Waterfire Eye-To-Eye Speaker Encouraged Her Audience to Consider a Different Route to Change
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Cultural Dinner 2021 Registration The event is planned for September. Expect more details very soon. Sign up here to let us know you may be interested. This is a planned virtual meet & greet to prepare for upcoming Motif Spoken Word & Storytelling awards. Includes meal kits delivered to you and a Zoom conversation. Policy of Motif on Matters of Sexual Harassment Motif stands with and believes survivors of sexual assault. We take seriously our responsibility to our community and collaborators to foster the conversations that effect social change, no matter how difficult, and we are committed to being vigilant in this work. This includes reevaluating our relationships with sources and contributors when allegations come to light, as well as being a strong ally and voice for those who come forward. Motif is committed to transparency and we respect our responsibility to live up to the trust you place in us. Emily Olson, Editor Mike Ryan, Publisher Motif Music Awards Process People often ask us about the nomination process for the Music Awards. Here’s how we do it, spelled out in as much detail as we can muster: First, we contact every booking entity we know of in the area. This includes everyone who has sent us music related press releases, been in our listings, been covered as a venue, podcast, producer or label over the years, or that any of our editorial team and music writers are aware of. Our contact list is not always as up-to-date as we would like, but most of them are people we correspond with periodically, so it’s pretty fresh. We also ask our salespeople to contribute contact information (they know everybody), and our writers contribute contacts, then our admin staff (with the help of intrepid interns) try to chase everyone down to get their suggestions. In 2021, coming out of lockdown, a lot of venues were still shuttered and we had no interns, so everything has had an added level of randomness. Everyone participating is sent a list of suggested categories, but also open-ended questions. Our outreach protocol is 1. Send email. 2. Send to alternate email addresses if we have them in sales, accounting or among the writers. 3. Remind/nudge/reach out on social media. 4. Call. 5. Repeat the emails. Go to the venues we still haven’t reached, if possible. To all of these contacts, we send a list of probable categories and ask the open-ended questions: What were your favorite acts? Once we have everyone’s nominations in, we put them all in a giant spreadsheet. There are several people working on the data entry, because it’s a lot. Many of the nominations we receive don’t specify what category. We’re okay with that – we want the input and feedback, and we’d rather sort through the details ourselves than have people not respond because it’s too much work. But it does leave a lot of parsing, as we try to figure out how to categorize act. We know some of the results are a bit forced, and of course every performer has their own unique sound. But without categories, it’s hard to do the voting part. From that spreadsheet, we do straight math – if something or someone received five or six nods from nominators, it gets on the nominee list over something that got one or two. We pick the top 4 – 8 entries in each category, and remove categories that had fewer than 4 nominees. Unfortunately, straight math alone can’t do the whole trick – we frequently end up with ties. And, of course, we need to filter out the bands that are inactive, aren’t really local or are in the wrong category. For that part of the process, we have meetings. Usually two, inviting all our music writers and any other people we think have in-depth knowledge of particular parts of the community and can help answer those questions. The goal is to break the ties and settle on a final set of nominees. Winners are chosen by the public, with over 6,600 voters participating in 2019. We require each voter to enter a unique email address, and we have technology to block vote fraud, detecting AI patterns, duplicate IP addresses, etc. We know some people can vote a couple of times (at work, at home for example) but with that many voters, it’s incredibly rare that any selection comes down to just a few votes, and we’ve taken all possible precautions, including review by humans, to prevent bots and the like. It’s certainly true that you have an advantage if you get out there on social media, and you have advantages if lots of people saw a show. We WANT the widespread participation – one of our fundamental goals is to get people to realize how robust the music scene is, and how many shows and bands are out there and how much more activity there is than the average voter may have realized. If bands scare up votes, it still helps us all. Suggestions for improvement are always welcomed, and we tweak our process a little bit every year, so if you want to reach out, send us a FB message, tweet or IG message or email Mike at [email protected]. Cancel Cancel Culture: WaterFire Eye-to-Eye speaker encouraged her audience to consider a different route to change WaterFire recently hosted the latest in their Eye-to-Eye series of public lectures intended to inspire thoughtful conversations around timely social topics. The event was co-sponsored by Leadership Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Foundation and featured Loretta Ross, a professor from Smith College who came to discuss the topic of cancel culture. Her ]premise is that cancel culture within liberal circles actually hobbles liberal causes by directing dissent inward, alienating potential allies over distinctions of relatively little consequence and distracting from the larger, real issues that require cooperation and understanding to address. She discussed her own learning curve, from a full career spent in activism around issues of social justice and gender and race equity. “For close to 20 years, my motivation for doing this work was anger, because I was angry, I was angry at the world and I wanted to make a difference by grabbing the world by the throat and choking it. I was not a turn the other cheek person — if you hit me, I’d lay you out on the ground.” In the course of her activism, she became involved in a lot of outreach. “For years, I taught Black feminist theory to Black men incarcerated for raping women. I taught race history to incarcerated white supremacists. So I had to learn to find love for the people who only know hate.” The only way, she found, to make progress and change minds was to embrace those who disagreed with her and show them a different way. Not exclude them. Not pile on them. What she sees happening now, especially online, forces people in the opposite direction. She mentioned the “Caste” podcast by journalist Isabel Wilkerson and one of its consistent themes: that you can’t change society, unless you are willing to take responsibility for it. That highlights a huge difference between blame and responsibility, which has guided her through the latter part of her career inciting change. Essentially, she encouraged the audience not to worry about what they were fighting against in society. “Focus on what you are fighting FOR.” Despite the heavy subject matter, Ross had the audience laughing throughout her delightfully anecdotal and engaging talk, which was followed by a community conversation moderated by Sterling Clinton-Spellman. This lecture was held at the WaterFire Arts Center amid their current “Eye to Eye” and “Witness” exhibitions of photographic art by Mary Beth Meehan and Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, which created a perfect backdrop. It is an exhibition that could truly only take place in a space with the scale of the Art Center’s stories-high main hall, a virtual airplane hanger of art. Meehan’s poignant portraits of diverse Rhode Island everymen and everywomen are well worth dropping by to see, and they complemented the large, engaged audience nicely, bearing silent witness to the discussion. The series is ongoing; watch waterfire.org for updates and coming attractions. Motif 2021 Music Awards It’s time again – finally! – for Motif’s RI Music Awards. Please help show your support for local music by choosing some of these fine artists. We know a lot of people haven’t been out much over the last year and a half, but either cast your minds back to the before times, or check out the links in our online survey, which will let you assess the music of most of the artists mentioned here. SAVE THE DATE! Monday, August 23, 6 – 9pm at FMH (Fete Music Hall), 103 Dike St, PVD Or hit us up – and spread the word – on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/events/261035492492492 BEST ONLINE STREAMING PERFORMANCE Check Yourself – 7th Annual Holiday Benefit Show on YouTube Joe Potenza at The Parlour MisSter DylaN on Patreon MorganEve Swain at The Knickerbocker Sgt Baker and the Clones at The Parlour Steve Donovan on Facebook Vague Perception on Facebook BEST COVID PIVOT Askew – allowed filming, block parties Dusk – outdoor concerts and movies Galactic Theatre – ice cream and drinks to go Greenwich Odeum – private screenings, rented out marquee The Parlour – rebuilt into recording studio; pizza MUSIC VIDEO (All Genres) Beth Barron “I’m Alive” Fine.