6-8pm

Wednesday 30th June 2010

Birmingham Library Theatre

The Colony, originally made as an innovative TV documentary, explores the experience of members of the Caribbean migrant community in Birmingham and the Midlands. The film allows its subjects space to candidly evaluate their reception in the UK and their relationships with home and other migrant workers. Controversial at the time of its original broadcast the film is an enduring and powerful document of a key moment in post-war British history.

Everyone is welcome but the event is particularly aimed at those with an interest in the social history of the region, post-war migration and community, documentary film and the BBC. We want to contact educators, heritage and community groups and researchers who will find Donnellan’s archive useful and who might aid in finding ways of preserving it and promoting its use as a resource for the social and cultural history of the region.

Biography: Philip Donnellan (1924-99) worked for the BBC from 1948-84. Much of his professional life was spent in the Midlands where he worked first in radio and then in television. His work expressed his belief in the value of ordinary life and culture and the need to give working people and underrepresented social minorities a space in which to articulate their concerns in their own voices.

The project: Philip Donnellan’s un-catalogued archive is held in the Birmingham Archives and contains an extensive range of film, audio and print material pertaining to his career with the BBC and the works he made in and about the region. An award from Screen West Midlands has allowed the employment of an archive worker to assess these deposits. As a result, we are already finding rich materials such as unbroadcast films, oral histories and programme research materials.

More information: Details of Donnellan’s life and work can be found at the

‘Friends of Philip Donnellan’ website

Subscribe to the posterous site

Join the Facebook group

Help? Please pass this invitation on to your networks and to those who may find the project to be of interest. If you are interested but cannot make the event, let us know and we’ll keep you informed of developments and available resources. If you can get an audience together and find a venue, we’ll be glad to come and show some of the films to you and talk about the project.

RSVP: If you wish to attend, please forward your details to:

donnellanphilip@googlemail.com

Postal address:

Dr Paul Long
Reader in Media and Cultural History
Birmingham School of Media
BCU
B42 2SU

Who is involved? The project is funded by Screen West Midlands and managed by a partnership of Birmingham Archives and Heritage, Media Archive Central England (MACE) and Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University.

The event, Chaired by Tim Challans (former co-ordinator for the West Midlands Culture & Sport Improvement Network), will highlight the latest research and intelligence relating to culture, sport and tourism and review the implications for the West Midlands: a region striving to assert itself as a national and international visitor destination and a leader in the digital agenda. The intention is for the event to dynamic and interactive, providing plenty of opportunity for delegates to dictate discussions.

Full details of the conference programme, speaker biographies and venue information are on the West Midlands Cultural Observatory website

The conference is being organised by the West Midlands Cultural Observatory, in association with Birmingham City University, the West Midlands Cultural Research & Intelligence Group and West Midlands Regional Observatory.

Nick Webber’s MeCCSA 2010 conference presentation at the London School of Economics, regarding the effect and veracity of existing research on the public debate around digital music consumption.

Tim and Simon’s presentation at the 2010 MeCCSA Conference.

The workshop came about initially from Morag who approached me to help formulate this into a collaborative project where we could share skills, good practice and knowledge between us and our KTF partners at the PRA. This was done with the intention of providing the conference attendees with a solid insight into how prison radio could be adopted by other national prison services and integrated into their programs for education, health and well being based on the successes already demonstrated by the Prison Radio Association in the UK.

The workshop was well attended by a mixture of international delegates who were involved in the prison service at various levels from policy makers to frontline health workers.

Morag chaired the workshop, on behalf of BCU and Phil and Andrew delivered a dynamic presentation on the history and development of prison radio within the UK and how it has been used by the prisoners, in a participatory manner, as a tool for development and well being. They played examples of radio productions by prisoners and explained the rationale and benefits of their participatory approach in addressing many issues concerning prisoners and their families but especially focussing on health ‘spots’. They also talked about how radio has met with great success in getting messages and information to hard to reach prisoners such as those with literacy issues.

After their delivery I talked about my background, experiences and involvement with radio as a tool for development drawing on previous projects I have worked on. I then focussed my part of my delivery on the potential use of radio and audio artefacts as a tool for ‘through care’. This was focussed around the production of audio information such as podcasts that could be embedded into post-release agencies websites for easy access to ex offenders, especially those that had literacy problems. I also discussed the benefits of how a participatory approach could benefit ex-offenders in their rehabilitation by them producing some of the podcasts and audio files. I also talked about the ease of skills acquisition in radio production and self esteem building and the relative cheapness of using modern digital technologies. (A video of my address is available on request).

After this the floor was opened for questions of which there were many especially based around application within prisons, cost of equipment, benefits to inmates etc. On the strength of our workshop we have had a prospective invite from the Italian Director of Prisons to address at a similar conference in Italy.

Having the opportunity to address this conference at this international level was really exciting and has provided a platform for the University and School of Media to be given international exposure and recognition for their ongoing work.

All in all this was a really positive and beneficial collaboration between the School, CRQ and our KTF partners the PRA and offers up the potential for further collaborative projects that I believe will benefit the school. I, Siobhan and Morag have already put forward a proposal for a European project dealing with violence against women and young children and looking at ways in which community radio could be employed to train trainers in radio/audio production for agencies that work with victims of domestic violence and exploitation.

Watch this space!!

I attended an event in Copenhagen back in March this year. It was organised by Jazz Danmark, a government funded body whose role it is to promote and foster Danish jazz. My keynote was about how musicians could use the opportunities of the internet, and it seemed to go down reasonably well.

Through that connection, I was invited to be a guest of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, which finished today (I’ve just returned home).

Naturally, I was delighted to attend. Of course, there would be a lot of great music and events – but it also gave me an opportunity to research and consider the ways in which a festival like that could communicate online.

I thought of it as a natural extension of the Aftershock Project for me. How do you take those ideas and begin to apply them elsewhere?

But although it’s still very much about live music, it’s configured very differently. So the frame through which I saw the event was one of digital narrative, and how you could BE a jazz festival online – without simply making a brochure or an online programme. In that sense, the approach, at least, remained.

And this was timely, because this week, we’re off to talk to the organisers of the Scarborough Jazz Festival to discuss just that issue.

While I was there, I captured some video, and talked to a few people – but it’s the way that this could all be assembled that interests me. And I came up with a concept that is helping me think through the ways in which events could be considered.

The digital narrative matrix
Essentially, the digital narrative matrix is an interwoven series of frameworks through which an event can be viewed – the overlapping threads of story that can be signposted and brought to the attention of the site visitor. For instance, with the Aftershock Project, those key narrative threads are character, chronology and song development. But there are all sorts of different ways in which you could build a matrix (not The Matrix – that’s a film. Just a matrix).

When building a matrix, I think the key questions that need to be considered should include the following:

- What are the possible stories?
- Who are those stories for?
- What is interesting to them?
- How can they be involved in that storytelling?
- What is important to communicate?
- What can be done in the digital realm that could not be done in any other way?
- What else, other than the obvious, could be interesting?
- What else is going on? (eg: off-stage, behind the scenes, amongst the audience)?
- What does it all sound / look / feel like?
- What do you have to be respectful of that would lead you to a different way of working?

The things to avoid are mere reproduction of an audience experience (ie: filming a concert and putting it online), reportage, and fixed delineation by subgenre or music type. Instead, a successful matrix would tease out opportunities for surprise, delight, conversation, and human interaction.

Of course, I have pages of notes about how that could be translated as an online digital narrative matrix in the particular instance of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, which differs markedly from any other event – and I will type up and send a report to the festival organisers in thanks for my invitation, in the hopes that will be helpful to them.

But as a result of these conversations, and many more I had with other festival guests, I’m looking at working with a few other festivals and organisations on this sort of thing. Which is great on two important levels: first, that this sort of research can have direct and helpful benefits to cultural industries; and second, going to jazz festivals is cool.

This is the audio recording of the panel session I chaired at Un-Convention in Manchester last month. It was about music that falls outside the indie rock band tradition you’d normally expect represented at these sorts of events. I wanted to know if there were any lessons that could be drawn from outside the margins.

Some really amazing and insightful stuff from Stef Lewandowski, Steve Lawson, Amran Ellahi, Abigail Seabrook, and Caroline Churchill.

You can listen to all of the panel sessions at the Un-Convention Soundcloud page.