This year, supporting the arts has been more difficult than usual; being unable to attend concerts, theatre productions, visiting museums, workshops, galleries and many more. Despite this, there are ways to remotely attend these venues with everything being shifted online.
Some examples of this are;
The website “Bandsintown” is currently live-streaming concerts online, including the music of popular and indie artists. This is a good way to remotely attend a concert and support artists whose concerts have been cancelled due to Covid. Some examples of these are, Harry Styles, Foo Fighters, Hayley Williams and many more.
Some music artists are doing VIP online meet and greet sessions, which are available through this website. It is important to support the arts in current times due to the lack of support by concerts etc.
Another way to remotely attend an art-driven establishment is through the Forced Entertainment website. Forced entertainment is a theatre company, consisting of 6 theatre workers, that creates contemporary theatre productions and runs projects within the community.
They are currently creating ‘table top’ at-home productions of Shakespeare, taking Shakespeare in a contemporary way. One performance they did was Shakespeare with household items explaining the performance, and using the items as different characters. These productions are running through October and November.
Some museums and zoos are holding virtual live tours and 360 tours. Most of these tours are free but take donations in order to keep the zoos/ museums open. Chester Zoo hosts live tours and takes donations for these tours.
Pontio in Bangor also hosts workshops and live performances which are good to follow if you are a fan of theatre and would like to support the local theatre. The production of Faust is currently in the making in Pontio, by Theatre Branwen.
Therefore make sure to support the arts this year, and attend as many virtual productions as you can.