Are you looking for something to spice up your summer? Do you want to put your volunteer skills to work to create a more 'creative' Fort Wayne? Read the message below from Janette Luu and contact her if you (and your friends) can help with the 'City Prototype' event, August 10 - 14, 2004.
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Hello, everyone.
First of all, I want to let you know that there is a temporary look to the cityprototype.com website, but feel free to check the page for information on the week. I met with a few volunteers last week, but I can always use more help. Please let me know if you can volunteer for any of the following:
Prototype Art Campaign: - I have to finalize the times for the TV painting, but I'm considering 10am-6pm on July 31st and August 1st. I'd like to have some folks around to help the artists in any way and to talk to the public about the CP week.
Prototype News Conference: - Markey's Audio Visual will begin setting up at 8-8:30am, so I'd like to have some people on hand just in case. Any other help with setup/teardown would be good.
Prototype Collaboration: - I'm working on getting Higher Grounds, where we'd like the teens to congregate. With the use of Science Central's video gear, we will interview students about Fort Wayne and possibly go out with them and shoot some downtown video. We'll also take them up to the Summit Club from 1-3pm. We'll have free boxed lunches for the students from the Summit Club. Whatever the number of teens, we need to be prepared with as many people as possible for setup, video production, guides, etc.
Prototype Product Launch: - Markey's will begin setup around 1pm, so it'd be good to have some folks around for that and other setup needs. I'd like to have someone who can work closely with Northeast Indiana Innovation Center to make sure their needs are taken care of.
Prototype Storefront: - I should be hearing soon whether the Redevelopment Commission has given us permission to use the Midtowne Crossing space. Our digital storefront has moved to the vacant space right next to Columbia Street West, so we'll be able to do something different at Midtowne if the space is approved. We will invite artists to create a prototype studio space/virtual gallery. Anyone who would be interested in organizing this, let me know.
Pop Filter: - I need volunteers all day, before, during and after the event. Imagine organizing three huge parties and everything it entails. Need I say more? :)
Thanks!
Janette Luu
Anchor/Reporter
WPTA 21Alive News
Fort Wayne, IN
260.483.8111 work
260.804.6669 cell
The Mastodons on Parade has issued a call for artists. See the website here: Mastodons on Parade: Call for Artists.
Pop Filter was such a big hit - these creative folks have a real encore problem! But no doubt, City Prototype will wow us all over again! Spread the word, and mark your calendars now. Janette Luu recently shared the City Prototype overview below:
CITY PROTOTYPE (August 10-14, 2004)
“I didn’t think I was in Fort Wayne.” That was the most common statement made after the Pop Filter multimedia art event at the Avant-Garde Gallery on January 17, 2004. More than 700 people immersed themselves in a unique social environment that fused video, music, visual art and drama on two floors of the DeSoto Building on Lafayette Street. Since then, many have asked Pop Filter creators, Janette Luu and Matt Stuart, to produce another event.
However, Pop Filter is expanding its focus from the art scene to the city of Fort Wayne. In an effort to present the Summit City in a new light, Luu and Stuart will be offering a City Prototype through a week-long experience in August. A series of events will serve as working models that emphasize the importance of ideas and creativity as precious resources for economic growth, as well as the impact that technology and innovation have on our future economy. Each prototype will feature the undervalued assets and underutilized spaces of downtown Fort Wayne.
Public Art Campaign: Weekend of July 31st, corner of Clinton St. and Fourth St.
Local artists will paint/decorate old junk TVs at the OmniSource freight house. The community will be invited to watch the process, which will be documented on video. The piece will be shown at the Prototype News Conference, as well as Pop Filter.
Prototype News Conference: Tuesday, August 10th, 10:30 AM, 110 W. Berry St., 26th floor
City leaders will gather at the Summit Club in the National City Center to endorse the City Prototype initiative. A public art campaign will kick off with painted television sets placed at the transfer points for the CitiLoop trolley route. The TVs will highlight the innovation of Fort Wayne’s own Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television.
Prototype Collaboration: Wednesday, August 11th, 12-6 PM, corner of Wayne St. and Calhoun St.
High school students will take part in a video project that shows innovation and creativity at work. The teenagers will be encouraged to use problem-solving skills to address issues including the brain drain and downtown revitalization. Tools of the digital revolution (e.g. DVD player, MP3 player, digital camera) will be given away as prizes.
Prototype Product Launch: Thursday, August 12th, 7-10 PM, 1301 Lafayette St. at Douglas Ave.
Northeast Indiana Innovation Center will sponsor a launch party for a prototype brain imaging device to be unveiled at the Avant-Garde Gallery in the DeSoto Building. Technology including live visuals, digital imaging and digital projection will assist in showcasing the product and its uses. Free food and entertainment will be provided.
Prototype Storefront: Friday, August 13th, 12-10 PM, downtown Fort Wayne
Digital AV will transform a vacant downtown retail space into a dynamic digital storefront promoting several local entrepreneurs and highlighting the downtown revitalization. Nearby businesses will be encouraged to stay open later than usual. Free food and entertainment will be provided.
Prototype Immersive Experience – Pop Filter: Saturday, August 14th, 8 PM-2 AM, 300 block Main St.
With the help of Markey’s Audio Visual, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Performing Arts Center and the FourthWave building (formerly NIPSCO) will be part of an all-ages multimedia art event celebrating the end of City Prototype. Headline performances include Eszter Balint, a New York singer/songwriter and actress, and Jonathan Goldstein, a writer and former producer for NPR’s “This American Life.” Admission is $15 in advance or $20 at the door.
Producers: Janette Luu, Matt Stuart
Executive Producer: Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class”
Sponsors: Downtown Improvement District, Northeast Indiana Innovation Center, National City Bank, One Lucky Guitar, Digital AV, Markey’s Audio Visual, Indiana Data Center, Farm Bureau Insurance, Fort Wayne Councilman Dr. John Crawford, Ian & Mimi Rolland
Fort Wayne, Ind. – Mayor Graham Richard today released details of a recently completed hotel study. The study reveals that market demand will support the construction of an additional hotel in downtown Fort Wayne.
Mayor Richard also announced the City will send out request for proposals within the next month for the purpose of assessing the interest of hotel developers to build a new hotel.
“The results of this study are very important as we continue to improve our downtown,” said Mayor Richard. “I want to thank all of our partners for their participation as we work together to build a better city to attract more businesses and development downtown.”
C.H. Johnson Consulting, Inc. was hired by the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission to conduct the study. C.H. Johnson has given the City several recommendations for the type of hotel needed downtown.
- Category: mid-level to full service hotel
- Number of rooms: at least 300
- Possible amenities: 10 breakout rooms, 8,000 square foot grand ballroom, 5,000 square foot junior ballroom, two restaurants, pool, fitness center, coffee shop, gift shop, business center, parking for 300 cars, and two 1,000 square foot boardrooms
- Daily rate structure: $91-$101
- Site: adjacent to the Grand Wayne Center
- Demand sectors: groups and conventions (68%); corporate events (18%); leisure/visitors (14%)
C.H. Johnson determined the Grand Wayne Center and Allen County Public Library expansions will bring significant additional attendees and visitors to the downtown area. This will increase the demand for hotel space.
Providence Journal - July 2, 2004 A half-century ago, many urbanists, including the late Lewis Mumford, believed that the inexorable shift to the suburbs was transforming cities into discarded parcels of "a disordered and disintegrating urban mass." Yet today, cities seem in many ways not to be disintegrating; rather, they are widely believed to be enjoying a revival of considerable proportions.>Link
Such an assessment may be replacing the excessive pessimism of the 1960s with an overblown optimism. In reality, thoughout the last 40 years the suburbs have gained ground on the urban centers on almost every significant measure, from corporate headquarters to jobs in manufacturing, high technology, and business services.
So what about the ballyhooed urban revival?
What we are seeing is more like a subtle shift in the role of cities: from the commanding centers of global civilization to (at least in the advanced countries) a more peripheral function.
In many ways, this follows the prediction made a century ago by H.G. Wells, who said that cities would evolve from the unquestioned center of economic life into a "bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous."
Today, such cultural industries are becoming the focus of many urban political and business leaders. Instead of working to retain middle-class families, factory jobs, and economic superiority to the periphery, many cities now stress such ephemeral concepts as fashionability and "hipness" -- trend and style -- as the keys to their survival.
Montréal, for example, once a financial- and business-services center, seems intent on wiping out much of its remaining industrial base -- even its vibrant garment sector -- in favor of marketing the city as "hip and happening."
In many other cities -- including San Francisco, Miami, Boston, and New York -- culture-based tourism has emerged among the largest and most promising industries. And such fast-growing urban areas as Las Vegas and Orlando depend on providing "experiences," complete with eye-catching architecture and round-the-clock entertainment, as their base economy.
It is conceivable that New York, Boston or Chicago could poke along the 21st Century on the strength of their cultural attributes. They will probably never recover their former importance, but the yuppies, the aging affluent, and the temporary 20-somethings may have a good enough time not to notice.
The trend gets absurd, however, when it comes to smaller, less culturally endowed places. Take Detroit, the now desolate auto capital, whose political and business leaders hoped that by making it a "cool city" -- attracting gays, Bohemians, and young "creatives" -- they could find the answer to their profound economic and social problems. Unfortunately, though, many of those most attracted to culture, restaurants, and nose-ring parlors are not going to choose the Motor City over, well, about 50 alternatives.
This applies even to better-off smaller cities, such as Providence. Athough they have nicely restored central districts, attractive to professionals and college students, so do 100 or so other places. Some people might stay a year or two, maybe even a decade, but it's unlikely that culture will keep them after they've spent a weekend in Boston, not to mention New York.
A stratagem based on purported or real cultural attractions also fails to address some disturbing realities. Brookings Institution demographer Bill Frey says that many of the young people who are lured to "cool" urban places leave when they start businesses and families. He adds, "There are simply not enough yuppies to go around" for such cities.
If people stay in Providence, particularly people in their 30s, it is probably not for the art museums and cafés, but, rather, for more such mundane reasons as a low crime rate, affordable housing, family-friendly environments, and, more than anything else, jobs that pay decently.
This is where Providence and its environs can and often do outperform a New York or a Boston. Such advantages to being smaller, particularly when a city is well run, can spark a regional revival. A smaller community can often hone its development efforts, engage its citizens, and solve fundamental problems more easily than a big metropolis.
Yet city officials, planners, arts foundations and developers often don't adopt such an approach, because it can be difficult and expensive. It is much easier and more media-friendly (not to mention immediately profitable for developers and their political patrons) to plan some lovely or kicky project or endow a museum or sports facility with taxpayers' money than it is to nurture small businesses.
Meanwhile, it can be tough to persuade a factory not to move to Mexico or China; to rebuild failing schools; and to improve mass transit. Yet these economic fundamentals should remain the focus of progressive city officials and business and civic leaders.
As long as the leaders indulge their fantasies about being "hip" and neglect a firmer foundation, their cities will become little more than theme parks for the affluent -- and symbols of lost opportunity for everyone else.
Another downtown event you won't want to miss!
A cordial invitation for you and a guest to attend the:
MEE KYUNG SHIM: RECENT WORKS
ART SHOWING & RECEPTION
Friday, July 9th, 2004
6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
Avant-Garde Fine Art Gallery
1301 Lafayette St.
(Located on the 1st Floor of the DeSoto Bldg.)
Fort Wayne, In. 46802
260-426-300
This exhibition is presented by:
Salvador Soto, President- Avant Garde Fine Art Gallery and DeSoto Translation & Marketing.
EXHIBITION IS FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: BRING YOUR FRIENDS AND JOIN US
Submitted by Vince Robinson
For the past several years, a small group of local music enthusiasts has been working to promote the enjoyment of a true American art form: jazz music. The non-profit Fort Wayne Jazz & Blues Festival, Inc. has announced plans for the 2004 Jazz & Blues Festival, which will feature national, regional and local jazz/blues performers. Hopefully, the community will rally around this effort to promote the arts and local talent.
The year's festival is scheduled for Friday, August 6 and Saturday, August 7 at Headwaters Park. The show will feature Huntington native Denny Jiosa, Better Than Chocolate and the Troolee Dangerous Blues Revue. Saturday's lineup will include national jazz recording artist Peter White, Big James & The Chicago Playboys, and Fort Wayne's own Ty Causey.
Fine dining will be available along with beer and wine.
For ticket information, visit www.fwjbf.org or call the Scottish Rite Center Box Office at (260) 423-2593 ext 1.