Sam Coley and Oliver Carter presenting to the Sights and Sounds conference, University of Salford, June 2010.

Radio documentary, fandom and new participatory cultures from Interactive Cultures on Vimeo.

Here’s the ad:

The Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research is a rapidly developing centre of research excellence based at Birmingham City University with a community of over thirty academics and research degree students. Centre staff conduct research into all aspects of the media and popular culture, but have a particularly strong reputation in work about the changing form of popular music and radio media.

The research would form part of the work of the Interactive Cultures group, and you would be supervised by Prof Tim Wall Dr Paul Long and Andrew Dubber. Their work in popular music, radio and cultural politics is internationally recognised with both academic and media communities, and you would have the opportunity to be involved in a number of major research and knowledge transfer initiatives including the Music and Radio Innovation and the Music Consumption in the Digital Age projects.

We are offering a three-year, full-time research studentship, linked to our doctoral programme.

The studentship is open to both home and overseas students, although you would be responsible for any fee or living expenses beyond the value of the studentship.

Applications can be made to undertake research degree work in a study relevant to one of the following themes:

• The music industry in the digital age
• Music culture in the digital age
• Radio in the digital age

Applications from any academic background are welcome, but the successful candidate must be able to demonstrate familiarity with the music or radio industries, and the implications of new technologies. We will select the successful candidate primarily upon the quality of their research proposal.

Normally we would look for applicants with a masters degree which included research training, but we welcome non-traditional applications from those with strong industrial backgrounds and experience in research and written communication.

A willingness and ability to contribute to our research community is particularly desirable.

The studentship period will start in March 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter. The studentships will attract a bursary of £13,290 per annum in addition to a waiver of the tuition fees up to the home student rate of £3,390. Successful candidates will usually be expected to participate in the wider activities of the research centre, and there may be opportunities for an additional paid research assistant or teaching role for up to 180 hours per year.

How to apply

Complete and submit the ‘Application for Research Degree Course’ form which should include a research degree proposal of no more than 600 words. We may ask you to supply more information if you are selected for interview. Please indicate that you are applying for the research studentship in popular music and radio in the digital age, or we may inadvertently treat your application as one simply for our research degree programme.

The final closing date is Monday 1st March 2010 but we will select appropriate candidates for interview as applications arrive.

You should return the completed application form to:

Dr John Mercer
Research Degree Coordinator, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU

Or via email to: john.mercer@bcu.ac.uk

Please do forward this link on.

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!!

Interactive Cultures at The Radio Conference from Interactive Cultures on Vimeo.

Andrew Dubber and I spent the end of July at The Radio Conference.  This is a bi-annual international gathering of radio studies academics which this year took place at York University in Toronto Canada.  The conference brought together people studying radio from across the world, and there were particularly strong contingents from Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and USA, as you’d expect from an English language conference; but most parts of the world had at least one scholar representing them.

Radio is a wide field and there were interesting papers on a whole range of topics including Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds, un-licensed stations in New Zealand, African American Citizen’s Band culture, BBC and community radio, early radio news, rock format radio and another on college rock radio in the US, experimental story-telling on the web, visual culture in radio, jazz on the war time BBC, early radio in the Soviet Union, and music radio and the music industry.

Andrew and I participated in a panel of papers on the future of music radio, where we reported on the key conclusions on our investigation of specialist music on the BBC in the digital age.

In an earlier post we mentioned an Interactive Cultures radio documentary about Irish rocker Phil Lynott. To mark what would have been Lynott’s 60th birthday this Thursday, BBC West Midlands 95.6 FM will be broadcasting the half hour feature at approximately 1300 on the Jimmy Franks Show on Saturday the 22nd of August.

The feature will also be discussed on the Thursday morning breakfast show with possible contributions from narrator Paul Murphy and Dawn Mccarrick, the UK Representative of the Phil Lynott Memorial Trust. As fate would have it, it turns out Dawn works here at BCU. Small world.

The national rock station ‘Absolute Radio’ (ex Virgin) will feature sections from the interviews along with the rare Lynott track showcased in the documentary. This can be heard during ‘Geoff Lloyd’s Hometime Show’ on Thursday afternoon, August 20th at http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk. Freeview (channel 727).

‘Spin FM 1038′ in Dublin will also be featuring music from the documentary – which has been designed to indirectly promote the efforts of Jez Collins at the Birmingham Music Archive, the initiator of this project. The radio feature was created as a “prototype” method of disseminating information about the BMA, as part of an ongoing KTF partnership with BCU.

The team here were relieved to hear that Phil’s Mother, Philomena Lynott in Dublin, had seen the YouTube clips accompanying this documentary and sent her approval.

The audio slideshow above features extracts taken from the documentary of Paul Murphy’s journey from Birmingham to Dublin. Other YouTube clips discuss the poetry of Phil Lynott:

And a previously unheard song, featuring Lynott, that had been sitting under a bed gathering dust for 25 years:

Last week I served time at HMP Brixton, as part of our commitment to KTF partners the Prison Radio Association. It was a productive session, which taught spot production skills and built on previous visits to Swinfen Hall, a long term male prison for young adults just outside Lichfield, and Brockhill, a male prison serving the Worcestershire and West Midlands areas.

The prisoners were part of a team working on “Electric Radio Brixton”. A PRA initiative which plays 24 hours a day on a channel of the television sets supplied to each cell. The class explored various spot production techniques and was designed to assist the prisoners in the creation of information spots about the various services provided in the prison, such as; health, education, post-release employment and safer custody.

Next month Andrew Wilkie, Manager of the National Prison Radio Network, and I will be visiting HMP Rye Hill, near Rugby, to deliver a combined session on spot production. This is in anticipation of the PRA’s quest to install a radio station in every English and Welsh Prison within the next few years.

“Electric Radio Brixton” has earned an enviable broadcasting reputation – recently scooping double gold at the Sony Radio Academy Awards 2009.

As chief judge Andy Ashton commented…

“Electric Radio Brixton is an example of what can be achieved when radio is used for what it does best – an intimate connection to deliver powerful, meaningful content that targets an audience who have a genuine need to be fulfilled. Everyone interested in making great radio would do well to follow it’s example of power full simplicity.”

Jon Dovey at the “Internet Attractions” Workshop

Last week I attended the University of Nottingham’s “Internet Attractions” workshop, sponsored by the AHRC as part of their “Beyond Text” research programme. Over two days the team examined short-form online media and the fleeting ways they tend to circulate. This was the first of two workshops in the series and focused on ‘user-generated’ content.

The workshop brought together academics from a range of disciplines as well as various media practitioners. Keynote speakers included Professor Barbara Klinger from Indiana University and Hugh Hancock, the Artistic Director of “Strange Company”.

Professor Jon Dovey from the University of West England gave an enlightening paper titled; “Archeologies, Economies and Ecologies” which commented that it’s our attention spans as media consumers that has become ephemeral – rather than the content itself.

Jon dismissed the image of web surfers as “nomadic browsers” – instead using the analogy of foie gras geese, engorged on a diet of force fed data. Mmmm… tasty data.

Another of Jon’s vivid metaphors was that of the internet as a lush rainforest, where only a few trees grow strong enough to form the “canopy” of online media. According to Jon, most net surfers only look down on the top of the forest – while the millions of “organisms” underneath the canopy “crawl around in the mulch”, unnoticed on the forest floor as they search frantically for sunlight.

For my part, I delivered a presentation entitled “Sound and Vision: Online Practices of David Bowie Fans” – which discussed the reconstitution of an AM radio documentary I produced in 2008 by YouTube users.

An example of which can be seen below:

For more information visit http://www.ephemeralmedia.co.uk

There are currently 195 licensed community radio stations in the U.K. – with more on the way. At this rate, it won’t be long before community stations outnumber their commercial cousins. But although community radio’s thriving across the country, it’s been noticeably underrepresented in London, where frequencies have been scarce. It would seem that’s about to change, as Ofcom is currently seeking applications for community radio licences within Greater London and the M25.

With this in mind, earlier in the month Siobhan Mullen and I joined the first of three “Pathways For Community Media in London” seminars organised by London Metropolitan University. The aim of the series is to “bring together community media practitioners to identify the needs and aspirations of London’s many disenfranchised communities and discuss a way forward that will give them a voice over the airwaves and the internet”. The hope is to eventually produce a manifesto for Community Media in London.

Although BCU’s representatives were “outsiders” in terms of the London radio debate, guests were interested to hear about Birmingham’s diverse mix of community radio. It was a productive afternoon, hosted at the Rich Mix Centre by Penny Wrout, BBC London Communities Editor, who generously got in the first round at the end of the day. Other attendees included Khera Amarjit the founder of Desi Radio, Trevor Dann the Director of the Radio Academy and Jacqui Devereux, Director of the Community Media Association.

Future seminars topics include “Sustainability” on the 12th of June, “Ways Forward for the Future” on the 1st of July. For more information, contact Donald McTernan donald@donaldmack.co.uk

Picture: Sam and Siobhan with Project Coordinator Donald McTernan and Peter Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Community Media, London Metropolitan University.

Tim Wall: Mobile Music from Jon Hickman on Vimeo.

I was recently invited to make a contribution to the Mobile Music Symposium taking place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the US.  I offered the organisers a paper on the transistor radio and its role in the developments of US radio music listening in the 1950s and 60s.

In fact I should have been there today, but sadly at the last minute I wasn’t able to make the journey.  In true Interactive Cultures style, though, I offered a videoed version of my paper, and a Skype link so I could join in the question and answer session.  You can watch the whole paper presentation (it’s just over 16 minutes long) thanks to Vimeo.
The paper is based upon research I’ve been working on with my colleague Nick Webber.  I called the paper Changing cultural co-ordinates: the transistor radio and space / time / identity.  It explores the way in which the portability of the radio set (in the car and later the pocket radio) connected with some major cultural imperatives and substantial social change in the mid 1950s to bring around a major shift in the radio listening experience.  At this time the dominant form of radio moved from the sort of mixed entertainment we get on TV today, to music and the record playing DJ.

The event has been organised to tie in with a new book The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Jason
Stanyek.  Nick and I have a chapter in the book which will build on the paper I talk about here, and develop the analysis into Europe and beyond.

The whole event looks really interesting and I’m very disappointed not to be there in person, but at least I can contribute and participate.