner, K. (2004) ‘Empowering Young Children In Art Museums: letting them take the lead’. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. 5 (1) 106-116.

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labourpress · 7 years

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Jeremy Corbyn speech to the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) conference

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour Party, speech to the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) conference:

Thank you for inviting me here today to your annual conference in the year of your union’s 120th anniversary.

I want to pay tribute to Russell Hobby, your General Secretary: a great advocate for head teachers who has overseen you joining the TUC, working with other teachers’ and education unions.

I also want to pay tribute to the next Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, who is a tireless campaigner and passionate advocate for your profession and for children.

It is a great honour to address you, leaders of one of the most important professions in our society, those who look after the education, the wellbeing, and the future of our children.

That is why Labour is making our children’s education one of the cornerstones of our General Election campaign.

The choice in this election could not be clearer – and it’s not the re-run of the EU referendum that the Prime Minister wants it to be.

Britain needs a government for the many not the few – one that’s ready to invest in our economy and public services. But the Conservatives have demonstrated that cannot be them, preferring to give the richest and largest corporations tax hand-outs worth tens of billions.

The NHS and social care have been pushed into a state of emergency. Housebuilding has fallen to its lowest peacetime rate since the 1920s. Schools across the country face real terms cuts in funding per pupil, and class sizes are rising – while those young people who want to go to university face huge debts.

There is no greater responsibility than ensuring our children get the education that they deserve. I know this, you know this, parents up and down this country know this. But it is clear that this Conservative Government has its focus elsewhere.

The NAHT has correctly pointed out that this election is make or break time for our children’s education system.

As all of you will know, the National Audit Office confirms that schools are facing a cut of three billion pounds in real terms by 2020, the first real terms cut in education budgets in a generation.

This is an absolutely staggering figure and shows the need for a complete change of direction in how the government of this country treats our schools.

And we have to ask ourselves: is this how we want to treat the education system of our children? Is this how Britain’s children deserve to be treated?

Do our children deserve to be held back by a chronic shortage of teachers?

Do our children deserve to crammed into schools like sardines?

Do our children deserve to be taught by teachers whose morale is at an all-time low?

Not by any fault of the teachers, they are the people who also bear the burden of government cuts, but the fault of governments who fail to recognise the importance of investing in the lives of children, and those who teach and support them, up and down this country.

That is why we must value teachers, because if we don’t we lose them. And you know better than anyone there is a recruitment crisis and that crisis will be made even worse if we don’t secure the rights of EU nationals.

Last year 5,000 teachers from EU countries qualified to teach here and there are thousands more working to teach our children. So that’s why, as Keir Starmer set out this week, a Labour government will guarantee the rights of EU nationals living here.

And if we lose teachers, we lose subjects, we narrow the horizons of young people. So that’s why I passionately believe in an Arts Pupil Premium so that every primary school child will benefit from a £160 million cash boost to help pupils learn to play instruments, learn drama and dance and have “regular access” to theatres, galleries or museums in their local areas.

And yet, while all this is happening, while funding to our children’s education is cut, multinational corporations have received multi-billion pound tax giveaways

How can it be right that money is being siphoned straight out of our children’s schools and directly into the pockets of the super-rich?

We have to be clear, once and for all, that enough is enough.

Throughout this General Election campaign, we will be making absolutely clear our commitment to build a country for the many, and not just the few.

A vital part of that will be creating an education system that provides for every child regardless of their background, or their parents’ income.

Labour will introduce a National Education Service, ensuring excellent learning opportunities for all from early years to adult education.

What we need now - and what you as teaching professionals need now - are concrete answers and concrete solutions to the problems that our education system is facing.

That is why Labour has set out a plan to help give every young person the best start in life possible, by introducing universal free school meals for pupils at primary schools. It’s a policy that is fully costed, and will be paid for by introducing VAT on private school fees.

There are clear educational benefits to providing universal free school meals. It boosts the attainment and level of education of our children. We know that these early formative years are the most important in a child’s education and we have a duty to provide for our children the best we possibly can throughout that period.

It’s a policy that demonstrates how a Labour government would care for the many, and not just the few.

We will ensure that every single child receives a healthy and nutritious meal which will not only boost children’s productivity in the classroom but also helps to ensure their personal wellbeing, no matter what their background.

Children eating together is a great start in life.

So not only will the policy help children throughout their time in education, it will also help teachers who will see the benefits of improved concentration and improved attainment in the classroom.

And it will help parents who will not only save money but will have the peace of mind in knowing that their child is getting a healthy school meal during the day

Investing in the health of our nation's children, is investing in our nation’s future.

If we are to truly place value on our children’s education, we must also place value on the teachers, head teachers and other school staff who deliver that education.

We must put an end to the continual attacks on the teaching profession, end the downward pressure on pay and conditions, the constant undermining of morale and the erosion of standards that means we have more unqualified teachers than ever in our classrooms.

That’s why, as part of the comprehensive programme Labour has set out today to strengthen rights at work and end the race to the bottom in the jobs market, we have confirmed a Labour government will lift the cap on public sector pay.

It cannot be right that those who provide our vital public services have their pay squeezed year after year. Britain’s public service employees deserve a pay rise.

And we must give the teaching profession the recognition it deserves, not only in terms of pay, but also in terms of status in our society.

We need to listen to you, the teaching professionals, on how you believe schools can be improved and respect the huge wealth of talent and knowledge that lies in the teaching profession as a whole.

I have always believed that the people who know how to a job best are those who do it day in day out. We must start listening to parents, teachers and head teachers: you are the people who know how schools should be run and you are the people who best understand the needs of our children.

That is why Labour has taken our lead from the NAHT - and from the other teachers’ unions - when we set out in no uncertain terms our opposition to the expansion of grammar schools in this country.

Not only does the mass introduction of segregation in our education system not help the overwhelming majority of this country’s children, it also returns us to what are frankly Victorian notions of education based on a narrow curriculum.

The task is clear: we must build an education system that suits the needs of our children and the opportunities they will have in the jobs market of tomorrow.

And if we are to build an economy worthy of the 21st century, we need a schools system that looks forwards, and not backwards to the failed models of the past.

We must recognise that every single child in this country has talents and every single child deserves the chance to flourish and thrive to their maximum potential in whichever field suits them best.

But our children’s schools do not exist in a vacuum. I am always in awe of the local head teachers I work with. Like thousands of children, I have learned so much from them.

And what I admire most is their commitment – not just to managing their schools and to educating our children - but the multi-faceted demands of the children in their community: their housing issues, immigration problems, their mental health. You are the heart of your communities.

You are part of a wider care system and you need the other parts of that system to work effectively alongside you, youth services, the NHS and social care.

Support for schools by these services is essential to promote pupil wellbeing. The duty to directly address pupils’ mental health needs ultimately rests with the social and care services.

No school should be asked to fund health and social care services from the school budget. That is why Labour has pledged to address the chronic underfunding for social care and the NHS.

As you all know schools are most effective as places of learning when they work together with high quality social care and health services to meet the needs of all students but especially those who are most vulnerable.

One in ten children and young people in this country suffer from a mental health condition and 75 percent of adult mental health problems are found to begin before the age of 18.

We must prioritise the mental wellbeing of our children. This is the least they deserve.

It is vital that we enable early intervention and provide support when problems first emerge but to do this we must build an education system that integrates social and health care.

Improving the way our society deals with mental health is a particular concern of mine because I am passionate to see opportunities for all.

That’s why I have been so impressed by the work so many of you do for children with special needs and how good special needs co-ordinators can liberate children from what has sometimes been a lifetime of exclusion.

That focus on the individual child is what drives our determination to reduce class sizes. We know that half a million children have been landed in super-size classes of 31 pupils or more.

This government is failing on education on its own terms. The Prime Minister herself has said that super-sized classes are proof of a school system in crisis. So then why is it allowed to continue?

Why are our children’s schools, not getting the funding that they deserve? This is a choice. And it is the wrong choice. The cut to schools funding is also a breach of their manifesto the Conservatives’ pledge to protect schools funding.

Labour will ensure schools have the resources they need.

I’m afraid I can’t give you a sneak preview of the full Labour manifesto today but be assured if it’s a choice between a tax giveaway to the largest corporations paying the lowest rates of tax in the developed world or funding for our schools. Labour will make very different choices from the Conservatives.

We have already started to set some of that out not just our free schools meals policy.

And our commitment to reintroduce the Educational Maintenance Allowance for college students from lower incomes.

We are also committed to restoring maintenance grants for university students so that no one is held back from realising their ambitions and so that every schoolchild knows that the options of further and higher Education are available to them.

We must not be ashamed to value education, for education’s own sake.

Schools should exist to get the very best from our children, to give them the best start in life, to enable them to succeed in whichever walk of life they chose.

Whereas Theresa May’s government has repeatedly cut resources and staffing we will invest in our children’s futures because they deserve nothing less.

The excuses from the government come thick and fast. They’ve blamed teachers for not working hard enough, they’ve diverted funds to their vanity projects. £138.5 million wasted on schools that have closed, partially closed or never opened in the first place.

We will not bring back a system that blamed children and parents for not passing the eleven plus and getting into a grammar school.

They blame everybody else, to divert attention from their own damaging failures. They need head teachers to tell them, own up, take responsibility and say sorry.

Labour will give schools the funding that our children deserve, the funding that teachers and headteachers deserve and the investment that our country and our economy deserves.

This election can be the chance for a fresh start, with a Labour government that will invest to create shared prosperity, protect our public services and build a fairer Britain.

A Labour government will work with you, we will give schools the funding the need and we will ensure you and your staff get the respect and resources you need.

We have a duty to our children and we will meet it.

Thank you.

7 notes · View notes

nelgbtc · 7 years

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Please fill out this form to register for WORKSHOPS

There is a visual aid in this post to help you plan your workshops accordingly.

To view the NELGBT conference booklet and Saturday workshop breakdown for 2018 please click here.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Paul Robeson Campus Center Essex Room 231

350 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Newark, NJ 07102

1:30 PM - 4:00 PM: Health Fair/HIV Testing

We will be offering a small health fair for our attendees with some of our Newark Community Members, as well as free HIV testing through a community partner.

3:00 PM: Registration Opens

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM: “Mirror, Mirror” Gallery Exhibition Tours (Hahnes Express Newark Gallery)

After you register at our registration table and drop off your luggage in our convenient, staff-attended luggage room, you will have the opportunity to visit the newest building in the Rutgers University-Newark campus, the Hahne's Building. A guide will take you to Halsey Street to walk through our Rutgers-Newark gallery exhibition of Mirror, Mirror. From their website:

"Mirror Mirror" plumbs the relationship between identity, cultural norms, and representation. In the most abbreviated of forms, a portrait is a depiction of a person, usually a face, occasionally a torso, sometimes more of the body, or even a symbolic representation of an aspect of an individual’s character. The artists in the show have approached the subject of portraiture in a multitude of ways. Historically, portraiture was utilized in service of the ruling classes, and some of the works in the exhibition explore the machinations of the powerful, touching upon the fraught histories of colonialism, slavery, American inference abroad, and eugenic practices. Photography is presented in both documentary modes and as a means to deconstruct representations of femininity, adolescence, and motherhood. Other artists work in non-traditional media, exploring the portrait painted by our data and bacteria, and radical possibilities of self-invention through new virtual and bio technologies. Taken as a whole, the works in Mirror Mirror communicate the connected nature of representation and self-determination (http://artgallery.newark.rutgers.edu/exhibitions/mirror-mirror-2/).

5:30 PM: Dinner

5:30 PM: Rhythm in our Narratives with Keynote Speaker Carla Christopher

Poet-Activist, Carla Christopher, is a former Poet Laureate of York, Pennsylvania (2011 – 2013) and was the 2014 Arts and Cultural Community Liaison for the City of York. A veteran of social service, Carla studied psychology, education, and creative writing at Columbia University in the City of New York and spent years as an educator and case manager in domestic violence shelters, state prison systems, and school districts before connecting her belief in the power of the written and spoken word with her passion for activism.

Carla has twice received the key to the city for her community empowerment and education initiatives, which range from founding Equality Fest, a multi-thousand attendee festival in celebration of LGBTQA Marriage Equality, to creating a retailer cultural competency training model for urban renewal business districts. She has been the force behind regional campaigns and activism training curriculum for groups like Food and Water Watch, Put People First - PA, the Y.W.C.A. of York County and several political campaigns. She has designed diversity programming for multiple school districts, businesses, and libraries, and has been a keynote speaker, featured performer and workshop facilitator for dozens of organizations, nonprofits, and educational institutions around the globe, from Rutgers, Penn State, and Northern Arizona University to organizations in Kosovo, Albania, Flint, Chicago, Baltimore, Phoenix and Philadelphia in the last few years alone.

Carla is currently the co-director of Community Arts Ink Press & Promotion, host of the cultural showcase, Culture & Main, on WRCT, and is widely published, including three collections of poetry, Song (Columbia University Press, 2000), Baby, Read Me Something with Rhythm (PoemSugar Press, 2011), Strength (New York Quarterly Press, 2018) and a poetic memoir, Fruit of the Darkest Tree (Community Arts Ink, 2017). She also currently performs with the Poetry/Funk Fusion Band, Groove Ink, and released the EP Of Water Born with the ensemble Poetic Voices in 2015, and the full-length recorded collection, Poetry from the Ashes with Soul Thief Collective in 2017. She is currently pursuing her Masters of Divinity at United Lutheran Seminary - Gettysburg.

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM: An evening of Narratives

We will break into smaller groups to do some introductory narrative work. These workshops will be facilitated by Rutgers-University Newark staff and students using a Social Justice model.

8:30 PM - 11:00 PM: Speed Networking/No Talent, Talent Show (NJIT Campus Center - 150 Bleeker Street Newark, NJ 07102)

Bring your best foot to put forward and your talent to put on display in our Speed Networking and Talent Show! Showcasing the pub at NJIT, our committee partner, we are excited to offer you a space to make new friends and show everyone how uniquely talented you are! You can do the Speed Networking without participating in the Talent Show, so don’t worry! Whether you choose to perform or not, still come out, make new friends and enjoy the show!

Saturday, April 7, 2018

15 Washington Street, Great Hall Newark, NJ 07102

8:00 AM : Breakfast

Breakfast is served at our wonderfully grand building at 15 Washington, Newark, NJ. Join us for our early morning coffee and pastries in the Great Hall at 15 Washington, a historic building in Newark and on the Rutgers-Newark campus.

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Morning Workshop - Sessions I (Various Locations)

We start our workshops, with an amazing selection of 13 different workshops facilitated by students and community members. Everyone will have a chance to attend their workshop of choice; but, due to space limitations and wanting to provide an intimate space, those that register will have first dibs on seats to all of our workshops.

To register for workshops please click here.

12:05 PM - 1:30 PM: Lunch and Panel: An afternoon of Intersectional Activism

Lunch and Panel. Location: 15 Washington, Great Hall

Our panel and moderator will include Dr. Dr. Bil Leipold, Dr. Shana Russell, Amir Ashour, an LGBTQ Activist from Iran and Ziva Gorani. Their bios are as follows:

Moderator: Dr. Bil Leipold

Dr. Bil Leipold, Dr. Bil, is currently the Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Services & Experience at Rutgers University-Newark. Prior to this, he served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Human Resources and the Associate Dean of Academic Programs & Students Services for the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark. Dr. Bil had the opportunity to serve as the Human Resources Integration Lead during the historic merger with legacy University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. With more than 25 years of experience in higher education, Dr. Bil has had the opportunity to work in multiple areas that range from housing and residence life, human resources, athletics and academic affairs. Dr. Bil has won numerous awards that range from Campus Activities Magazine’s Diversity Artist of the Year in 2006; outstanding new professional from ACPA; and Rutgers University’s Norman Samuels Award for outstanding service to students. As a consultant and trainer, Bil has had the privilege to speak at hundreds of universities in 48 of the states. He speaks on issues related to leadership development, social justice, homophobia and bullying. His research has focused on social justice, marginalized sexual orientations and identities, and higher education leadership. Dr. Bil attended Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Norwich University and St. John Fisher College..

Panelist: Dr. Shana A. Russell

Dr. Shana A. Russell received her Ph.D. in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Both her scholarly research and her organizing work are grounded by history and literature, past and present, to construct narratives of resistance among black women workers. Her current manuscript in progress, tentatively titled "Richard Wright's Native Daughters," explores fictional representations of working-class black women in the work of Richard Wright. As an educator, she resurrects the voices of ordinary people to tell local stories with global significance. This lies at the center of her current work as the Program Manager for the States of Incarceration initiative at the Humanities Action Lab.

Panelist: Amir Ashour

Amir Ashour is an international speaker and founder of the organization IraQueer. IraQueer is a registered human rights organization focusing on the LGBT+ community in Iraq/Kurdistan region. He founded the organization on March 2015 making it the first and only LGBT+ focusing on the LGBT+ community in Iraq/Kurdistan region. Ashour has cultivated a diverse team of young activists between the age of 18 - 32 residing mostly inside the Iraq/Kurdistan region, whose focus is on advancing IraQueer’s mission to advocate and represent the first queer movement in Iraq's public history. For more information about IraQueer please visit https://www.iraqueer.org/.

Panelist: Ziva Gorani

Ziva Gorani is a Kurdish Syrian pansexual Trans woman. Ziva moved to Canada in 2016 from Syria via Turkey. Working in the humanitarian sector in Turkey and Syria, Ziva developed an activist voice when she began speaking about her experience as a queer Trans woman displaced by war and religious intolerance. Ziva works in the region of Peel to increase visibility and inclusion of LGBTQ+ communities through community development and interventions to improve well-being.

1:30 PM - 4:30 PM: Afternoon Workshop- Sessions II (Various Locations)

4:30 PM - 5:30 PM: Caucuses

4:30 PM - 5:30 PM: Sober/Recovery Meeting (15 Washington Street 2nd Floor)

This meeting space is not affiliated with a specific 12 step program but is open to all attendees who participate in any of the 12 Step programs and/or are seeking support on their journey to sobriety/recovery during the NELGBT Conference. The focus of this meeting will include sharing our narratives in a confidential environment, positive reflection on our progress, and seeking support through shared resources.

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM: GaySL (15 Washington Street 2nd Floor)

Back by popular demand, Hayden Kristal will offer an encore presentation of their very popular GaySL workshop. Seating is limited to 75, so you must sign up for this workshop.

Please click here to register for this workshop.

8:00 PM - 10:45 PM: Screening of “Saturday Church.” (15 Washington Street 2nd Floor)

SATURDAY CHURCH tells the story of 14-year-old Ulysses, a shy and effeminate boy, who finds himself coping with new responsibilities as "man of the house" after the death of his father. Living alongside his mother, younger brother, and conservative aunt, Ulysses is also struggling with questions about his gender identity. He finds an escape by creating a world of fantasy filled with dance and music. Ulysses' journey takes a turn for the better when he encounters a vibrant transgender community, who take him to "Saturday Church," a program for LGBTQ youth. Ulysses manages to keep his two worlds apart; appeasing his aunt and discovering his passion for the NYC ball scene, and voguing, until his double life is revealed. Ulysses must find the courage to be who he truly is, all while risking losing those he cares about most.

8:00 PM - 10:45 PM: Express Yourself Dance!

Put on your best party clothes and come out to Express Yourself! Dance to the sounds of our own RU-Newark DJ from our local radio station WRNU as we dance, laugh and have a great time on Saturday night. We will also have a photographer there so that you can capture the memories of the night!

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Paul Robeson Campus Center Essex Room 231

350 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Newark, NJ 07102

8:00 AM : Breakfast

9:00 AM - 11:00 AM: Final Breakout Sessions - Session III (Various Locations)

For these breakout sessions, we will come together to hold planning sessions where, as a group, you can address an issue that is facing your campus or broader community and work together to create an action plan to bring social justice to your own communities.

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM: Closing Plenary

To view the NELGBT conference booklet and Saturday workshop breakdown for 2018 please click here.

Come and join us for the final word on the 2018 Northeast LGBT Conference!

3 notes · View notes

templified · 5 years

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Content Marketing WordPress Themes | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/content-marketing-wordpress-themes/

Content Marketing WordPress Themes

Welcome to the best WordPress content marketing themes around. Searching for a great looking, powerful, modern and feature filled WordPress theme to help you reach a wider audience than ever before? Well, we’ve got a great collection for you to peruse. These themes are the best of the best, each one perfectly optimized to help you maximize your profits from blogging and creating content. This collection of content marketing themes is going to be the biggest and best on the internet, so stay tuned as we keep adding more and more great themes.

DizzyMag

DizzyMag is a beautiful, well designed Adsense optimised theme that helps you turn your blog or magazine into a full fledged business, since Adsense is the leading way for bloggers to make money from click-through ads. This well crafted, modern and powerful Adsense ready WordPress template offers the very best in customization options, with a stunning design that’s easy to navigate and simple to change to fit your style. If you’ve been searching high and low for a brand spanking new Adsense WordPress template, made specifically for presenting your content, images, or design work in the best possible light, the large array of high quality designs makes WordPress a great and popular option. DizzyMag is no exception. Although you will find quite a few high-quality, premium portfolio or gallery themes readily available for WordPress, this one is simply one of the best. Recently there has been a big surge in the amount of responsive portfolio themes that have the Adsense ready features you require and it’s easy to understand why. Adsense is a great way to monetize your content. If you would like visitors to have the ability to conveniently see your portfolio site on a cell phone or even tablet.

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Simple Life

This awesome AdSense WordPress magazine and blog theme may be used for almost any type of blog site you need and it’s an Adsense powerhouse, built to last and ready to please. With a sophisticated design and a large array of functions, it would work amazingly well as a clothing blog site, a magazine blog or perhaps your personal blog page. With a first class, efficient arrangement and a wide range of features to help make blogging painless. In case you’re not a WordPress professional, you can still adjust this design to provide the functions you are looking for your website to have. Your viewers will like the way your amazing blog looks, the convenient navigation, the modern and specialized design, the fresh scripts, the general configuration and a great deal more.

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San Francisco

This beautiful Adsense theme provides the ultimate basic customization choices in an amazing design. When you’re seeking a brand new AdSense optimized theme to market your posts, images, or design work, the wide variety of quality designs makes WordPress an effective option. While there have been many first-class portfolio themes available for WordPress for many years, recently there has been a significant rise in the amount of responsive portfolio themes and it’s easy to see why. If you want your website visitors to have the capacity to conveniently see your portfolio web-site on a phone or maybe tablet, along with a computer, a responsive WordPress portfolio theme is an excellent choice.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

CrazyBlog

This stunning AdSense WordPress theme can be used for virtually any variety of web-site you want and the fact that it’s SEO optimized and ready for Adsense ads makes it a snap to help you build an audience and monetize your traffic. With a really great design and a large variety of functions, it will work great as a stylish fashion blog site, a news magazine blog or perhaps a personal blog page. With a wonderful, useful design and plentiful features to help make blogging and site-building simple. In case you’re not a code specialist, it’s possible to revise this amazing theme to provide it with the options you are looking for your web blog to have. Your blog readers will cherish the the style and features offered by your blog, the straight forward navigation, the contemporary and well built layout, the clear code, the simple arrangement and a whole lot more.

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WordX

Online blogs and internet magazines can really utilize the bold, professional style and the well-constructed layout and code that they get with WordX WordPress theme. WordX does a marvelous job of arranging content and high quality HD images to present a professional and polished appearance which will convince website visitors to stay and appreciate the content. For businesses that are using Adsense to make money, it’s a key factor. Keeping the audience around on a ‘sticky’ site is far more valuable than having the audience’s attention for a fleeting moment. This WordPress theme offers 100% responsiveness so that folks can appreciate pictures, the text and other info from any mobile device like smartphones and tablet computers.

If it cannot be located by potential customers, a web site won’t ever prosper. This WP theme is completely incorporated with the most recent search engine optimization choices, which means that you’re going to be seen by the spiders and you’ll be ranking in no time. Some of the characteristics you may appreciate in your site: complete integration with AdSense, multiple flexible ad-blocks and a carousel attribute that is exceptional. If you always want to put your best posts and images out there, this is a wonderful way to do just that. These key features will enable you to assemble a content-rich web site with the WordX WordPress theme that brings in sales and brings traffic.

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MoneyFlow

Want to make money from your home, in your spare time? Then you may need a great AdSense ready theme like Money Flow. The Money Flow WordPress theme offers an ideal system to investigate various online opportunities and make greater gains in traffic, and income, than ever before. It’s chock full of great attributes, it’s highly customizable and MoneyFlow is fully incorporated with the most popular monetization strategies. That’s what Adsense is all about.

Although the design may seem complicated, there’s no need to learn any development or programming technology in order to create and focus-grabbing website with MoneyFlow. User guides and a comprehensive and detailed instruction manual are also included in your download package. If you should run into problems, MyThemeShop does a great job of supporting all of their themes. The Money Flow WP theme offers responsiveness that is complete, so the website looks great even on mobile devices. International business is eased with translation abilities, which permit you to expand and enlarge your world of influence and increase traffic around the globe in any language. Money Flow supplies everything needed to create and establish a contemporary WordPress site that has the possibility to make you a significant amount of income as time passes.

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Collecto

Collecto is a classic newspaper inspired WordPress theme with a very attractive grid layout that presents your posts in a professional, polished and beautiful way. It’s easy to navigate, because Collecto is so visual, your readers will simply click on the gorgeous images they see, the alluring headlines and they’ll be on to the next topic that interests them. It really does look a bit like a newspaper and I really love the typography that’s included in the vanilla demo. Single pages are just as attractive, with a bold, minimal style that accentuates your content, not the site’s design. The result is a site that’s very easily navigated and that looks great on all devices, thanks to pure responsive design. Collecto should absolutely be considered for any site that wants a wonderful looking, dynamic grid based layout.

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HyperX

Here’s an excellent theme that’s the whole bundle of tasteful design excellence, called HyperX, and it’s sweetly coded with a purely responsive layout. This is an incredibly appealing, feature packed multi-page web design that can really be a perfect solution for an AdSense based business. This theme is right on the money, whether you need to create a web site for corporate use, private sites or curriculum vitae pages to highlight your specific set of skills, freelance creative portfolios or average internet users who desire to emphasize their work, be it writing, photography or something different. HyperX is a fantastic AdSense ready theme too and it’ll permit you to set up quickly, and run successfully, a brilliant looking business with a site design that’s either full-width or a design that is boxed. That flexibility enables you to make the design fit your business’ brand, not the other way around. Building an on-line fine art gallery? Definitely doable. Making a product centered website site? Readily done, just add a little patience and an excellent theme like HyperX.

Control layout, colors, graphics, symbols, icons, light and dark variants, background pictures and more in this genre defining theme. Making money from AdSense is a challenge, since the competition is high. With a theme like this one, you’ve got a huge head start, thanks to the smart ad placement, the well crafted design, the ease of navigation and the customization options. That helps you to make the best first impression you can to every visitor you see with this nicely crafted theme. The theme remains intuitive and straightforward to set up, because the Visual Composer plugin makes it so easy to make a unique design with a unique layout. It’s design made simple and you won’t even have to learn how to code.

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Grimag

This stylish AdSense WordPress magazine and blog theme can be used for just about any style of web-site you want. With a really great design along with a wide variety of features, it would work perfectly as a fashion blog site, a magazine as well as your personal blog page and with Adsense, you can monetize it too! Grimag offers you a superb, useful layout and plenty of features to help make blogging trouble-free. If you are not a WordPress expert, it is possible to modify this great looking theme to provide the options you are looking for your website to possess. Your readers will love the style and features of your site, the convenient navigation, the trendy and well coded design, the fresh code, the general layout and a great deal more.

This gorgeous Adsense theme offers the ultimate personalization choices in a beautiful design. If you are you’re seeking a fresh Adsense ready theme to promote your content, pictures, or design work, the large array of high quality designs makes WordPress an incredible option. Though you can find a number of top quality portfolio themes sold for WordPress for quite some time, recently there has been a significant rise in the variety of responsive portfolio themes and it’s no wonder why. If you would like your traffic to have the ability to clearly see your portfolio web-site on a mobile phone or maybe tablet, in addition to a computer, a responsive WordPress portfolio theme is a fantastic solution. For more great adsense WordPress themes, check this out.

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Gridlove

Check out Gridlove. It’s clean, glossy, modern and nicely featured, a perfect solution in case you’re buying a contemporary masonry design which helps focus your readers attention on all of your content. Using an array of pre-built layouts and templates, you are able to be up and running with Gridlove in just a couple clicks. There’s a demo website you could choose for a test drive also, to help you feel sure that Gridlove will do that which you need before you buy it it to do. That is helpful. There are numerous layouts included and you’ll manage to craft a flexible homepage to match your needs, regardless of what they are. Emphasize your posts and widgets to accentuate your hottest content, or the content that your readers engage with the most. The choice is yours.

Gridlove is professional and varied with multiple header styles, you can control nearly every design setting in this theme, each category can even have it’s own layout as well as color scheme. That lets you really call attention to the content you want to have featured. You’ll be able to customize single post layouts to give your articles their particular flavor. Boundless fonts, color combos and committed sections to upload a logo and icons. Trendy! This SEO optimized theme is excellent for assisting you to monetize your articles with Adsense sections also. The 100% responsive design actually helps with monetization and Search Engine Optimization, since it loads incredibly quickly and it’s properly coded to rank well in the search engines. There is an unrivaled, advanced theme options panel also for customizing the finer details of your website. Post formats, widgets, post pageviews, a bunch of lovely and talented shortcodes and a good deal more make Gridlove a wonderful theme for your subsequent internet project. Here are some more smashing magazine WordPress themes.

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TrueMag

Want a new theme that will really allow you to increase your conversion rate? A truly powerful, well designed adsense theme that is ideal for any sort of magazine or blog, no matter what sort of business you’re into? Well look no further than TrueMag, a fantastically well designed WordPress theme that makes blogging fun and profitable. TrueMag is advertising and AdSense optimized, making it simple to manage all of your content and advertising space in one simple package, without the need to source plugins and other addons that may bog your site down. After all, with a website that relies on AdSense marketing, loading time and user engagement is every bit as important as your content. That’s why TrueMag is such a fantastic option for an online marketer. Strict Themes has created the ultimate monetization theme for WordPress.

You can add sticky posts, highlight recent posts in a variety of areas and there are advertising spaces built right in, making your ads blend into the content, which is a key feature for any site that is making money from selling ad space. TrueMag highlights advertising without making it intrustive, which helps drive traffic and convert your traffic into clicks, maximizing profit on every post or page. The responsive and Retina ready layout is key, allowing your visitors to see your amazing content no matter what screen size or device and the images will practically jump off the page. Use a boxed layout or full width, the choice is yours. There are dark and light variations of this powerful theme and it’s even WooCommerc ready, so you can make some money selling products too, whether they’re digitally downloadable or tangible goods. Pretty cool, right? There are plenty of post formats pre-made and of course, this theme is SEO optimized for maximum conversion rates and a fantastic user experience all around.

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SteadyIncome

This is SteadyIncome, and for anyone who wishes to find an Adsene-optimized theme to help monetize a website, or put the focus on professional business or marketing, you should try the SteadyIncome WordPress theme. The vast selection of features and different elements mean that it supports many different industries and niches with its flexible structure. Install the WP theme with a single click to get started. Customization options are accessible from the user-friendly interface. Add third-party plugins, such as search engine optimization helpers, contact forms, social media integrators, and switch around page elements to suit your needs.

The SteadyIncome WP theme creators offer ongoing support for the people who use their theme. Help is always available through email and can even be extended to the owners of websites you may build for them. This theme package comes with unlimited domain usage, regularly scheduled updates, tutorial videos to help with each feature, and the right to install it on any site you wish.

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#Content Marketing

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endevia · 5 years

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Kid-created Games That Teach

It’s discouraging to all stakeholders that annually, about 1.2 million students fail to graduate from high school. And “Pathways to Prosperity” reports that just 56% of college attendees complete a degree. Fingers point all directions but nothing changes the stark truth: Something causes kids to hate learning so much that they’d rather face their future without the knowledge or skills to do so successfully.

Solutions to this problem abound but one of the most popular with K-16 educators — because it works — is to gamify learning. Wikipedia defines “gamification” as:

“an educational approach to motivate students to learn by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. The goal is to maximize enjoyment and engagement through capturing the interest of learners and inspiring them to continue learning.”

Games remind kids of days when they chose their own seats, worked at their own pace, and responded to their own interests. Through childhood games, they learned social skills, problem-solving, sequencing, and a whole bunch more while they thought they were doing a puzzle, building blocks, or playing dodgeball.

Fast forward to formal schooling. As early as Kindergarten, kids are stuck into classrooms where play is replaced with rote drills, repetition, and growing boredom. It’s taken the experts decades but finally, the value of applying gameplaying characteristics to learning is being recognized as a formidable approach. I’ve written much about the use of games and simulations but today, I want to focus on the student as maker, where they create the game, troubleshoot problems, and refine the end result — exactly the traits valued by coding and programming.

Here are some of my favorite game creation tools for students:

Adventure Games Studio

High School and up

Free

Adventure Games Studio (AGS) is a Windows software program appropriate for mid-level game creators. Using their own story and artwork, students upload and then create their own 2D point-and-click adventure game similar to Lucas Arts and Sierra Games from the early 2000’s. The program includes a collection of backgrounds, characters, and pieces that can be used in the new game. Happily, there are many YouTube tutorials on using AGS like this one from Chris Jones.

Note: AGS was created over twenty years ago, though it is constantly updated. It would be wise to preview it before sharing with students.

ClassTools

Grade 2 and up

Free

ClassTools is well known for its easy-to-use templates themed to popular activities (such as Facebook). Many are intuitive to use, require little direction from teachers, and can be completed in under five minutes, making them the go-to resource for projects and lesson plans. No sign-up, log-in, or password is required. Games include arcade-style games, Pac-Man, Breaking News generator, crosswords, and more. Once created, games can be shared using the ClassTools’ link.

Note: Once published, the games are public so make sure students keep all information generic and vanilla.

GameMaker Studio 2

High School+

Free/fee

GameMaker Studio 2 is one of the top tools available for students with a serious interest in game development. It uses a familiar drag-and-drop interface but also has scripting available for pros. Because of its robustness, the learning curve can be steep though committed students will have no problem. It runs on Windows and Mac as well as Ubuntu, Linux, Android, iOS, UWP, HTML5, XBox One, and PlayStation 4.

GameMaker Studio 2 is best suited to teaching for a full unit or semester rather than a quick in-and-out as might be used for Hour of Code.

GameSalad

High School+

Free/fee

GameSalad is a leading game creation tool for the K-12 ecosystem. Its drag and drop interface requires no knowledge of programming and is familiar from many other coding webtools and programs. One of its goals is to make learning computer science and programming easy. That being said, it is best suited for students who have experience with basic game creators such as Scratch or Hopscotch. Most students will be able to create their first game within a few weeks.

GameSalad is one of several on this list that focus on classroom use. It offers a web-based state standards-aligned curriculum with everything educators need to teach computer science fundamentals. Units are modular. Each unit covers one or more topics and each features a specific game genre or mechanic, giving maximum flexibility to design a program that meets the needs of students.

Gamestar Mechanic

4th-9th grade

Free/fee

Gamestar Mechanic teaches game design through the use of web-based game-based quests and courses. Before students begin the process of creating a game, they practice gaming skills and take design courses from professionals.

Gamestar offers an Educational Package affordably priced with everything needed to teach game design to students including a teacher dashboard for tracking individual and class progress.

Scratch

Ages 8-16

Free

With MIT’s web-based Scratch program, students create games and animations that are easily shared with others. It uses the familiar drag-and-drop interface with lots of free backgrounds, characters, and more to build exactly the game students want. For reluctant creators, they can select one of the over 39 million projects included in the gallery and remix it to the level of their ability. Scratch is available on Windows and Macs. Teachers will be interested in the education-focused Scratch website from Harvard called ScratchEd.

Note: For students younger than 2nd grade, Scratch Jr. is an excellent alternative.

Stencyl

Age 6 and up

Fee

Stencyl is downloadable software that uses an intuitive drag-and-drop block-snapping interface to choose game elements. While coding is not required, Stencyl does offer an advanced edition for Power coders who wish to write their own code. Once a game is completed, it can be published to iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Flash games without a code.

Stencyl provides an Education Kit — including a curriculum — for a full coding class.

TinyTap

Age 7 and up

Fee (subscription) for Premium content

Using award-winning TinyTap, students can play, create, and share interactive games and lessons on iPads, iPhones, and Android. No coding is required. Creators can upload their personal photos and designs or use TinyTap templates and graphics. The app can either be downloaded to an iPad or Android tablet or used on a computer desktop. For those interested, there are excellent how-to videos available on YouTube.

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Students will work more rigorously and learner higher-order thinking skills faster doing something they love. Creating their own game that can then be shared with others is exactly that.

— published first on TeachHUB