Jarvis Joins the Judges
Candlestar's role as brokers of significant associations on behalf of its clients has been highlighted this week in London and Dubai . In Dubai we have secured partnerships for the Magic of Persian charity with Quintessentially, Jumeriah and Canvas magazine. While in London the team has just secured Jarvis Cocker's agreement to act as a judge for the 2008 Sovereign European Art Prize. He joins, among others, Honorary Chair Sir Peter Blake and Tim Marlow (White Cube). Candlestar's networks have already delivered significant associations for the Prize including those with Guggenheim, Hayward , Bonhams and with 2008 charity partner Kids Co.

Angel of the Lower East Side
Candlestar have been appointed by the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts (New York) to develop a series of exhibitions in the UK by the sculptor Angel Orensanz. The Angel Orensanz Foundation was established in 1992 and has since worked with such institutions as  PS I; The Goethe Institute, New York; the Italian Cultural Institute; New York University; Columbia University; Princeton University and the National Russian Museum of St. Petersburg, as well as independent artists from all over the world develop educational and artistic projects. The Candlestar production team is currently researching potential London exhibition spaces on behalf o]f the Foundation http://www.orensanz.org/.
The news of the partnership  with the Orensanz Foundation came at the end of a hectic few days for Candlestar whose communications team was also in New York to launch brief the City’s arts journalists about the Gulf Art Fair before heading up to Toronto for the ACU PR and Communications conference and then back to Europe (Venice ) for the launch of the 2006/07 Sovereign European Art Prize.

Nominations Building for  the Sovereign European Art Prize 2006/07
Almost from the moment it launched in Venice nominations for the Sovereign European Art Prize have been arriving steadily at the Candlestar office. The criteria for nomination have been tightened up considerably and the network of advisers has widened to include a wide range of country based experts including Tim Marlow (UK), Vanessa Quang (France) and Tomas Pospinzl (Czech Republic) and artists including David Mach and Paola Pivi. Nominations close at midnight on 31 December 2006. The thirty paintings shortlisted for the €25,000 Prize will be announced in early February and the auction gala dinner will be held on March 15 2007. Click here to view the terms and conditions for the Sovereign European Art Prize 2006/07. 

New Media Team Revamp Gulf Art Fair site and turn to face the Association of Commonwealth Universities
The Candlestar new media and design  team have recently completed a major overhaul of the site for the Gulf Art Fair. Everything has been changed – branding, content, look and feel. This work was completed in just over a month as the site needed to be ready for a second round of media briefings in New York.  As soon as that project was completed the team turned its attention the website of the Association of Commonwealth Universities – developing a holding page in advance of the complete re-development of the site http://www.acu.ac.uk/- which requires similar attention but may take slightly longer…

Candlestar marketing team support Rochester’s strategy
Following a series of briefing meetings at the College over the summer followed by an away day with the College’s senior team, the Candlestar marketing team has produced a detailed draft marketing strategy for the Rochester.  This first draft is currently being considered by the College which will shortly identify  a number of priority areas.

Sovereign at the Guggenheim
On a blazing July day (the twenty second) 150 VIPs – artists, critics, journalists, curators, business leaders and even an ambassador or two came from all parts of Europe and elsewhere to be at the launch of the Sovereign Art Foundation’s 2006/07 European Art Prize. The launch, held on the exclusive roof terrace of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection was attended by the Foundation’s new Italian judge Enzo di Martino, historian of the Venice Biennale, and Venice- based adviser Chiara Zampettini. The speaker’s included Dr Rossana Pittelli, from the Italian Cultural Institute in London and Ian Le Bretton representing the Sovereign Group and they both  stressed the Foundation’s gratitude to the Guggenheim Foundation for supporting the Prize in this way. The €25,000 Prize will be presented in March 2007 and in the meantime the Prize’s advisers will help seek out painters from all over Europe and the panel of judges – which will again this  year be chaired by Sir Peter Blake – will shortlist 30 of the most outstanding painters

7July 2006
Sovereign European Art Prize 2006/07 to launch at Guggenheim Collection in Venice
The Sovereign Art Foundation, working with Candlestar, will launch the 2006/07 European Prize at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, on Saturday 22 July 2006. This Prize is the Foundation's principal fundraising device, whose proceeds go to support worthy charitable causes in the field of the arts. Last year's prize proved to be a success and received significant media attention for the winning entry – a painting by the English artist Susan Gunn. Sir Peter Blake will again lead an impressive panel of judges. The nominations, made by internationally known artists, will close in December 2006 and a shortlist will be announced in January 2007. The prize will culminate with an exhibition in Venice in February 2007, followed by a gala dinner and an auction at Bonham's magnificent new showrooms in New Bond Street, London. Proceeds from the auction will go to charity.

7July 2006
The Department of Tourism and Commerce of Dubai gives support to the inaugural Gulf Art Fair
The Department of Tourism and Commerce of Dubai will support the inaugural Gulf Art Fair, which will take place in Dubai, 7-10 March 2007. Candlestar is full of activity promoting the event, as fifty of the world's top international galleries will take part in the first major art fair in one of the wealthiest economies in the world, which – as a tax-free location – offers significant benefits to dealers and collectors. The event will add to the cultural profile of a City that aspires to become a major centre for the global art market. The recent boom in art sales in London is contributed to the most enthusiastic art collectors from Asia ; this world-class event will bring art to their doorsteps. Click here to view the Press Release

Commonwealth Communications in Australia
For the last four months the Candlestar communications and marketing team has been developing plans for an integrated communications and marketing plan for the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). That strategy which seeks to reposition the ACU as a powerful global education brand was presented to the ACU Council at their meeting in Adelaide on 8 April 2006. That meeting was held at the start of the ACU's Conference of Executive Heads of Commonwealth Universities during which the Candlestar team ran the Conference Communications office in Adelaide and London . Our work on behalf of the ACU now moves into an operational mode as we start implementing the agreed strategy.

Blending at the British Library
Candlestar New Media director, Fariba Farshad, delivered the keynote address at a conference on teaching and learning, at the British Library on 28 April 2006. The conference was attended by 200 people and was organised by the University College for the Creative Arts. Fariba Farshad's talk entitled The Art of Blending outlined how learning technology works best for art and design institutions when it is allied with traditional skills and techniques. Click here to view "the Art of Blending" presentatiion
and veiw speaker's notes.

Gulf Art Engagement
The Candlestar communications and marketing team has just been appointed to develop and deliver an integrated communications and marketing programme for the first Gulf Art Fair which is to be held at the spectacular Madinar Arena on Jumeriah Beach , Dubai between 7-10 March 2007. This will be the first opportunity for leading international galleries to participate in a major art fair in one of the wealthiest economies in the world.

Susan Gunn Wins First European Art Prize
The inaugural €25,000 (£17,000) Sovereign European Art Prize 2005 prize has been won by the British artist Susan Gunn. It didn't escape the press that Susan was the wife former Norwich and Scotland goalkeeper Bryan Gunn and as a result the award was greeted by a welcome blast of publicity that extended from Norfolk to Kerala and from Scotland to Sydney. The Prize was presented by Howard Bilton, the founder and chairman of the Sovereign Art Foundation, at a special gala dinner and auction held at Bonhams, New Bond Street. Two artists won of the public vote which was open to visitors to the gallery and to the Art Foundation website -the Dutch artist Bas Coenegracht and the British artist Pamela Golden. The exhibition of paintings short listed for the Sovereign European Art Prize 2005 ran at Bonhams between 4 – 17 January. Nearly 400 people attended the preview evening on 5 January and the guests at the gala dinner and auction a week later included Sir Peter Blake, Kate Adie and many luminaries from the European Art scene.

Candlestar Goes Global
The Candlestar communications team have been appointed to handle media relations on behalf of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. This will cover communications leading up to the conference of executive head of universities that takes place in Adelaide 9 -12 April 2006. The team will also work with the ACU to develop a communications plan and to advise on the inaugural global conference on communications and marketing which will be held in Toronto between 17 – 19 July 2006. Further details of the Executive Heads conference can be found at http://www.adelaide.edu.au/acu2006/ .

Online at Rochester
Candlestar's digital team has been appointed to help steer the development of e-learning at the University College of the Creative Arts at Rochester . The Postgraduate team supported by Head of Library and IT specialists will champion the e-learning development at Rochester. The team is currently working on pilot projects with a view to developing an online Masters' degree.

Going for Power
Next month one of Candlestar's associated artists, the filmmaker Ken McMullen, will launch the largest public art work in Europe . The work entitled Lumin et Lumine , was made in association with CERN in Geneva , and features a continuous six minute film loop projected on to the side of British Energy's power station at Torness. The aim is for the work, which has been produced under the aegis of the Demarco European Art Foundation, to run for a full year. As the power station sits next to both the main road and rail links between Edinburgh and London Mc Mullen's installation will attract an audience of over 16 million people. For more information about Ken McMullen go to http://www.geocities.com/kenmcm_2000/filmpages/biography.htm .

Candlestar's Digital Team support Ravensbourne's Greenwich Move
The Candlestar digital team has this month been appointed to advise Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication on the development of   a learning strategy to build an actual and   virtual learning space that will enable a new approach to the delivery of learning and teaching in education. The College's mission to ‘ champion the creative exploration of digital technologies in design and communication'. In advance of its planned move to a new signature building on the Greenwich peninsula in 2008, the College has launched a series of projects to prototype the new learning environments that will be required by this new building  

Europe Welcomes Art Prize
The European Art Prize that Candlestar designed and are co-ordinating for the Sovereign Art Foundation, has attracted an enormous response from European painters.   Nearly 300 nominations have come in from across Europe – from Finland, Norway and Latvia to Greece and Cyprus and from Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic to Eire and the Iberian peninsula.   The Prize's advisers including leading gallerists, critics and cultural attaches recently assembled in London to select a long list of paintings and this has now been sent   on to the judging panel who are in the process of selecting a shortlist of 30 paintings. Their deciso is du eon 18 November 2005.

A programme in support of the Joash Woodrow Retrospective- Ben Uri Gallery & RCA, Autumn 2005
108 Fine Art, Harrogate have invited Candlestar Ltd to use their extensive contacts in the London art world and media to support two major retrospectives of the work of Joash Woodrow. An under-mentioned genius from the same era as Peter Blake, Kramer, Wolmark and Gertler, but quite unlike his contemporaries, Woodrow remains uncelebrated and widely unknown. The purpose of these exhibitions to bolster the profile of this important artist. The first of the two shows takes place at the Ben Uri Gallery (between 12th September - 20the November) and the second is at the Royal College of Art (18th -23rd October). Through the development of this project the Candlestar team seek to play a key role in the unfolding public (and art world) appreciation of the work of an artist of the first rank.

New Candelstar production: Art, Poetry and Particle Physics.
Released in October 2005, Art, Poetry and Particle Physics is derived from the internationally acclaimed project Signatures of the Invisible devised by Michael Benson and Ken McMullen and which resulted in exhibitions in London, Beijing, Rome, Geneva, Lisbon and New York. This engaging film directed by Ken McMullen shows Berger in discussion with scientists working at the World's largest particle physics laboratory at CERN in Geneva . The film is a long running collection of dialogue and collaborations between Berger and leading theoretical and experimental physicists John March-Russel and Michael Doser. Throughout the film Berger brings an infectious curiosity to each of his encounters adding a new dimension of understanding to the value of science and culture today.

Web-based best practice resource: a feasibility study for the General Teaching Council for England (GTC)
Fariba Farshad, Head of Candlestar's digital division, is a key member of a team that have been appointed to prepare a feasibility study for the General Teaching for creation of a 'best practice' resource of case study exemplars drawn from the teaching expertise of the 600 national and regional Teaching Award winners since 1999. The feasibility study will examine the potential of this resource as a tool for supporting and improving good practice in teaching. It will also examine the mechanisms
to ensure the use-ability and accessibility of the resource to support further dialogue between teachers. The team's report will be submitted in September.

Bonhams To Stage Prize Exhibition
Candlestar has reached an agreement with Bonhams the world's oldest and  fastest growing auction house, to stage the exhibition of work shortlisted for the inaugural Sovereign European Art Prize.  Under this agreement Bonhams will exhibit paintings that reach the shortlist for the prestigious euros 25,000 prize at their showrooms in New Bond Street between 4 - 17 January 2006. During this period the first winner of the Sovereign European Art prize will be announced and there will be a gala dinner and auction that will be conducted by Bonhams from which all proceeds will go to the Sovereign Art Foundation - a registered charity. More