الاثنين، 25 مارس 2019
الأحد، 24 مارس 2019
Saudi Arabia’s East Coast Festival lines up top-class cultural activities
Mon, 2019-03-25 01:01
DAMMAM: People in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province have had no shortage of things to do during the Sharqiah Season. From pop concerts featuring international artists to massive sporting events, there is something for everyone among the 83 different events planned.
However, it would be remiss not to celebrate the heritage and culture of the country itself. The Enter East Coast Festival, an open-air marketplace with plenty of activities for locals and tourists to enjoy.
The festival is being held along the Dammam Corniche, at the waterfront of King Abdullah Park, and access to the 10-day event is free.
It features stalls with craftsmen beavering away. At one, a potter is bent over a wheel as he makes vases, lanterns and small toys. At another, carpenters fashion chairs and tables out of planks of wood. A weaver hums as he plaits together palm fronds to form baskets and fans.
The vendors are mostly from Saudi Arabia, but there are other countries showcasing their work too.
Fishermen and sailors from Oman display pearls still in their shells, delicate replicas of traditional fishing boats, and stretches of fishing net. The stalls from Kuwait feature items from the past and vendors from Bahrain offer local sweets, handmade items and clothing.
There are Saudi dances and musical performances too. One stage, resembling a ship, features performers dressed as sailors singing traditional sea shanties. Another stage has drummers and a singer. A huge area in the middle of the space is allotted to dancers, flag-bearers, and even armed officers participating in a traditional Ardah, or Saudi dance.
Those looking to eat something can chow down on Saudi offerings including jareesh, margoog, or qursan. There are food trucks selling Western fare such as burgers and tacos.
The festival runs until March 30, when the Sharqiah Season ends.
The season is a collaborative effort between the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, the General Entertainment Authority, the General Culture Authority and the General Sports Authority. It is the first of 11 scheduled festivals planned across the country for 2019.
Future seasons will focus on different areas of Saudi Arabia, with different entertainment options for each city, and different parts of the year, such as Ramadan, Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha.
Main category:
What We Are Reading Today: Gateway State by Sarah Miller-Davenport
Sun, 2019-03-24 22:54
Gateway State explores the development of Hawai’i as a model for liberal multiculturalism and a tool of American global power in the era of decolonization. The establishment of Hawaii statehood in 1959 was a watershed moment, not only in the ways Americans defined their nation’s role on the international stage but also in the ways they understood the problems of social difference at home. Hawaii’s remarkable transition from territory to state heralded the emergence of postwar multiculturalism, which was a response both to independence movements abroad and to the limits of civil rights in the US.
Once a racially problematic overseas colony, by the 1960s, Hawaii had come to symbolize John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. This was a more inclusive idea of who counted as American at home and what areas of the world were considered to be within the US sphere of influence. Statehood advocates argued that Hawaii and its majority Asian population could serve as a bridge to Cold War Asia — and as a global showcase of American democracy and racial harmony. Business leaders and policymakers worked to institutionalize and sell this ideal by capitalizing on Hawaii’s diversity.
Asian Americans in Hawaii never lost a perceived connection to Asia. Instead, their ethnic difference became a marketable resource to help other Americans navigate a decolonizing world.
Tags:
The UAE’s art scene isn’t imported, Emirati curator argues
Sun, 2019-03-24 12:03
ABU DHABI: This year, Art Dubai introduced a new segment into its program — the UAE NOW exhibit that showcased the country’s local independent, artist-run platforms.
The region’s largest art fair ran from March 20-23 and Arab News caught up with UAE NOW curator Munira Al-Sayegh to find out more about the push to showcase homegrown creativity.
“The UAE NOW section of Art Dubai is extremely important to me. It is a moment where we are looking at the cross-collaboration of grassroots platforms that have taken place out of the sheer idea of collaboration between creatives and it is extremely important to showcase this as a counter-narrative to the usual stereotypical idea that the UAE’s art scene is a very commercial art scene or one that is imported,” the curator said.
The participating platforms included Bait 15, Banat Collective, Jaffat el Aqlam, PAC (Public Art Collective) and Daftar Asfar. The platforms were invited to showcase their works and many ended up creating small, informal spaces that showed off the artists’ pieces in a cozy atmosphere. Bait 15’s booth featured a large mattress in the middle, where visitors could rest their weary feet, and the Banat Collective boasted draped chiffon on which passers-by could draw and doodle with chalk pastels.
The piece by Saudi Arabia-based Palestinian artist Jana Ghalayini was a “collaboration with the public,” she told Arab News, adding that she was hoping to explore themes of identity and empowerment through the interactive installation.
For her part, co-founder of the Abu Dhabi-based Bait 15 studio Afra Al-Dhaheri was equally interested in opening up a dialogue.
“This is the first time that Art Dubai allows for community spaces to be present… I think this dialogue has to emerge one way or another, like, having the artist community speak,” she told Arab News.
“Art is important for any society. It’s a register for the history of the society, the community and the times,” she added.
Main category:
Tags:
Scenic Highlands at eye of Scotland’s Brexit storm
ID:
1553415871987628100
Sun, 2019-03-24 08:00
INVERNESS, Scotland: Glen Mhor Hotel, a picturesque base for tourists hunting Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, is struggling to find staff for the summer season as workers from the European Union snub Brexit Britain.
While Prime Minister Theresa May battles to win support for her plans to leave the EU, a shortage of migrant workers from the bloc is already threatening Scotland’s economy and upsetting its politics.
Migration is a major source of irritation between London and Edinburgh. It is also one reason behind a new drive for Scottish independence from Britain.
EU migrants account for half the hospitality workforce in the city of Inverness, a hub for the Highlands tourist region popular with golfing Americans and whisky-sipping Europeans.
But local cleaning and cooking staff for the 75-room Glen Mhor are proving hard to find. Unemployment in Inverness stands at 3 percent compared with 4.2 percent in Britain as a whole.
With Brexit looming, the Victorian hotel’s manager, Frenchman Emmanuel Moine, is struggling to recruit.
“Last year I advertised for a chef de partie in a specialist French hospitality newspaper and I got 50 resumes in a few days,” Moine said, in an elegant hotel lounge overlooking the River Ness. “I didn’t get one from the UK.”
Potential staff from the EU are put off by the prospect of tougher immigration rules and a weaker pound reducing the amount of money they can send home in euros.
Sparsely populated Scotland is aging rapidly so labor shortages affect its economy more than the rest of Britain. Stemming the inflow of EU workers, as May’s government plans, will be “catastrophic,” Edinburgh says.
“Severe restrictions on immigration pose a genuine risk to the long-term health of our economy and our society,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says.
Home to just 5 million of Britain’s 66 million people, Scotland’s vote to remain in the EU was outweighed by the rest of the country.
Scotland’s working age population will only remain stable over the next 25 years if current migration rates persist, a University of Edinburgh study said. Migrants’ taxes and economic activity help to fund public services in areas where the population is falling.
The Scottish Fiscal Commission projected that if the UK government met its target of reducing net migration to the “tens of thousands,” the Scottish economy would shrink by around one fifth more than the rest of the UK by 2040.
Moine, Glen Mhor’s manager, says the Brexit vote had a “brutal, immediate” impact on his attempt to recruit up to 90 workers needed in the summer. He now pays his cooks 15 percent more than in 2016, the year Britain voted for Brexit.
In Britain as a whole 37 percent of workers in hospitality are non-British EU nationals, the Federation of Small Businesses says. In Scotland that number is 45 percent, and in the Highlands local hoteliers say it is about 50 percent.
In densely populated England, many people voted for Brexit because of fears about migration. But in Scotland foreign workers help offset a birthrate at a 150-year low and keep the rural areas economically viable.
Scots rejected independence by a 10-point margin in a 2014 referendum. But many of Sturgeon’s supporters say plans to end free movement of EU citizens as part of Brexit amount to a huge change in Scotland’s circumstances that necessitates another independence vote.
Thousands of volunteers are planning a door-to-door campaign in support of independence. They hope to win over EU nationals living in Scotland who mostly rejected independence in 2014.
“We’re quite confident it will be the opposite next time around and we’ll get a pretty solid majority of EU nationals,” said Ross Greer, a pro-independence Scottish Greens lawmaker, who is involved in the campaign.
EU migration to Britain has fallen since June 2016, and net migration of EU citizens in the country fell to its lowest since 2009 in the year to September. The Scottish government estimates EU nationals in Scotland have fallen 5 percent to 223,000.
Meanwhile some workers at Glen Mhor are waiting see what Brexit actually means for them.
“This is good place to work, money is good and you can live well on the minimum. After Brexit, I don’t know what to tell you,” says Marta Ofiarska, a 41-year-old housekeeper at Glen Mhor who has been in Scotland for 13 years.
But her 21-year-old daughter went back to Poland after the 2016 Brexit vote and at least 20 of her Polish friends have left Scotland since then.
Dubai Opera head lauds local art scene as BBC Proms wraps up
Sun, 2019-03-24 10:14
DUBAI: The metropolitan nature of Dubai made it the perfect spot for the BBC Proms’ international lineup of musical acts, which took place at the Dubai Opera from March 19-22, according to the venue’s chief executive.
Although the BBC Proms — one of the biggest classical musical festivals in the world — has only left London three times, it has universal appeal because of its “internationality of music,” Jasper Hope, chief executive of Dubai Opera, told Arab News.
“The Proms features musicians from Sweden and the UK, among other countries, as well as the likes of Bushra El-Turk, a British composer with roots in the Middle East,” Hope said.
To add more of a local twist to the British festival, Dubai Opera formed the “Dubai Opera Festival Chorus,” a singing group composed of local residents who performed alongside world-class musicians at the Proms.
Asked when the group will perform in any other shows, Hope said: “When you have formed a really talented group, you know you have to continue going,” without giving specific details on future performances.
Hope was particularly excited that they have managed to bring the BBC Proms back for the second time, only two years after its Middle East debut in 2017. Hope recalled the debut event, saying much of the crowd were first timers.
“The BBC Proms is all about making classical music accessible to everyone… People can be nervous when attending something called an opera,” he said, as he emphasized Dubai Opera’s role in “inspiring (the) local community to take interest” in the culture and arts scene.
Established in 1895, the BBC Proms is based predominantly in London’s Royal Albert Hall. It was derived from the British tradition of “promming,” usually held in public gardens around London.
Main category:
Tags:
الاشتراك في:
الرسائل (Atom)
