There is another way Richard Willacy – Birmingham Opera Company I’m arriving at a foyer buzzing with excitement; youth, experience, love, pride, selfies, chat, insta, a full house. Hundreds thrill thousands. I’m placing my mobile phone in a small locker in a ranchlike entrance before I walk through a metal detector flanked by guards ahead of 150 guests. I’m standing sock footed on a round mat in an upstairs room wearing a virtual reality headset alongside another 10 or so people. Where am I? It’s [...]

The Final Embrace Friday 25 November, 2022 On Saturday, November 26, 2022, Ópera na Prisão (Opera in Prison) and TRACTION will be sharing its final embrace at the José Lúcio da Silva theatre, at 16:00 (GMT). This final event celebrates the intense work developed throughout the past two years by the young inmates and professional artists on co-creation, drama rehearsals, singing, score reading and technology, that led to the public performance of the opera O TEMPO (SOMOS NÓS)/Time (As we are). Everyone attending the theatre [...]

The TRACTION Toolset Wiki: Making the Technology Toolkit Available to the Community Tuesday 22 November, 2022 The TRACTION project aims to contribute to opera’s renewal as a territory of cultural and social inclusion through three community opera trials in Barcelona, Portugal, and Ireland. These trials have been supported and facilitated by the new technology tools developed during the project: The Co-Creation Space and the Co-Creation Stage. The development of the new technologies followed a user-centric design methodology, where end-users were involved in all stages of the process. This [...]

An Out of the Ordinary Experience Tania Banotti – Creative Ireland – 14 October 2022 Out of the Ordinary @ Dublin Fringe Festival © Simon Lazewski I visited Out of the Ordinary /As an nGnach this September in Dublin as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. I deliberately didn’t read too much about how the project had evolved over COVID before I went with a friend to experience it. Like the Dr Spock quote: “It’s life Jim, but not as you know it”. “It’s opera [...]

A prison opera and digital transformation boost diversity of artistic voices A special opera performance in Lisbon improves inclusivity for the marginalised while digital literacy will create new artistic opportunities. Written by Emanuela Barbiroglio Pictured above, 'O Tempo (Somos Nós)', performance June 17th 2022, Lisboa, Portugal © Joaquim Dâmaso/SAMP Research projects are exploring the capacity of artists to reduce inequality in the digital age. A special opera performance in Lisbon improves inclusivity for the marginalised while digital literacy will create new artistic opportunities. Four professional Portuguese [...]

Opera from the inside out Irish National Opera Presents Out of the Ordinary/As an nGnách The world’s first Virtual Reality Community Opera Premiering at Kilkenny Arts Festival Tuesday 9 to Sunday 14 August Also at Dublin Fringe Festival Friday 12 to Thursday 25 September Irish National Opera’s new Out of the Ordinary/As an nGnách is as close as you’ll get to an opera for the people and by the people. It’s the world’s first virtual reality community opera, and it has been developed [...]

A Culture of Possibility Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview David Ramy and Bruno Homem of SAMP on Co-creating Original Opera with Incarcerated Youth Arlene Goldbard - 15 July 2022   NOTE: This post is to introduce you to the 19th episode of François Matarasso’s and my monthly podcast, “A Culture of Possibility.” It will be available starting 15 July 2022. You can find it and all episodes at Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts, along with miaaw.net’s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie [...]

TRACTION at IMX 2022 Thomas Roggla – CWI – 11 July 2022 From June 22nd to 24th 2022, the TRACTION project had a presence at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX) hosted by the University of Aveiro in Aveiro, Portugal. The conference gathers an international community of researchers and professionals in human-computer interaction, design, and sociology. Two peer reviewed works from the TRACTION project were presented by Sueyoon Lee and Thomas Röggla from CWI, a work-in-progress, and a demo paper. Titled “Designing [...]

Change from within The TRACTION project and the power to transform institutions, networks, individuals and, eventually, systems. Performance at Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon © Joaquim Dâmaso / SAMP To create positive and lasting social change, major improvements must be made at the systems level of an issue area. This entails reconfiguring policies, processes, and power structures to remedy complex issues such as poverty, social justice, health disparities, and more.[1] As a project manager at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation who, among other responsibilities, manages grants targeting social [...]

TRACTION brings the Co-Creation Stageto IEEE BMSB 2022 Mikel Zorrila – Vicomtech – 24th June Photograph by Joaquim Dâmaso – SAMP The scientific and technological research in TRACTION, mainly represented by Vicomtech, CWI and DCU, has had a very relevant presence at the IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting hosted in Bilbao from the 15th to the 17th of June of 2022. In particular, the Co-Creation Stage has raised interest within the research community as a web-based tool to orchestrate media content to enable [...]