4 September 2012

Centenary program (Part 1) [Would you have preferred The Rolling Stones poll?]

| johnboy
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The meeja reptiles are being entertained as I write in The Playhouse for the launch of the Centenary Program (Part 1), and tonight the Great and The Good will assemble for a gala event.

But here we’re more interested in the substance and so here’s the program (Part 1).

Anything leaping out at you there dear reader?

Apparently we could have had The Rolling Stones for one big night, or this program. Which would you have preferred? (Remember there’s a Part 2 still to be unveiled)

Which would you prefer for the Centenary?

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Lynyrd Skynyrd would be my preference

Endrey said :

Trade in a year of genuine ACT cultural programs for one night of the re-animated tattooed corpses of poms who did their best work decades before I was alive. I’d rather shit myself to death.

Oh come on, the geriatrics would get a kick out of watching other geriatrics on the Steel Wheelchairs Tour. The Stones are not only for the old but also the old-at-heart

Trade in a year of genuine ACT cultural programs for one night of the re-animated tattooed corpses of poms who did their best work decades before I was alive. I’d rather shit myself to death.

Masquara said :

Wouldn’t you know it? The pdf has not been made accessible.
Hypocritical bastards! No access for the disabled – and released by the ACT Government in the middle of the Paralympics ….

They might get a light tap on the buttocks from AGIMO about accessibility. Or not. There’s a rolling schedule for compliance with this stuff, but I haven’t been on top of it since two contracts ago. Hopefully it will improve with a little light caterwauling in their direction. Wow, I nailed caterwauling without Mr Spell Cheque. Oarsome.

* there aren’t

Thanks, b2 for that link. On topic, I note the Diaspora program: http://canberra100.com.au/programs/canberra-diaspora/

Might provide some insights…

Wouldn’t you know it? The pdf has not been made accessible.
Hypocritical bastards! No access for the disabled – and released by the ACT Government in the middle of the Paralympics ….

b2 said :

You do realise that everything in the printed program is available on the website

Now I do. Thanks for the link.

DrKoresh said :

Truthiness said :

Every year Canberra suffers a mass exodus of artists, it would have been nice to bring them back, if only for one year.

I know so many ‘artists’ who’ve buggered off to Melbourne under the delusion that it will make them better, more cultured individuals. Good riddance to the pretentious dickheads, I say, Canberra has a thriving (if small) local arts community, anyone who wants to find them knows where to look.

Yes and no. A bit like the IT and research and so many other industries, I think many find that they hit the top of their game and then their just aren’t the gigs or the audiences to sustain or progress them. Melbourne is a sane move for many, a not so great experience for others.

I don’t know that wanting to excel in your field or topping your industry makes you a pretentious dickhead. Otherwise Robert de Castella would just have been running around the lake with his mates and then retiring with the ACT Vets every Sunday, to draw but one of several thousand analogies.

OK, so here is the tl;dr

The vast majority of “events” are just showcases of our institutions, everything gets a mention, galleries, museums, the zoo, stromlo, historic places and popular businesses. This list extends right down to the Potter’s workshop and the m16 art space. There will be a day of celebration and lots of hoopla all year.

There are a huge number of little arty things, a highschool battle of the bands, exhibitions, live musicians and performances all spread through a multitude of locations. They say all music genres are represented “except for anything that requires loud amplification” which presumably excludes most modern music.

Other than that it mostly seems to be retrospective things, there will be a glossy book, a centenary phone app, web app and event map along with various biographical thingies like “diaspora” which is crowd sourced biographies of people who have left Canberra.

There seem to be so many things going on in obscure places, I’ll be amazed if anyone sees more than a fraction of it all.

Truthiness said :

Every year Canberra suffers a mass exodus of artists, it would have been nice to bring them back, if only for one year.

I know so many ‘artists’ who’ve buggered off to Melbourne under the delusion that it will make them better, more cultured individuals. Good riddance to the pretentious dickheads, I say, Canberra has a thriving (if small) local arts community, anyone who wants to find them knows where to look.

Truthiness said :

Every year Canberra suffers a mass exodus of artists, it would have been nice to bring them back, if only for one year.

is mike nock on the program?

Every year Canberra suffers a mass exodus of artists, it would have been nice to bring them back, if only for one year.

You do realise that everything in the printed program is available on the website

As for The Rolling Stones, well, each to their own, but even if you put them in the big top for $25 a head, and then gave me comp tickets so good that I’d have to be ducking my head every time the lipp-ed one thrust his pelvis to the front…..

Yeah, I’d probably choose to be down at THE Front (Cafe, Lyneham).

Personal choice.

I’m really interested in the content and 64MB holds no fear for my download limit or processor, but….

Sorry, we are unable to scan this file for viruses.
The file exceeds the maximum size that we scan. Download anyway?

Yeah, no. Having spent the last six weeks working with cybercops, no, just no.

Sounds like a job for the Centenary’s web monkeys to concoct a more accessible, and byte-sized version.

When I’m driving in my car
and Robyn comes on the radio
saying how great things will be
for this Centenary
and sounds celebratory
I can’t get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say

wildturkeycanoe6:20 am 05 Sep 12

All I got was “47852 C100 Program_text-fa3lr.pdf” and then a bunch of Chinese symbols like this “? ? ? ????.” Anyone care to translate?? Have we outsourced the coordination of these activities with our trading partners to save on costs??

If I knew what everyone was talking about I’d make a constructive comment, but in reply to the comments about fun activities…
– bring back legalized fireworks, they are fun.
– bring back legalized wood fires, they are fun to watch and keep you warm
– bring back bushbikes without stack-hats, much more fun with the wind in your hair.
– bring back the drive in cinema, my kids don’t know what one is.
– “bring it back, bring it back, bring it back, bring it back to me…..”

Mr Evil said :

Where the hell are Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson when you need ’em????

One man, his madness
Stanhope’s sad, hang-ups may prevail
Public art, possesses, conquers, my city’s budget
The phallic owls rise, and fail

Wasteful spending is eternal
Long before this assembly’s lines were drawn
When the Liberals ruled, when no crossbenchers stood
The Stadium fiasco was born

(Surely some Rioters will recognise it)

Some of you have got a heart of stone. Or maybe we’re just headed for our 19th nervous breakdown. Perhaps Robyn should just paint Canberra black.

Why the hell aren’t they doing “Gunghalin Drive Extention – The Musical”?

Where the hell are Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson when you need ’em????

c_c said :

Masquara said :

Robyn Archer is an enthusiastic lady of moderate cabaret talents

And immense ego I would suggest. Jumping up the front and singing at the launch today. Gosh, doesn’t Canberra have any good singers that she had to do it instead?

It was excruciatingly bad. Her voice has never been good, even in her heyday; she got by on enthusiasm.

Bluey said :

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

Quote from google download: “Sorry, we are unable to scan this file for viruses. The file exceeds the maximum size that we scan.” ROFL

I just can’t stop picturing some octegenarian trying to access this on the dialup plan they’ve had with Telstra since it was Telecom and still works just fine when they want to email the grandkids thankyou very much…. hahahhahaha

Masquara said :

Robyn Archer is an enthusiastic lady of moderate cabaret talents

And immense ego I would suggest. Jumping up the front and singing at the launch today. Gosh, doesn’t Canberra have any good singers that she had to do it instead?

Robyn Archer is an enthusiastic lady of moderate cabaret talents, who has developed a track record successfully directing standard arts festivals – where you loosely devise a theme, and are lauded for bringing disparate and fabulous acts from all over to a city, where a mix of visitors and locals celebrate hard for a week or two.
I simply don’t think she has been up to the C100 job.
Here’s an example: C100 spokesman interviewed on 666 this afternoon was asked to nominate two highlights of Canberra’s festival – remember, Canberra’s 100 years is the year-long theme. He nominated the Toulouse Lautrec exhibition and a one-day cricket match – both of which should fall solidly into the camp of “side, foreign” and “side, national” rather than “core” events.

The centenary has a name, but not a cogent theme. Remember how Archer’s framework specified one of the goals for Canberra’s centenary events as “encouraging remote Indigenous employment” – simply a byproduct of hauling C100 funding from some program bucket or other into the C100 budget – after she was questioned about Ngapartji’s links with Canberra (spuriously retrofitted from a single performance that happened to coincide with an Indigenous conference at Aiatsis years ago, and nothing to do with any actual developed relationship between Ngapartji and Canberra).

C100’s PR has been piecemeal, inconsistent and anything but strategic. Out of a hotchpotch of 1,000 events, of course many of them will be fun and worthwhile, especially lots of the local ones, and the ones arising from Canberra’s ACTUAL, not Robyn Archer’s faux, diaspora. But cherrypicking some great events from a pea soup (pardon the mixed metaphor) over an entire year simply won’t hang together for Canberrans as a cogent celebration.

The interview this evening was also STILL apologising for Canberra. Since when was “worthwhile Canberra” only “recent Canberra”? The “old Canberra” is apparently something that Archer has lately decided to reject, refining her PR message to somehow send a message that Canberra has seen the error of its ways and is now a fun city. What a ridiculous approach, when that “old” Canberra was an absolute fount of creativity and amazingness, and a unique environment where hippiedom, academia, grunge & bohemia could mix & thrive. Archer in her arrogance hasn’t bothered with the social history and identity of Canberra.

More’s the pity.

And inflicting a 64 megabyte program on those of us who won’t get handed one in hardcopy, is just another example of incompetence.

johnboy said :

But it’s hard to keep going after King O’Malleys is named the Centenary Pub

And who says public servants don’t have a sense of humour.

On the upside, at least it’s a pub that acknowledges it’s pulling the piss about being an Irish pub. On the downside, it’s King O’Malleys.

justin heywood5:36 pm 04 Sep 12

astrojax said :

tommo said :

How’s this for a brief summary:
It’s not the Rolling Stones

so, no satisfaction then? i thought wild horses wouldn’t keep them away. they miss you already and would gimme shelter if they were to come, but it’s only rock n roll…

Well, you can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might …

Get what you need!

What would the 500 public servants employed by the ACT Government’s “Arts” directorate *do*, though, if they weren’t given an endless stream of pointless tasks to perform?
It would be a disaster – our Rates would have to go down if they didn’t find all these sorts of pointless rubbish to fund.

Not even Sympathy for the Devil.

Bluey said :

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

Suspect someone in CMD hasn’t learnt to use PDF Optimiser in Acrobat. No way a file should be that big.

My efforts at shrinking it still came out at well over 30MB, by which point google already had it. It’s a rich print document.

tommo said :

How’s this for a brief summary:
It’s not the Rolling Stones

so, no satisfaction then? i thought wild horses wouldn’t keep them away. they miss you already and would gimme shelter if they were to come, but it’s only rock n roll…

How’s this for a brief summary:
It’s not the Rolling Stones

So will you do a summary JB? In your copious spare time?

I don’t see how it can be summarised.

100+ bitsy pages of ad ons, previously announceds, rebadged existing events, and then god knows what.

will i get to wave at the queen?

Bluey said :

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

There really isn’t.

I did ask for a breakout of the new events rather than the rebadged ones and got this answer:

“In terms of separating what’s completely ‘new’ versus the legacy stuff, no, we don’t have a break down and it would be really tricky – there are new components to existing activities (e.g., Collected Works at CTC), what we released at the Preview in March, and new things that have already been announced along the way …”

Some things go all years, some for months, some were happening anyway.

Canberra Day down by the lake is meant to be a big highlight.

But it’s hard to keep going after King O’Malleys is named the Centenary Pub and Summernats makes its appearance.

Everything is presented as being MAAARVELOUS, and there’s a hundred odd pages of it, so who’s to say?

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

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