Popular performance for new urban audiences: reconnecting M50 creative cluster with Shanghai All-Female Yue Opera

该项目将通过数字媒介将传统的中国戏曲表演融入上海的一个文化遗产，重点关注上海女儿剧，并恢复其与上海M50当代艺术创意集群的历史联系。该项目将探索这种与传统形式的接触如何为促进中小企业与公共部门合作的商业发展提供机会，建立一条“创意链”，以增强上海城市创意经济的多样性和可持续性。20世纪初，随着浙江女工涌入上海不断扩大的纺织工业，越剧首先从浙江农村进入上海，并在那里演变成一种与上海女性表演者和观众有关的城市流行文化形式。上世纪90年代，全国范围内的国企改革、纺织厂的关闭和工人的裁员，切断了传统的听众，也切断了国家的赞助。M50创意集群就是在这样一家纺织厂的旧址上建立起来的，后来发展成为一个世界知名的创意集群。目前拥有来自20多个国家和地区的140多家艺术家工作室、画廊和其他创意公司，展示国际当代艺术。今天，它是中国经济转型的象征——从“中国制造”到“中国创造”。然而，尽管它与越剧有历史联系，但在M50没有与中国传统戏剧有关的存在，也没有旅游或其他文献为游客提供这种联系或历史。该项目将重新连接M50与越剧的历史联系，并将越剧作为一种不断发展的艺术形式呈现给当代城市观众；而且是在一个以当代艺术闻名的地方，包括媒体和数字作品。该项目将通过档案、历史和当代观众研究以及与当地企业和利益相关者的合作，在M50形成一系列特定于公共场所的装置。这些装置将使用数字媒体向广大公众展示越剧的各个方面，以及越剧与M50的历史联系。这将包括参观者使用ipad作为手持向导，大型表演投影装置，特定地点的背景和其他材料的监视器放映，以及促进游客参与和将媒体嵌入与历史或当代相关的互动对象中。该项目还将制作一部纪录片、一本合编的书，并向上海市政府提交一份报告，以确保尽可能广泛地传播。该项目将包括两场公开研讨会，届时来自英国和中国的相关人士将参与讨论该项目在发展过程中的影响。我们的案例研究旨在展示如何通过公共和私营部门之间的合作，吸引新的城市观众来欣赏越剧，从而建立一个创意产业链。在这条创意产业链中，私营部门和公共部门共同努力，确定特定的消费群体并开发当地市场：在这种情况下，音乐业务、设计商品和重新诠释传统表演艺术之间的关系。该创意产业链旨在超越研究项目的持续时间，并为上海创意经济发展的多样性和可持续性做出贡献。在这些方面，该项目将有助于上海建立一个多元化、创造性和可持续性的全球文化城市的雄心。该项目还将为中国其他传统戏曲形式的可持续发展提供一个典范，全国有多达300种传统戏曲形式。

This project will engage new urban audiences with traditional Chinese opera through the digital mediation of performance into a heritage site in Shanghai, focusing on Shanghai All-Female Yue Opera and reviving its historical connection to the Shanghai M50 contemporary arts creative cluster. The project will explore how this kind of engagement with traditional forms may provide opportunities to enhance small and medium enterprise business development in partnership with the public sector, establishing a 'creative chain' that will enhance the diversity and sustainability of Shanghai's urban creative economy. Yue Opera first entered Shanghai from the rural countryside of Zhejiang province following the influx of Zhejiang female workers to the expanding Shanghai textile industry in the early 20th century, where it evolved into an urban popular cultural form identified with female performers and audience in Shanghai. In the 1990s, nationwide state enterprise reform, textile factory closures and worker redundancies cut off the traditional audience as well as state patronage. The M50 creative cluster was established at the site of one such textile factory and has since developed into a world-renowned creative cluster. It currently houses more than 140 artists' studios, galleries and other creative companies, from over 20 countries and regions, presenting international contemporary art. It is today the symbol of China's transitional economy - from 'made in China' to 'created in China'. However, despite its historical association with Yue Opera, at M50 there is no presence associated with traditional Chinese opera and no tourism or other literature providing this link or history for visitors. This project will reconnect M50 to its historical association with Yue Opera, and re-present Yue Opera for a contemporary urban audience as an art form of constant evolution; and do so at a site now renowned for contemporary art, including media and digital work. The project will result in a series of public site-specific installations at M50 developed through archival, historical and contemporary audience research and collaboration with local businesses and stakeholders. The installations will use digital media to re-present aspects of Yue Opera, and its historical links to M50, to a broad public. This will include the use of iPads by visitors acting as hand-held guides, large-scale projected installations of performance, the site-specific screening on monitors of contextual and other material, as well as the facilitation of visitor participation and the embedding of media into interactive objects of historical or contemporary relevance. The project will also result in a documentary video, a co-edited book, and a report to the Shanghai Municipal Government, to ensure the widest possible dissemination. The project will include two public symposia that will bring interested parties from the UK and China to contribute to and debate the implications of the project as it develops and in its culmination. Our case study aims to demonstrate how by engaging new urban audiences for Yue Opera a creative industry chain may be built in collaborations between public and private sectors. In this creative industry chain, the private and public sectors work together to identify specific consumer groups and develop local markets: in this case in relationships between music business, design merchandise, and the reinterpretation of traditional performing arts. This creative industry chain is intended to outlive the duration of the research project and contribute to the diversity and sustainability of the creative economy development in Shanghai. In these ways, the project will contribute to Shanghai's ambitions to build a global cultural city of diversity, creativity and sustainability. The project will also offer a model relevant to the sustainable development of other traditional opera forms across China, of which there are up to 300 nationwide.