interactivecultures

To what extent is social media a useful tool for meeting the government’s local empowerment agenda? That was the question being asked in a panel session at an event last week organised by the National Empowerment Partnership which is managed by the Community Development Foundation.

‘Local Engagement: Sharing Practical Approaches’ was aimed at local authority officers and those working in the various organisations that make up the National Empowerment Partnership. The panel I was presenting at included Hannah Peaker from the London Civic Forum (who interestingly had spent time on the Obama campaign in 2008) and Stephen Frost from izwe.com. I was there courtesy of the work the role I’ve had with Digital Birmingham over the past year.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Ikon Gallery, in Birmingham City Centre – Image CC by ell-r-brown

I recently had an informal meeting with Ikon, Birmingham’s contemporary arts gallery, where we discussed how they can use social media effectively. Many galleries, museums, and other attractions have profiles in a number of social networks and Ikon is no exception. The main social media activity from Ikon is on Facebook and Twitter where they have developed a fairly active following. The Twitter account is particularly interesting when used to live blog from a series of talks. Encouraged by this initial success (which has come relatively easily), Ikon are keen to push forward and develop a more comprehensive social media strategy. I asked Ikon three key questions, and discussed a number of solutions for them. Ikon are keen for you to add more in the comments below.

Read the rest of this entry »

The School of Media’s new suite of MA programmes start this September. Several of the programmes have their heart in the work of Interactive Cultures or the research interests of team members. The MA Music Industry starts in September 2010, but we have had a major hand in the development of MA Social Media & MA Creative Industries and Cultural Policy.

A key feature of the learning experience on the MA Social Media is a research blog. I started this blog off with a few entries (some of which run parallel to but provide a different take on posts made to this blog) but our first intake of postgraduate students have now started contributing to the blog. The first two student contributions were made yesterday, and there will be plenty more to follow so do add the blog to your RSS reader. So, Ladies & Gentleman so say hello to Leland Strott and Jigar Patel.

Marlon Parker addresses the Black Country Social Media Café

Last month I spent two days in the company of South African social media academic Marlon Parker. Regular readers will remember Marlon from his guest post several months ago. The purpose of the visit was to share thoughts and ideas in the field of social media, and to discuss social media education. We were fortunate that the visit coincided with a number of social media events in Birmingham, which meant I could give Marlon a real flavour of what we do in the West Midlands and I could introduce him to as many contacts as possible in a few short days. So what does an academic and social entrepreneur from Cape Town make of the social media activity in Birmingham? And what could we learn from him? The answer is: “a lot”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Cartoon of Sam Coley CC Alex Hughes

Moseley Barcamp was held at The Cross in Moseley on Sunday the 28th of July and was a free-ranging forum for those involved in Birmingham’s social media / internet “scene”. Speakers included Pete Ashton, Nick Booth, Chris Unitt and Michael Grimes to name but a few… The room contained a fair smattering of the “Brumtwitter mafia” who debated, and I imagine “tweeted”, passionately about all things “web” in Birmingham.

Read the rest of this entry »

Singer Nima captures video of her fellow Aftershock participants on a dinner break in Genoa – Pic © After Shock Project

“I can’t believe how hard you work.” High praise from Nitin Sawhney, composer, multi-instrumentalist and (it turns out) heavy-duty arts and culture thinker.

Of course, work’s a relative term when you’re doing something really enjoyable and fascinating in a really amazing setting, but given that I was completely focused on (almost) nothing other than the task at hand from 8am till 2am over 5 consecutive days, perhaps he had a point.

I was in Genoa, Italy with Birmingham web developer and entrepreneur Stef Lewandowski to work on the Aftershock Project – a pan-European collaborative music event. In short, Nitin Sawhney turns up in a town, brings about a dozen musicians together, and they workshop, compose, rehearse and eventually perform about an hour’s worth of completely new music over the course of a week. Stef had been commissioned to make them a website, and he’d asked me on board for my perspective as the “online music guy”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I spoke at “My Dad’s on Twitter but he doesn’t know why” – part of Fazeley Digital ‘09. Part lecture, part performance, the idea was to mind map some current thinking about Twitter by writing on a wall in an empty studio space. I’ve written a blog post about the process of the event on the new MA Social Media blog but wanted to also reflect on some of the content here on the IC blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

Image CC frontlineblogger

Today the Telegraph published an article headlined “Oldest Tweeter talks cuppas and casserole on Twitter at 104”. The article tells the story of Ivy Bean, who has taken advantage of some IT training offered to her at Hillside Manor residential home in Bradford, and has recently taken up use of the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. The story is being gently taken up by the Twitter community, who are excited about the concept of the “world’s oldest tweeter”. But in some ways this story is actually quite troubling.
Read the rest of this entry »

Myself and Jon Bounds are working on creating a map of musical activity in Birmingham. As part of the AHRC KTF, Interactive Cultures sent us to the Cultural Mappings; Cities, Landscapes and Memory Symposium. Jon has provided the following report for us from the event: Read the rest of this entry »

Image CC pigsonthewing

One of my favourite panels at last week’s West by West Midlands (WXWM) event was Nicky Getgood’s talk about the Digbeth is Good blog. Nicky’s presentation itself was a gentle journey through the history of her blog, complete with anecdotes about some of her Digbeth centred projects such as the week of breakfasts. The talk was interesting, but it was the Q&A session at the end that really got me thinking.

Read the rest of this entry »