Tag Archives: weekend

May 1 2021

If You Build It, They Will Come

Happy Birthday to the Arts Centre!

We built it, and wow, did you come! In your droves, from every corner of the earth (although I don’t think we’ve cracked Antarctica yet)!

Notes From Xanadu – the online arts centre – is one year old today! We opened with a bang, featuring 21 pieces of new work over the May bank holiday weekend, and established a global audience right from the start, hitting six of the seven continents during the four days of our launch.  Born in the early days of the Covid 19 pandemic, we reached out to the growing online community with something unique, and we have continued to do so and to grow as one lockdown led to another.

To celebrate our birthday, we’re doing something similar to that launch weekend, over three days. We will be releasing new work at intervals over the weekend. We have photography, knitting, writing, comedy, music and more. Links to each piece will be provided via our Twitter and Facebook accounts as they happen. If you are reading this, and you have friends who you think might also be interested, please share the link with them in whichever way suits you. We will be delighted to get shares of any kind to any or all of the work featured during the birthday celebrations.

Going forward, the plan for the arts centre is to release work as an when suitable submissions are received, and to share news about what’s going on in the theatre, rather than having a regular slot each week. There will be posts in Twitter and Facebook when this happens, but alongside that a mailing list will be set up, so that anyone who wants to can be notified whenever new stuff is released. We will let you know when that is in place.

This will allow me, as artistic director, to concentrate more of my energies on the theatre: our regular events such as Stitch ‘n’ Bitch and Canadh agus Caint, alongside new plays and concerts (there’s a brilliant one of those coming up later this month, more details during the weekend).

Although we have a large team of contributors, actors, backstage helpers and so on, Notes From Xanadu is basically run by one person – a person who is chronically ill and disabled (would you be surprised to hear that the arts centre and theatre both operate out of a bungalow in the west of Ireland?) – so a regular PR campaign is unsustainable. But for this birthday weekend at least, we can pull out all the stops!

Enjoy the weekend! Let the party begin!

Mary Tynan

Everyone who works on Notes From Xanadu and Xanadu Online Theatre is a volunteer. If you would like to join us in any capacity, please send me an email on notesfromxanadu@hotmail.com.

 

Mar 10 2021

Four is Fair

You know what? You deserve a day off. Why don’t you take a long weekend, stay home on Monday? Hey, it’s cool, don’t worry, you can tell them the guy in Notes From Xanadu said it was okay.

In fact, take every Monday. Or maybe Friday. Yeah, Fridays would probably be better. Sure, why not? Take Fridays off from now on. Yes, you – all of you. No problem. You’re welcome.

See, that was easy.

What if we all just started working a four-day week? Simply downed tools, shut off the PC, parked the train, trousered the last brown envelope… all on Thursday evening. Then rang in sick, like the Blue Flu, every seven days.

Yes, those phone calls would be awkward at first: “Well, I guess it is strange how we’re all sick again this Friday boss, but (pinches nose, coughs) I rilly habe a bery bad cold.”  Yes, there would be fury at first. Yes, some of us, many of us, might be fired. But we would be fired for the greater good. You can’t make an omelette without a few pioneers getting arrows in their backs.

And after a while, we wouldn’t have to ring in at all. Eventually, even those most incensed by this great leap backward would capitulate. Owner-managers, CEOs, bosses of every kidney would, after a while, throw up their hands in despair and start taking their mistresses to Kinsale every Friday (metaphorically speaking, of course – at least till the pandemic is under control). After all, how can you work if there’s no-one to work with?

Clients and customers too would learn to appreciate this extended breathing space at the end of the traditional work cycle. Even foreign trading partners would come to terms with it: “Ah oui, the lazy Irish … but what can you do, uh?” In time, and with an easterly wind, our bold initiative would sneak across every European border, like Johnny Logan and the smoking ban. And inevitably, other continents would also follow suit. The grassroots support is already there, worldwide – after all, who doesn’t want to work less? – and once Ireland is out there as proof of concept, nation after nation will tumble before this beautiful historical tide.

With reduced working hours comes reduced productivity, and from reduced productivity flows the manna of reduced prices, thereby slowing inflation and gradually bringing down the cost of living. Possibly. While I’m making stuff up, let’s say also that the social and economic sea-change of a four-day week would, within 12 months, end the current global fiscal crisis, boost consumer confidence and spending, cure Covid, slash the price of oil and put a 64-inch plasma TV in the arms of every schoolchild in the world.

Where did it come from, anyway, this inviolable figure of 40 hours’ work per week?  It’s so uneven, so awkward – such an unwieldy figure. It should be rounded down. Maybe to 30. That’s a nice handy number.

The first step is up to you. Enjoy the long weekend.