Too many entertainment choices online? Check out this new site for NW arts
The pandemic has forced all of us to change the way we go about our daily lives -- from work to school to grocery shopping.
Even our social lives have migrated to various digital platforms. We have Zoom happy hours, Google Hangout coffee dates, and we stream entertainment like never before.
Unless you’re super savvy, you probably rely on recommendations from friends or other trusted sources to find links to good music, movies or streaming performances. A new aggregator website—the Northwest Arts Streaming Hub, NASH--hopes to become your one-stop location when it comes to finding new and streaming offerings created by Northwest artists.
“Think of it as an aggregator site,” says filmmaker and NASH co-founder John Gordon Hill. “We don’t host the material, we just direct people to where it is.”
NASH was a response to an immediate need.
“On March 11, Governor Inslee basically said any venue over 250 seats was closed,” Hill said. “A few days later it was down to zero. And I realized that all of my friends in the performing arts were basically unemployed.”
Some of those artists had the skills—and the money—to post their work online. But Hill and his collaborators wanted to make sure that artists without the means or the necessary technology also had what they needed to stream their work. Private philanthropists provided NASH’s seed money; neither artists nor audiences need to pay to post or stream content from NASH. Although the participating artists don’t get paid, they’re encouraged to seek donations through the site.
The NASH website is organized by artistic genre. You can search for music, multi-media art, dance, and more. Hill says they’d like to add more content. A selection committee vets submissions to ensure for quality, plus a diversity of voices.
Right now NASH is dedicated to regional artists, arts organizations and arts education groups, but Hill says the idea could spread to other parts of the country. The organizers want NASH to live on even after social gathering restrictions are lifted and theaters and clubs can welcome back audiences.
“Streaming is an art form in its own right,” Hill says. “It’s not a replacement for live performance, it’s something different.”
The NASH site is live, although still in beta mode.
RADIOACTIVE MUSICALS
KUOW’s youth journalism program Radioactive has teamed up with the 5th Avenue Theatre’s Rising Star Project to present 4 mini-musicals based on youth reported stories. They’ll be streamed on Facebook Live Friday May 8 and Saturday May 9 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to anyone, but organizers would like you to RSVP here.
