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

该项目将通过表演的数字中介将中国传统戏曲吸引到新的城市观众中，成为上海的一个遗产，专注于上海全女性越剧，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提供机会，与公共部门合作，促进中小企业的业务发展，建立一个将增强上海城市创意经济的多样性和可持续性的“创意链”。越剧最初是在20世纪初浙江女工涌入不断扩张的上海纺织业后从浙江农村进入上海的，在那里它演变成了一种与上海女性表演者和观众认同的城市流行文化形式。上世纪90年代，全国性的国企改革、纺织厂关闭和工人裁员切断了传统受众和国家赞助。M50创意集群是在这样一家纺织厂的原址上建立起来的，此后发展成为世界知名的创意集群。目前，它拥有来自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。如今，它是中国经济转型的标志--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，没有与中国传统戏曲有关的存在，也没有旅游业或其他文学作品为游客提供这种联系或历史。该项目将重新将M50与越剧的历史联系起来，并将越剧作为一种不断演变的艺术形式重新呈现给当代城市观众；并在一个现在以当代艺术(包括媒体和数字作品)闻名的地点做到这一点。该项目将通过档案、历史和当代受众研究以及与当地企业和利益相关者的合作，在M50产生一系列特定于公共地点的装置。这些装置将使用数字媒体向广大公众再现越剧的各个方面，以及它与M50的历史联系。这将包括参观者使用iPad作为手持导游，大规模投射表演装置，在监视器上对背景材料和其他材料进行特定地点的筛选，以及促进参观者的参与和将媒体嵌入具有历史或当代意义的互动对象。该项目还将制作一部纪录片，一本共同编辑的书，并向上海市政府提交一份报告，以确保尽可能广泛的传播。该项目将包括两个公开研讨会，将邀请来自英国和中国的感兴趣的各方在项目发展和达到顶峰的过程中对其影响进行贡献和辩论。我们的案例研究旨在展示如何通过吸引新的城市观众观看越剧，在公共部门和私营部门的合作中建立创意产业链。在这个创意产业链中，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，是音乐业务、设计商品和对传统表演艺术的重新诠释之间的关系。这一创意产业链旨在超过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。通过这些方式，该项目将为上海建设多元化、创造性和可持续发展的全球文化城市的雄心做出贡献。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样板。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.