Tony Levin 1940-2011

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Simon Barber

Tony Levin at mac, Birmingham, 9 October 2010 (Photo by Russ Escritt).

We are hugely saddened to report the death of drummer Tony Levin, who passed away today at the age of 71. Tony was a highly regarded jazz drummer and one of our partners on the AHRC KTF project. Together we developed http://tonylevin.org and produced academic research into building British jazz archives.

Tony was highly respected for his performances on several great British jazz albums and performed frequently at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in the 1960s with artists including Joe Harriott, Al Cohn, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Zoot Sims, and Toots Thielemanns.

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International Conference for Prison Health Protection

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Matt Grimes

I was recently invited by the United Nations and World Health Organisation to attend their annual international conference to discuss the use of radio in prisons as a way to engage with hard to reach prisoners. I, Morag McDonald (from CRQ at BCU), Phil Maguire (from the Prison Radio Association-one of our KTF partners) and Andrew Wilkie (from the National Prison Radio Authority) presented a one hour workshop on the benefits of using prison radio as a tool for health promotion and education within prisons. Continue reading →

Evaluating the AHRC KTF

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Nick Webber

At the end of January 2010, our current AHRC-funded knowledge transfer fellowship (KTF) project draws to a close. That’s only a marker date, but it is the point at which the funding stops. Three months later, we need to have submitted forms, letters and financial summaries which, among other things, evaluate our project’s effectiveness and general, overall, wholesome family goodness.

And there’s our problem. We’ll have spent two years working with our KTF partners – and there are lots of them – and we have to judge how effective our involvement has been. Continue reading →

Interactive Cultures at Scarborough Jazz Festival

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Simon Barber

What is it?

‘Just Like Jazz’ is a collaborative project between Interactive Cultures, a research unit at

Birmingham City University, and the Scarborough Jazz Festival. Part of our academic interests include jazz and so we’re working with the Scarborough Jazz Festival to explore the ways in which jazz festivals can be portrayed online.

Why is it different?

Rather than creating a brochure website around the festival, or simply filming the festival and putting that online, our goal is to capture the spirit of the festival using a range of techniques such as photography, text and handheld, personal digital video. We have given small, cheap, portable video cameras to select audience members, musicians, backstage staff and the festival organisers and asked them to capture whatever they think is interesting: the buzz of the audience, the surrounding environment, snippets of the music performed, and any discussions that take place around jazz.

PROMO VIDEO OF ANDREW: Watch members of the Interactive Cultures team describe the aims of the Scarborough Jazz project.

What are we going to do?

We’re gathering together all of this video, photography and text from our contributors and publishing it live on a website as the festival happens. We’re also tagging the content in order to experiment with the ways in which the characters and stories that are captured can be navigated by visitors to the website. This process gives audiences the opportunity to experience the festival in their own way and makes the event accessible to those who may wish to attend the festival in future years, or who may never have considered visiting a jazz festival at all.

Phil Lynott at 60

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Sam Coley

http://www.vimeo.com/5834434

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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/local_radio/

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 attached to this posting features extracts taken from the documentary of Paul Murphy’s journey from Birmingham to Dublin. Other YouTube clips discuss the poetry of Phil Lynott:

http://www.vimeo.com/5887808

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

http://www.vimeo.com/5851012

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How to stop being embarrassed by your website commissioning

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Jon Hickman

Birmingham City Council has come into criticism this week over the development of it’s new birmingham.gov.uk website. The coverage and the chatter on the topic got me thinking: how could public sector organisations commission these big projects in a way that might prevent embarrassing questions? Could large scale public web projects be done in a more innovative way? Here’s what I came up with.
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Thin Lizzy frontman remembered

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Sam Coley

Phil Lynott, lead singer of Irish rockers Thin Lizzy died on January the 4th 1986. It was a slow, painful death, the result of years of drug abuse and excessive drinking. Had he lived, Lynott would be turning sixty next month. It’s a little known fact that this legend of rock was born in South Birmingham. An interesting piece of trivia that caught the attention of Jez Colins, founder of the Birmingham Music Archive.

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Good behaviour at HMP Brixton

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Sam Coley

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.

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Ephemeral Media

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Sam Coley

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”.

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Category Archives: AHRC KTF

Tony Levin 1940-2011

International Conference for Prison Health Protection

Evaluating the AHRC KTF

Interactive Cultures at Scarborough Jazz Festival

Phil Lynott at 60

How to stop being embarrassed by your website commissioning

Thin Lizzy frontman remembered

Good behaviour at HMP Brixton

Ephemeral Media