FR!NGE should not be rated by star system
|
January 27, 2010 6:57 AM
|
Re: “Life on the fringe,” Jan. 20
As the producers of the WLU Fr!nge Festival, we sincerely thank you for the coverage in last week’s Cord.
The interest of the local arts community is important to us, as is support of the creative arts. This is especially true in the Laurier community where we lack a dramatic arts program. The support of the Cord has helped us to improve our visibility on campus, and we are truly grateful.
That said, there has been some discussion on the way we were reviewed, especially in regards to the use of a ‘star rating’ to evaluate the merit and success of our contributors.
The Fr!nge Festival is a non-adjudicated collection of original work, meant to provide a space for creative endeavors outside the mainstream.
If your reviewers were expected to quantitatively evaluate our festival, we would have preferred them to justify what the numbers in this scale represent. The issue is not that each review was not glowing, but that the reasoning behind the reviews was not well thought out.
A star does not replace a worded critique. Essentially, what is a ‘star’? The use of these graphics detracts from space that your reviewers could have used to write more than three short sentences to critique a work. Your article seems to reduce the reception of the festival to arbitrary scoring and generalized statements.
We hope that future reviews of the festival present themselves as more justified in their evaluation, and with more understanding of the spirit of Fr!nge.
–Kate Cooper and Adam Cilevitz
blog comments powered by Disqus
