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Archives for June 2010

City Gets “F” In Student Testing

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When guessing takes the place of knowing, something’s wrong with test scoring—certainly in the New York public schools. And the release of national test scores last month has shown the extent to which our local schools are not doing their job.

What’s happened to local test scoring to make it look better than it is? Are the alleged “improved” scores all for show? As a parent of a fourth grade student and a kindergartener, I’m concerned.

Turns out the number of answers required to pass the NY standard test has been lowered each year since 2004, when Bloomberg was elected to office. It has become so easy for a student to pass that as a recent Daily News story put, “Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to end ‘social promotion,’ sixth-graders can score high enough on state English exams to move to the next grade—just by guessing.”

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London to the ‘Burg … Shifting Impressions

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DSCF1916-520x373-1Williamsburg is colourful, to say the least. Very few of the buildings, walls or sidewalks in this area are bare. They are a flush with graffiti and street art that in London would be painted over before anyone had a chance to see it. This flux of creativity is due to the many artists that wish to get their work seen, and have taken to the streets in order to do so. I do not feel as though the colours on the walls are just etchings of young kids trying to “stick it to the man.” It is one of the reasons I am quickly falling in love with the neighbourhood and its constant flow of creativity that is literally everywhere you look.

One setback to this creative community is that it can be very hard to live off the salary of a struggling artist, so many find themselves working many jobs with long hours and evening shifts. This lifestyle has made way for a new mental disorder labelled Shift-Work Disorder, in which someone suffers chronic insomnia as the mental and physical states are thrown out of balance. It seems strange to think that many of us back home have been living with the disorder but just thought of it as the student way of life; working hard yet playing harder. As the hype continues around the new disorder that is taking over Williamsburg and most of Brooklyn, the Skewville brothers felt inspired and thought it time to visualise the symptoms.skewville1-1

The Skewville brothers are a New York City street art twin duo, who have been working on many different forms of street art for the past 15 years. Their work began when they realised the change from graffiti into street art and started to throw wooden pictures of trainers (sneakers) over telephone wires, documenting it as they went along. They opened up their own gallery, so they did not have to worry over the art politics that showed these brightly decorated trainers in Seattle, New York, Mexico, London, Amsterdam and many more. These images started off a chain reaction, and Skewville became well known for their work. They have been featured in many magazines, worked with Fred Segal in Los Angeles and also been in the background of many a Hollywood film, taking the street art world places Banksy never wanted to go.

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From London to the ‘Burg … Playing With Impressions at The Brick

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Dandilion and the Amazing Bicycle Powered Cloud Plane

Dandilion and the Amazing Bicycle Powered Cloud Plane

The Brick is where it’s at. The Too Soon Festival that is. Last night I happened to catch two very different performances at the intimate theatre located on Metropolitan Ave. The Brick describes itself as being a “non-tourist theatre, real theatre for those that live in NYC,” and they had me at non-tourist. After you open the heavy industrial door, you are welcomed by smiling theatre-types and told to take your seat in the DIY theatre space. Its brick walls and black back drop do nothing to distract you from the performance, something the theatres in London’s West End are very good at. So I sat and waited with anticipation as to what I was about to witness. The name of the first play was rather odd but it did explain what I was to see; Dandilion and the Amazing Bicycle Powered Cloud Plane.

While watching the short play with “mean” pig people and an enigmatic bunny rabbit, montages that resemble scenes from Rocky and impromptu props, I found that after I stopped trying to work out what it all meant, what it was representing and just took it for what it was; a trip into the imagination of young experimental theatre kids, it was funny, light and enjoyable. It reminded me of some of the community theatre I have seen back home. The kind where the actors stop trying to over think the script, the costumes and even the acting and just have fun with what they obviously love to do. This little production was written by Heather Coffey and Andy Hadaway, and directed by Heather Coffey.

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