When walking down the BSC, I am sure that you have realized the beautiful and creative banners made by the Marketing Team of the Office of Student Activities (OSA). One of the people that work for OSA, Curstin Carpenter, makes these creatively painted banners for organizations and activities happening on campus. Carpenter is a sophomore majoring in business administration with a concentration in marketing. Additionally, her work is to attend these activities and create social media posts to inform students of the various things that will be happening on or out of campus.

“Anyone who has a love for student organizations and activities and can effectively manage social media platforms for specific events can work in the marketing team of OSA,” Carpenter said. 

Working in this position has given her many skills like managing, organizing and working with a team. The job is very technical, but you do not need to be good at drawing and painting to be a part of it. You just need to be creative and let your inner self be expressed by the different paintings.

“What I enjoy the most is painting the banners and getting to see/hear people refer to my work when walking through the BSC,” Carpenter explained. 

“Applying for the job was simple,” she said. Carpenter applied online through the school website and a few days later she got an interview for the position. “It was a fairly easy process,” she claimed.

The hours of operation are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for a normal schedule. But as an advantage, they give you the opportunity to adjust it by your availability. Carpenter finds that extremely useful because she does not have to be stressed about working and attending classes.

“When getting out of class, I can go to the Marketplace and then head to my on-campus job without any worry and a belly full, which is a good thing,” she said.

There are multiple tasks that must be taken care of before a certain day and time. Not only does one person work on them, but multiple people do, making it fun and entertaining. Carpenter loves her job because it helps sometimes relieve some of the stress she has. It has grown to become her safe place to be when she wants to escape from time to time.

“We could always need help and new people applying for this position,” Carpenter stated.

If anyone is interested in applying for the position, you are welcome to head to the HUB which is located downstairs of the BSC, close to the mail services, and ask for information. At the same time, you could come across other on-campus jobs that OSA offers.

The Sedona Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Bureau recently ended its tourism partnership with the City of Sedona because the local government wouldn’t allow it to restart destination marketing. The move came in the wake of a November election that saw a mayor and council member voted out and that was seen as a referendum on resident attitudes toward tourism.

“It got to the point where somebody had to make a bold decision,” said city councilman Pete Furman. “The chamber pulled the trigger first.”

The non-renewal of the contract for the next fiscal year represents a broader tale of many places rethinking their spending on tourism promotion. Sedona’s tourism bureau is one of a growing list of entities put under greater pressure from legislators and constituents to redirect funds toward destination management and other community goals. A recent Skift megatrend noted that residents in many parts of the world no longer want to be spectators in tourism.

Tourism Surge, Tourism Slump

Two years ago, the Sedona City Council revised its contract with the tourism bureau, stopping the bureau from spending money on destination marketing.

Before the pause, the tourism bureau spent between $500,000 and $600,000 a year on marketing and advertising per year to attract affluent, longer-staying visitors, said Michelle Conway, CEO and president of Sedona Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Bureau. The promotion expenses were only a minority of its expenditure, with destination management the bulk. Yet for the past two years, it only spent money on destination management.

Not everyone’s happy about the move.

Sedona benefited from a surge in tourism in 2021. But last year, business flagged.

Like other rural destinations, Sedona — a hiking and mountain biking destination — is facing wider competition now that the pandemic is over, international travel is open, and cities are attractive again to tourists.

In 2022, Sedona saw a decline in tourist traffic year over year. Meanwhile, direct competitors like Jackson Hole and Napa Valley haven’t seen the same drop and are eating away at Sedona’s share, Conway said.

Many hoteliers are concerned. Occupancy is now down 6.5 percent from its pre-pandemic level. Average daily rates have been dropping.

Hoteliers had been one of the most active stakeholders years ago in pushing for a 0.5 percent addition to the city’s 3 percent bed tax. The 0.5 percent was originally earmarked specifically for tourism promotion. 

Businesses — 60 percent of which are tourism-oriented — are now “suffering” and “asking for help,” Conway said. Some have seen double-digit drops in revenue. On top of lost visitor spending, business operations costs are above pre-Covid levels.

The tourism bureau thought it was time to restart destination marketing. Yet the Sedona City Council wouldn’t budge. It denied requests to jump-start marketing.

To properly support its business stakeholders, the chamber had to break away from the city, its leaders said. It’s confident it will find alternative sources to support future marketing efforts.

2021: The Turning Point

Something of a split between residents and the tourism industry had been appearing before the marketing pause.

Many locals haven’t been happy with changes in their life due to tourism in the last five years, said Ryan Casago, a resident and local vacation rental owner.

The year 2021 was something of a turning point because of overtourism, said Conway. Like other outdoor destinations during the pandemic, Sedona saw an explosion in visitors, with 3.7 million in 2021, up from its annual 3 million, according to the Sedona Chamber of Commerce.

“We were super successful,” said Furman. “Tourists started to flock to Sedona.”

But there were negative consequences.

The city’s road infrastructure was being pushed “close to its limits,” said Furman.

Traffic congestion, longer wait times at restaurants, and poor habits from new outdoor enthusiasts hit the town of 10,000 people. 

The influx of short-term rental properties has cut available housing and changed the community makeup. Conway said there are now more short-term rental rooms than hotel rooms (2,800), which has added to the angst of the locals.

Affordable and available housing has become harder to come by for large segments of the local workforce, said Furman. 

Such stress on community, physical, and natural infrastructure was a common problem among destinations in 2021 and 2022 in response to unprecedented tourism. What commonly followed were communities questioning the value of tourism promotion. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for example, residents have directly questioned its tourism board about ceasing marketing.

Destination marketing tactics like filling in slow seasons and promoting lesser-used trails instead of popular attractions do more harm than good, said Fuman. Lesser known trails not set up for parking suffered overcapacity, for example, which pushed the tourist parking to other locations. 

“All those decisions have unintended consequences of pissing off the locals,” he said. 

Tough Choices

The chamber doesn’t have an alternative funding source yet. The details of which funding model to use to replace the loss of bed tax dollars are still being worked out, but the business community said it’s fully behind whatever the chamber does.

Come July 1, when the current contract ends, the chamber will have to do “what it needs to survive,” said Conway. That may include operational and program cuts. Details on who will be responsible for which destination management programs and projects are still being worked out, but the chamber expects to have less on its plate.

With the contract over, Conway is “excited” about the new opportunities for creative marketing now that it won’t have its hands tied. One area of interest is potentially expanding marketing to include the greater Verde Valley that Sedona sits in — highlighting the region’s diversity of towns, wine country, and art communities.

Meanwhile, the city council is looking at hiring a consultant to help internally manage and mitigate the impacts of tourism.

“I don’t see a lot of energy in the near term to do destination marketing,” said Furman.

After a decade of living in Finland, David Popa has established a fruitful creative collaboration that would be impossible in his native New York City. The artist frequently works on land and sea, particularly the fractured ice floes of the Baltic, to render large-scale portraits and figurative murals that draw connections between the ephemerality of human life and the environment. Whether depicting his wife or newborn child in intimate renderings, he highlights the inevitability of change as time passes, seasons transition, and the climate warms.

Popa’s use of such unconventional canvases emerged from a desire for adventure and child-like play, when he put on a drysuit, climbed onto his paddleboard, and ventured out to a frozen mass. “These spaces were so mysterious and so interesting,” the artist says. “I derived an enormous amount of inspiration from going out into these ethereal spots.” After taking some drone photos of the areas, he began working, spraying the contours of a cheek or lip onto the icy matter.

Left: “Remnants of the Past.” Right: “Prometheus”

Because many of his works are destined to melt and be reabsorbed, Popa opts for natural materials like white chalk from the Champagne region, ochres from France and Italy, and powdered charcoal he makes himself—the latter also plays a small role in purifying the water, leaving it cleaner than the artist found it. Most pieces take between three and six hours to complete, and his work time is dependent on the weather, temperature, and condition of the sea. “The charcoal will sink into the ice and disappear from a very dark shade to a medium shade, so it has to be created very quickly and documented. No to mention the work on the ice will just crack and drift away completely, or the next day it will snow and be completely covered,” he says. “I’m really battling the elements.”

Popa embraces this cyclical process and the lack of control over the fate of his works, which he preserves only through stunning aerial photos. Broadly reflecting themes of existence and time, some of his murals, like “Prometheus” and “Remnants of the Past,” also emphasize shifts in aesthetic impulses. Mimicking Greek sculptures, the works appear “washed up on shore,” drawing connections between antiquity and today and the differences in how we perceive beauty.

Popa will release a new limited-edition print next month, and you can follow that release on his site and Instagram. (via Yatzer)

“Power of the Earth”

“Fractured”

“Redemption”

“Power of the Earth”

Left: “Lautassari.” Right: “Inceptus”

“Mirage”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Working on Ice Floes, David Popa Renders Ephemeral Portraits that Fracture and Split into the Sea appeared first on Colossal.

Hey, readers! This is James Hercher, AdExchanger senior editor, here with our weekly Commerce Media newsletter.

Today, we’re getting into the art side of art and science, with a look at Motion, a creative tech and data visualization startup that sits at the awkward intersection of performance marketing and high-strategy creative.

Motion raised $6 million this week and is riding a wave of creative-focused mar tech, such as Memorable AI raising $2.5 million last October and ad tech vet Omar Tawakol launching Rembrand in February.

But Motion has another wave beneath it, and that’s the powerhouse business channel that is “DTC Twitter,” a bubble of ecommerce brand operators and ad buyers, as Motion Co-Founder and CEO Reza Khadjavi told me Tuesday evening, after news of the round.

Why launch creative tech?

Khadjavi and Motion’s other co-founders previously started or were executives at Shoelace, a DTC-focused social media agency. Shoelace began as SaaS tech, but the market wanted a services and agency company for boutique DTC social advertising.

The Shoelace engineering team, a redundant and expensive part for an agency company, spun out in 2021 and turned into Motion. The jumping off point, according to Khadjavi, was when the SaaS product conjoined the metrics and data the performance or growth marketers are using to the actual creative, like the video or image itself.

Performance marketers try to communicate to creative strategists with pivot tables containing columns of slightly different percentages and cells with labels like “UGC_video_ad_BlackFriday_2,” and it simply doesn’t translate. But when two videos are contrasted, the creative execs understand how production and strategy affect performance outcomes.

For example, say two obscurely labeled cells, each representing one video ad, are being compared for their thumb-stop rate (TSR) – an important metric for brands that reach customers on TikTok and other scrolling video feeds. With standard campaign analytics, that might come in a column labeled TSR containing percent rates within a similar bound. And the information goes unabsorbed.

But show creative strategists two side-by-side videos – one that captures people mid-scroll for a second or two but then loses them, another that doesn’t hook people quickly but has a strong completion rate – and creatives see how the content production impacts ecommerce ad metrics and what to do next with those video elements.

“People have this assumption about the creative team that, ‘Oh, they don’t care about data,’” Khadjavi said. In fact, creative agencies and branding departments are hungry for ways to prove the value of their work.

There are also big media-buying changes that make creative a more important lever for the people buying ads. This includes Apple’s ATT and iOS privacy restrictions, which diminish tracking and user-level targeting, and privacy laws and policies that have propelled Google and Meta to launch their own ad products with tighter control over campaigns.

Performance Max and Advantage+, Google’s and Meta’s respective machine-learning ad systems, give advertisers no choice in targeting creative. In fact, neither reports which videos, images and words were used in the campaign.

But advertisers control the content they create and feed into those machine-learning systems.

The DTC Twitter phenomenon

Motion is built in a community of DTC brands, agencies and tech companies that settled on Twitter as a weird breeding ground, like Atlantic seabirds squashed together on a far-flung rock.

“There’s something special about DTC ecommerce and Twitter,” Khadjavi said. Lots of agency buyers, social consultants and brand operators share their information and strategies very openly. People create deal flow by returning value to the community, he said.

Some of the most prominent CMOs and CEOs on DTC Twitter are early Motion customers, too. HexClad pans, Ridge Wallets, Viori pants and Jones Road Beauty makeup are among the brand logos. Performance agencies like Foxwell Digital, Wpromote and Tinuiti license Motion for their own account services as well.

Aside from banding together to support one another’s businesses, DTC Twitter is an investment source. Before this week’s round, Motion previously was backed by angel investors in the space, including Nik Sharma, who owns a branding agency and invests in DTC ad tech and brands themselves; Adam Turner, CEO of Shopify marketing company Postscript; and Ben Jabbawy, who founded and sold the ecommerce marketing company Privy.

“We’re trying to shine a light on this topic of creative strategy,” Khadjavi said, “and build a bit of a community around that.”



When a creative material’s copyright lapses, it enters the public domain, which means it is no longer subject to trademarks, patents, or intellectual property rights. No individual, company, author, or artist owns it, and it belongs to the public. If this is the case, why is some public domain footage so expensive? This is the question at the core of Richard Misek’s short film “A History of the World According to Getting Images” in which he explores how historically significant footage from newsreels, government agencies, and pioneers of film are “held captive” behind paywalls.

Beyond the history contained within the images, Misek examines footage itself and what happens after it’s captured. He focuses on Getty Images, the world’s largest commercial archive, challenging its control over public footage, which it only makes available through steep licensing fees. In the case of The Miles Brothers’ iconic short film “A Trip Down Market Street,” which captures downtown San Francisco just days before the devastating 1906 earthquake, the film was digitized in 2016 by the Prelinger Archive and made available for free, while Getty charges hundreds or thousands of dollars for the rights to use the footage, depending on its intended use.

Misek parses the unequal power dynamics inherent within capturing life and major events, in addition to the barriers to accessing that footage today. “Newsreel cameras document power, but what strikes me most from my exploration of the Getty Archive, is how much the act of filming itself is an expression of power,” Misek narrates. He points out that footage shot by the government, like the first atomic explosions at Bikini Atoll in 1946, enters the public domain immediately, but that NASA is the only federal agency that releases directly to the public. Misek paid to us use six of the eight full clips in the film, which he sourced from various collections to find the best price.

Whenever I search a news archive, I always hope I’ll find some images that aren’t about power. And once in a while I do. But by and large, the past offers no surprises. As it is the source of all the inequalities and injustices that still exist. That’s why I made this film. Its aim is not only to share images’ stories, it’s to release them from captivity.

By paying to use the full clips, Misek slyly adds previously inaccessible images into the public realm by claiming no copyright, making the film available to stream online and download in full for free. You can find more of his work on Vimeo and his site.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article ‘A History of the World According to Getty Images’ Challenges the Power Structures Inherent in the Capture and Control of Footage appeared first on Colossal.

In 2021, I was selected to attend the Innovators Forum – a leadership summit of 28 teens from First Tee chapters across the country. I spent the week in San Jose, California learning about innovation, leadership, and sustainability. Each of us First Tee students were tasked with developing our own innovative service projects to implement in our communities.

Randi Sparks, the owner of Pyrogenic Arts, has always been a creative person. After attaining a degree in art and spending some time teaching, she decided it was time to begin pursuing her own creative path. She started Pyrogenic Arts as a way to take care of the professional side of creating in a legitimate way. 

Pyrogenic Arts is a creative company that sells colorful, hand-made ceramic objects, fiber art and jewelry inspired by nature, anatomy and horror/sci-fi/fantasy pop culture. Sparks is able to put her own creativity into every object she makes in order to provide the most unique, high-quality product to each customer.

Sparks first came to the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at the U of A looking for help with the business’ financials. Stephanie Parsons, business consultant for the center, assisted her by running a financial analysis of the business and walking her through the next steps. At first, taxes seemed daunting to Sparks, but Parsons boosted her confidence in being able to run her business and understand them.

“This year, I felt so much more confident about doing [my taxes] and helping other creatives feel better about the process too!”

Since starting her business, Sparks has taken many steps in order to make sure it would be successful. Between consultations from the Small Business and Technology Development Center and Fayetteville Public Library’s “From Maker to Market,” Sparks has learned how to navigate many entrepreneurial challenges such as tracking expenses, filing taxes, starting an LLC, marketing and setting costs for products. 

“Cultivate community,” Sparks said. “Spend more time marketing your work to the people who will get it and appreciate it the most.”  

Sparks states that she feels lucky to have the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center as a free resource in the community, filled with knowledgeable people who are happy to help business owners learn and answer any questions. The consultants with the ASBTDC will always do the research to make sure every business owner is able to find the right information they need, no matter the situation.

Visit the Pyrogenic Arts website.

About the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at the University of Arkansas: The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center, UAF helps small business in Northwest Arkansas thrive. With offices in Fayetteville and Bentonville, ASBTDC consultants provide one-on-one confidential consulting and guidance to current and prospective business owners in Benton, Boone, Carroll, Madison, Newton, and Washington counties. The center offers in-person and virtual trainings and workshops to help entrepreneurs gain the knowledge and skill necessary for success. The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration through a partnership with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and is a unit of the Division of Economic Development, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Last spring, the 29th Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival was well under way at the Lyceum Theatre in downtown San Diego when its founding organization, San Diego Repertory Theatre, collapsed with an insurmountable $2 million of debt.

San Diego Rep is no more, but JFest is rising again. Thanks to an outpouring of support from Jewish community organizations, private donors, international artists and local venue operators who have offered both financial support and performance space, the 30th-anniversary JFest will return June 1 through July 16 in a reimagined form.

In the past, JFest held most of its events at the Rep’s former home, the city-owned Lyceum Theatre. The new festival will present events all over the county at venues in La Jolla, Encinitas, Balboa Park, Hillcrest, Solana Beach, East Village and Carlsbad. This year’s venues include two professional theater companies, a Universalist church, a farm, a movie theater and a Jewish temple.

JFest’s founding artistic director, Todd Salovey, said he was overwhelmed by the community’s desire to rescue the festival, particularly the generous sponsorship by the fest’s longtime donors, the Lipinsky family of San Diego, as well as a new producing partner, the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla.

But even with those offers of support, Salovey said it was herculean effort to cobble together a new management team and festival program. He said it was touch and go for months, but several weeks ago, he and his team saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

“We felt like a start-up,” he said. “There was a lot of work to do without us knowing what would actually happen. About a month ago, we all looked at each other and realized this is going to happen.”

Theatre Dybbuk of Los Angeles, pictured last year, will perform “The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad” at the 2023 Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival.

(Taso Papadakis)

Salovey has returned in the role of artistic director. JFest’s new managing director is Matt Graber, who served as director of marketing and later as director of external affairs at San Diego Rep from 2015 to 2022 and is now chief marketing officer for San Diego Opera.

Joining them as festival advisers are Rebecca Myers, producer of the fest’s 3-year-old Whole Megillah Jewish New Play Festival, and Ali Viterbi, a festival producer and an associate artistic director for more than a decade.

Graber said this summer’s festival will be a “proof of concept” test to see if the public will support the festival in its new form. If it is successful, the creative team plans to put together a new mission, vision and values statement as well as a three-year fiscal plan.

Despite the challenging year in relaunching the festival, Graber and Salovey said they feel optimistic about the future.

“It has given us a freedom that we can make the festival take on different programming and be more ambitious,” Salovey said. “That will be super exciting.”

Besides working with the local artists that past festival-goers know, Salovey said he would love to attract even more international touring Jewish artists such as frequent past performer Hershey Felder and this summer’s Perla Batalla. He’d also like to produce more new events, like this summer’s 24-hour “Eco-Jewish Play Fest,” and perhaps partner on full theatrical productions with other local theater companies.

But the festival’s core goals won’t change.

“We love that our audience is not just Jewish,” Salovey said. “It’s important we demystify and de-stereotype the images of what we think Jewish people are and [that] we develop an audience across communities.”

Graber said a rising tide of anti-Semitism both in the United States and abroad has made it more important than ever for the festival to expand and diversify its audience.

“We want to represent Jews of many hues and we want to take the festival out to people,” he said. “We have to do what we can to ‘un-otherize’ ourselves. … One of the best ways to un-otherize people is through art. We want to represent the entire breadth and weight of the diaspora.”

2023 JFest

When: Thursday, June 1, through Sunday, July 16

Cost: $18-$50

Information: sdjfest.org

Schedule:

• Festival launch party: 7:30 p.m. June 1, Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. Details to come.

CCAE Theatricals’ world-premiere musical “Witnesses” won the top prize at the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle’s 2022 Craig Noel Awards.

(Ken Jacques)

• “Witnesses” concert: One-night reunion concert-style performance of CCAE Theatricals’ award-winning world-premiere 2022 musical inspired by the diaries of five European Jewish teenagers who died in the Holocaust. 2 p.m. June 4, Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, La Jolla.

• “Judaism & Art” by Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik: The senior rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan will be the festival keynote speaker. 7:30 p.m. June 5, Congregation Adat Yeshurun, 8625 La Jolla Scenic Drive North, La Jolla.

• The Whole Megillah New Jewish Play Festival: “Unapologetically Jewish” new plays will be presented at local theaters. 7:30 p.m. June 7 and 7 p.m. June 11 at The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park; 7:30 p.m. July 6 and 2 p.m. July 9 at New Village Arts, 2787 State St., Carlsbad.

• “Neshama — Music of the Soul”: A communitywide concert of pop, folk, klezmer, classical, Sephardic, dance and Middle Eastern music. 7:30 p.m. June 8, The Old Globe, Balboa Park.

• 14th annual Woman of Valor: Celebration of six San Diego Jewish women — Annie Benaroch, Amelia Glaser, Jan Landau, Fanny Krasner Lebovits, Sheila Lipinsky and Beth Sirull. 1 p.m. June 11, Leichtag Commons, 441 Saxony Road, Encinitas.

• “Hereville”: Family-friendly musical by Robby Sandler and Lizzie Hagstead about a time-traveling, monster-fighting orthodox Jewish girl. 7 p.m. June 11 at The Old Globe, Balboa Park, and 2 p.m. July 9 at New Village Arts, Carlsbad.

Perla Batalla will perform some of Leonard Cohen’s lesser-known songs and share anecdotes about their friendship on June 15.

(Courtesy photo)

• Perla Batalla in “House of Cohen”: The Grammy-nominated Batalla, who once toured as a backup singer with Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, performs some of his lesser-known songs and shares anecdotes about their friendship. 7:30 p.m. June 15, Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, La Jolla.

• Theatre Dybbuk presents “The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad”: This Los Angeles-based Jewish theater company presents its latest play, exploring the history and theatricality of one of William Shakespeare’s most controversial plays. 2 p.m. June 18, Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, La Jolla.

Singer Matisyahu will appear June 20 as part of the San Diego Jewish Arts Festival.

(Charles Vidal)

• Matisyahu in concert: This Jewish American singer, known for his pop hit “One Day,” performs reggae, rap, beatboxing and alternative pop. 8 p.m. June 20, Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach.

• 22nd Klezmer Summit: The World of Jewish Music: Yale Strom, Elizabeth Schwartz and Hot Pstromi will perform Jewish music from Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East with guests Farhad Bahrami, Corale Thuet, Robert Zelickman and Fred Benedetti. 7:30 p.m. June 21, First Universalist Unitarian Church of San Diego, 298 W. Arbor Drive, Hillcrest.

• “Recordially Yours, Lou Curtiss”: Screening of Yale Strom’s new documentary that chronicles the life and times of local audiophile and raconteur Lou Curtiss, who created both the San Diego Folk Festival and the Adams Ave. Unplugged Festival and ran Folk Arts Rare Records in San Diego. 7 p.m. June 25, Digital Gym Cinema, Park & Market, 1100 Market St., East Village. The screening will be preceded by a talk about Jews and folk music at 6:15 p.m.

• “Chagall”: This concert reading, created by writer-composer Yale Strom and writer-director Todd Salovey, traces how Bella and Marc Chagall became refugees in their lives and art. 7:30 p.m. July 6, New Village Arts, Carlsbad.

• Eco-Jewish Play Fest: Coastal Roots Farm will collaborate with Rebecca Fletcher on this new event, in which seven writers, directors and stage managers and 21 actors will be given 24 hours to create seven short plays inspired by the farm’s core Jewish values of sustainable agriculture and food justice. 6 p.m. July 16, Leichtag Commons, Encinitas. ◆