Today’s Buffalo Mardi Gras Parade and After-Parties Support Hospice and G4G
By Seamus Gallivan
Laissez les Beau-Fleuve Roulez! With Fat Tuesday and the Artvoice-led 17th annual Buffalo Mardi Gras parade and festivities, today marks the beginning of the second annual Give for Greatness season. The parade – led again this year by Green Options Buffalo’s Big Fat Bike Ride – kicks off at 5pm behind the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and carouses down the sin-filled streets of Elmwood, Allen, Main, Pearl, Chippewa, and Delaware before spilling out to 46 bars in those areas and now also in Hamburg and Williamsville, with proceeds still supporting Hospice Buffalo while also now serving G4G. Read more
B Team Brief – Volunteer for G4G to Help Keep Buffalo Great
By Matt Carlucci, Chairman, B Team Buffalo
What makes a city great? Is it architecture? Geography? Climate? Leadership?
Maybe all of these things contribute, but I submit a more appropriate and all-encompassing term: culture. Read more
Squeaky Bi-Weekly – Buffalo Youth Media Institute Accepting Applications
By Goda Trakumaite, Outreach Coordinator, Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center
Squeaky Wheel is now officially accepting applications for this year’s Buffalo Youth Media Institute! BYMI, as this fabulous collaboration with Buffalo Tours and Squeaky Wheel is known for short, is a video production and community history initiative open to 9th-12th graders. During seven fun and learning filled weeks this summer, a group of high school students will have the chance to write, shoot, and edit their own short documentaries while learning about their community and its history, and even earning a stipend for all their hard work.
I’m not even sure where to start talking about how exciting BYMI is. I had some excellent extracurricular opportunities in high school, but something like this would have been magical. Read more
Squeaky Bi-Weekly – Winter Workshops Await
By Goda Trakumaite, Outreach Coordinator, Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center
Although the first Squeaky event of the Winter/Spring season is not happening until February, we’re back from all our holidaying, feeling refreshed and ready to take care of all your media arts needs! On that note, our next round of workshops is set to begin on January 21st, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to write a little bit not just about what specific classes we’ve got coming up, but about these workshops more generally. Read more
Where the heART Is – Sugar City’s Sunday Soup Supports Home-cooked Causes
From Seamus Gallivan: After nearly a year of definitive coverage of local arts and cultural causes through her Where the heART Is column, Anna Miller is taking a hiatus to prepare for a winter adventure into Central American culture, where she will file occasional stories and bring back many more to Buffalo before the summer. The event at hand here will serve as one of a few going away parties for Anna, while hopefully also spinning off a few stories of its own – as has every subject Anna has covered so passionately and thoroughly. Please help us send her off in style!
By Anna Miller
On the last Sunday of the month, gathered together around a steaming pot of soup, three progressive community organizations are inviting you to sit down at their table – and they’re asking you bring your ideas.
Sugar City Arts Collaborative, Buffalo Barn Raisers, and Buffalo First are collaborating to host what they hope to be a huge installation of Sunday Soup, a micro-funding grant program that brings people together to democratically fund local community projects. Read more
Where the heART Is – Burning Books Brings Activism to West Side Store
By Anna Miller
In a quiet storefront on Connecticut Street, colorful posters look down from exposed brick walls; zines and small press books line long wooden shelves. The independent art that fills Burning Books, the West Side’s newest bookstore, embraces activism and encourages growth and empowerment. They tell the tales of the people’s history – stories of courage, of power, of struggles for victory in the face of oppression. Read more
Give for Greatness Pounding the Pavement
By Seamus Gallivan
As Buffalo First reported here yesterday in previewing their upcoming Teaching By Example: Volunteers forum, Buffalo is filled with willing volunteers for community causes, some responding more to sudden sparks, others searching out opportunities, and plenty who have the will but not the search. The newly minted Give for Greatness is going to great lengths to both create and fill volunteer opportunities for those interested in giving their time in support of local arts and cultural organizations.
Give for Greatness Executive Director Megan Callahan and her ever-growing arts army spent much of Tuesday Read more
Where the heART Is – African Dance Abounds in Buffalo
By Anna Miller
The chorus of drums beat fast and strong, as I fight to move my hands in synch, my feet in time to the steady rhythm. Then stop. Then move again, as one.
Never having been much for organized dance, I would wager I’m barely coordinated enough to endeavor into such succinct and crafted movement, but the persistent drum beat, repetitious moves, and my instructor’s energy keep my body and brain in the game.
As my bare feet stomp in rhythm, as my hands move with such calculation, my head explores the connections, my mind quieting amidst the noise to find purpose in the movement.
African dance and drumming is rooted deeply in community. The movement, the very beat, is an expression of a society – Read more
