Roadmap for Professionals

The Roadmap for Professionals is for Professionals who are working as individuals or in groups with or without assistance from interns, Fellows, or friends. Groups might wish to have 14 weekly sessions, but this can be customized to shorter time periods, more or fewer sessions, depending on need. Individuals can work at their own pace. The separate Facilitators’ Guide has more detail for each specific section of the PAL website.

Introduction

The PERFORMING ARTS LEGACY Project (PAL) at The Actors Fund is an online platform to document and represent professionals’ careers and save our national legacy.

PAL is a website where every contributing Professional gets to create their own child site within it. It includes a career timeline mapping one’s professional history, places for audio and oral histories, video interviews and life review, links to actual performances, journals, blogs and stories. It is built on a WordPress platform and can be edited and changed with help from a Contributor Manual, video tutorials, a Legal Guide to Clearing Rights as well as through a “Help” email, and includes letters and forms to guide professionals in requesting permission to publish uploaded works. PAL is multi-generational and interactive. It:

Captures memory
Shares collective histories
Uses Multimedia
Explores Life Review
Exemplifies Positive Aging
Enhances the quality of people, their communities and society

Click the headings below for more on the topic. To access resources and more, please click on the red links found within the sections below.

For Groups

PAL operates in a safe space. Information, stories, essays, blogs and expressions shared in these sessions are considered private within the context of PAL, until published on the PAL site. An important part of PAL is sharing as we create. Reading blogs, showing highlights, sharing challenges and triumphs give us a collegial community.

This guide is for people to work as individuals or in groups with or without assistance from interns, fellows, or friends. Groups might wish to have 14 weekly sessions, but this can be customized to shorter time periods, more or fewer sessions, depending on need. Individuals can work at their own pace.

The separate Facilitators’ Guide has more detail for each specific section of the PAL website.

Preparation

Welcome to the PERFORMING ARTS LEGACY website!

It is important at the beginning of your work to spend time thinking about how each professional wishes to represent his/her legacy within their control. This may take several sessions, but is time well spent, as the technical requirements will then make more sense.

Click the headings below for more on the topic. To access resources and more, please click on the red links found within the sections below.

Organizational Basics

Click here for Getting Organized – conceptualizing and organizing materials, what makes your project unique, conceptualizing your site.

Scope

Professionals are responsible for organizing memorabilia, typing grid entries, providing rights clearance information, obtaining permissions for materials they upload to their sites. Sites will be checked for copyright, privacy and defamation before they are finalized. This is to ensure that artists respect other artists.

Contributor Manual

Click here for text and video tutorials on each part of the PAL site, including device-specific questions and troubleshooting sections.

Technical Suggestions and Skills

We recommend each professional have a gmail account, a Google Drive, and use Chrome (instead of Safari, Firefox, etc), and knowledge of Zoom meetings.

Equipment: In many cases, equipment you already own—such as computers, smartphones and tablets—can be used for audio and video recording. For computer recording, we recommend a USB microphone, which plugs directly into a computer’s USB port. For editing, use a low-cost or free recording program like Reaper, Audacity, or Garage Band for Audio, iMovie for video editing, and Zoom for video conferencing.

Quick Reference Guides

For help with Zoom, consult Senior Planet’s online guide. For general tech and other questions, see Senior Planet’s Coronavirus Resource Guide.
StoryCorps offers outstanding guidance on interview techniques and technologies:

Units

For instructional materials and resources related to each unit, please click on the corresponding unit link (in red) below.

You can also download a PDF of the Roadmap, but be advised that the links below may be frequently updated.

Unit 1 – Introduction
Unit 2 – Intro to Audio and Video, The About Page, & Basic Tech Skills: Your Story
Unit 3 – Mapping the Legacy: Your Career Grid
Unit 4 – Mapping the Legacy: More About the Grid
Unit 5 – Clearing Rights
Unit 6 – Enhancing your Grid: Highlights and Blogs
Unit 7 – Enhancing Your Grid: Images and Highlight
Unit 8 – Customizing Your Site
Unit 9 – Reviewing Your Site for Publication in the Legacy Artists Directory

Performing Arts Legacy Project

An online platform to document and represent the careers of older performing arts professionals

Introduction

Preparation

Units

Terms of Use

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VIDEO: Learn About Our Work

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Performing Arts Legacy Project