Digital Capital Week is awesome. Why? Because among the great events, they brought together creative people to brainstorm how to keep Adams Morgan thriving while our neighborhood is hit with massive street-scape construction for the next two years. They are inviting people to think of ways to make the area boom through creativity.

I live in Adams Morgan and I have an office here. I love my neighborhood, and I am worried that the short term sidewalk construction will hurt our local businesses. The idea posed by the BID is to do something with innovative lighting, both to celebrate Adams Morgan is an evening destination location and that’s when the construction will be halted. What would you do?

Check out my little video about the construction plans and also hear from our community about creative ideas for lighting up the street to attract people during the construction. Have an idea to light up Adams Morgan?

Have an idea? Please comment here or get in touch with the Adams Morgan BID.

- Sarah

Call Massey Media to put your 2010 dreams into action.

What’s your dream for 2010? Is it stopping the destruction of mountains in West Virginia, bringing affordable, quality health care to the nation, covering the urban environment with murals, ending representational bias in the electorate, or maybe, just maybe, you dream of winning a national battle of the bands and taking your rock group global? As we reflect on 2009, we see the Massey Media team has brought positive media attention and new audiences to all of these dreams.

Mobilization for Health Care for All: Shifting the Conversation in the Press
The summer of 2009 was a time of intense opposition for the national healthcare overhaul. The conversation shifted from what kind of publicly supported healthcare should the United States have to should we have that at all. Advocates and activists took notice and organized to bring attention to the millions of Americans who believe health care is a human right and want universal healthcare for all. Massey Media helped the Mobilization for Health Care for All to create newsworthy messages, bring out the cameras, and successfully use social media to broadcast its vision.

I Wanna Rock: The Power of the Press in the Entertainment Industry
This year was groundbreaking for Massey Media in our work with arts and artists, especially when we successfully placed an art mural on the front page of the Weekend Edition of the Washington Post. As a result, our arts portfolio is rocking with new clients like DC’s youngest electronic rock band, Power Pirate. This fall, we placed the band on NBC4 for a live interview about their dreams of winning a national battle of the bands and playing for an international audience. The results were thousands of new fans who cast their votes in favor of the group and helped the band to win the contest.

Massey Media Takes on Massey Energy to Protect Appalachia
First off, no, we’re not related. Our group of Masseys want to protect Coal River Mountain from destruction, while the other group wants to blow off the top and rip up the hills for coal and greed. Mountaintop removal coal mining lays the mountains low, poisons the air and water and ruins livelihoods. We love mountains and green spaces. We believe there is a better way to make energy, such as wind farms. Massey Media is supporting Climate Ground Zero and this vital campaign by connecting them with national press.

Recent press results for our clients:

• 11/05/09 ABC News Protesters Arrested at Lieberman’s Office
• 11/19/09 NBC4 Power Pirate
• 11/29/09 The Atlantic The Best Picture Of The 2008 Electorate To Date
• 12/14/09 All Our Noise Tearing Down the Walls of Medium: District Calling Builds with the Mortar of Creativity
• 1/1/2010 Washington Post Storefront Exhibits Offer Artists a Different Kind of Exposure

Please call us at 202 518-6186 to discuss how we can place your message in the press.

Freedom is Created by Collaborative Experimentation
District Calling Brings Together Up-and-Coming DC Artists

(Washington, DC) – District Calling, a Washington, DC-based multidisciplinary arts project, hosts its first collaborative performance showcase at the District of Columbia Arts Center on December 5, 2009 at 7:30 and 10 pm. District Calling: Freedom is a tightly choreographed, full-length performance, featuring the collaborative work of artists from across various performance mediums, and highlighting a diversity of perspectives around the theme Freedom.

District Calling showcases up-and-coming (yet still under-represented) Washington, DC artists across a map of performance media, including music, storytelling, dance, and video. These artists, some of DC’s most exciting talent, have made a considerable contribution in their own performance mediums, but have had limited opportunities and venues to collaborate with artists working in other media. District Calling has provided a venue for bringing these artists together to encourage exploration of new ideas and the possibilities of collaborative performance. By providing structured workshops as forums for artist exchanges, District Calling sought to dissolve traditional artistic silos and build a space for artists to forge new, exciting partnerships, and establish a freed sense of what is possible in their performance work. The result has been an environment of heightened creativity and impassioned commitment to breaking from the traditional boundaries of the artists’ respective mediums.

In District Calling, freedom is examined in personal, social, and structural terms: it is found in the boundary blurring of storytelling backed by projections and music; the dancer’s movements that toy with freedoms of a captive audience; and in the improvisational music of a string quartet whose piece is an ode to creating structure only to become freed from it.

John Moon, sound artist and member of the group Cornel West Theory says this project is perfect for what he’s been wishing to explore artistically. “I have all these crazy ideas in my mind but most of them require other people, so this is forcing me to get a lot of these ideas out of my head. I get to work with some really obviously talented and interesting people. I’m blown away.”

“I’m really ecstatic about the opportunity to work with string instrumentalists again,” says Britton Powell, a classically trained turned experimental musician. “I’m excited to collaborate because it always opens your eyes up to another perspective.”

A grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities made the project possible, enabling co-producers Sean Peoples and Melissa Krodman to provide artist stipends and host workshops. Peoples and Krodman chose the theme of freedom as the project’s first showcase as a nod to the process of artistically breaking from the norm, but also as an acknowledgement of the word’s semantic power. “In the last decade there’s been a dramatic shift in people’s association with the word ‘freedom,’ says co-producer Melissa Krodman. “In a way we’re seeking to reclaim the word from the realm of the political and re-explore what it means to us individually, as artists and as humans.”

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District Calling is partially funded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and sponsored by Massey Media and Affinity Lab.

District Calling: Freedom
Saturday, December 5
DC Arts Center, 2438 18 Street NW, Washington DC
7:30 pm and 10 pm shows / $10
For tickets call: (202) 462-7833

District Calling artists are:
Carmen Wong, Producer and Creative Director of Banished? Productions
John Moon, Sound Artist, member of Cornel West Theory
Ayo Okunseinde, Video/Visual Artist and Co-founder of Ayyoko Confidential
Sean Peoples, Sound Artist, owner of experimental label Sockets Records, DJ (Fatback)
Vivianne Njoku, Percussionist, Storyteller, and Member of the Band noon:30
Britton Powell, String Instrumentalist and Member of the Band Save Hume
Melissa Krodman, Performer, Writer, Producer
Rashad Dobbins, Lyricist and “Blak Fantasy” Experimental Theatre Creator
Heather Doyle, Dancer (Daniel Burkholder/The Playground, Liz Lerman)
Yvonne Gilmore, Poet, Lecturer, Member of Cornel West Theory
Aaron Thompson, Singer, Songwriter

District Calling: Freedom, is a collaborative performance project featuring the work of Washington, DC’s rich artistic community, and highlighting the diversity of perspectives around the theme Freedom.

Contact:
Melissa Krodman
Phone: 202.251.8802 / 240.662.2915
Email: districtcalling@gmail.com

UPDATE: The amazing singer, songwriter, KUKU, the Afro-Soul Acoustic Experience (http://www.kukulive.com) is performing at the art opening. KUKU will be performing from 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM on Tuesday at 7th & M Streets outside of the Mt Vernon Sq/7th St-Convention Center Metro entrance.

The DC Convention Center is bringing its artistic side out. With a first-of-its-kind exhibit to fill windows and exterior gallery spaces with art, the Windows Into DC show is a reflection of our community. A little known fact about the Convention Center is that it houses a dynamic $4 million permanent art collection. With this new show, the Convention Center extends its inner-artists out to the sidewalk spaces around the building.

This is the time to take another look at the Convention Center. Thirteen DC artists created installations and new artworks for the exhibit. “Filling empty spaces with art is a great way to beautify the community and connect with new audiences,” says Windows into DC Artist Tim Conlon. “My Shaw Scrabble piece is a fun play with the words that connote the community. This way, area residents will see themselves reflected in the windows.”

The artists are: Beth Baldwin, Jason Clark, Tim Conlon, Liani Foster, Amber Robles-Gordon, Eve Hennessa, Michael Dax Iacovone, Anne Marchand, Cory Oberndorfer, Michael Platt & Carol A. Beane, Kelly Towles, Aneikan Udofia, Colin Winterbottom and featuring The New Community for Children.

The entire DC community is invited to a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty at 5:00 PM on Tuesday, September 29 at 7th & M Streets outside of the Mt Vernon Sq/7th St-Convention Center Metro entrance. At that time, young students from the New Community for Children will be finishing their three-panel art piece that shows their pint-size view of Shaw. Pick up a Windows Into DC brochure at the information desks located in the Grand Lobby. The installation will be open through March 2010.