Tag Archives: funding

The value of SxSWi

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In her post yesterday, Elizabeth described her trip to SxSWi as part of an official (funded) Birmingham delegation to the annual technology festival. She describes something of the process of getting to Austin and her experience as part of the community that made up that trade delegation. That’s a theme at the heart of a recent article I co-authored with Jennifer Jones, a visiting lecturer here at Birmingham School of Media and a researcher in UWS’s Creative Futures centre.

The article, The imaginary SxSWi, seeks to interrogate the way in which sponsoring trips to SxSWi can be justified; often attendance is positioned as proxy attendance for others but, with so much content from the festival being available online, what knowledge can be transferred only through proxy attendance?

The article is very much intended as, in the words of the hosting journal’s editors, “a ‘think’ piece, designed to spur discussion amongst scholars and audiences”. If you have any thoughts on this please do head over to FlowTV and leave a comment.

Read the article here

 

The Digest for September 16th

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Our digest of links for September 16th:

  • D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Guide To Sources Of Small Business Finance In The West Midlands –
  • But who appointed the creative policy makers? – IC member Paul Long is seeking to find out something about those who determine creative policy in the UK and their relationship with creative workers who are at the receiving end of policy interventions, decisions and strategies.

Creative industries, the ‘current climate’ and what knowledge exchange might mean.

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The last few days, weeks and months have presented us with a long list of doom and gloom as far as the economy goes. What has been happening in Birmingham and the region is making me, for one, feel like I’ve been transported back to the 1980s when the City seemed to have no rationale to exist so rapid was the decline into a ‘post-industrial’ condition. Today’s Birmingham Post reports the loss of 600 jobs at GKN while the situation at Jaguar Land Rover continues to concern us all. Closer to my working community, within University cloisters, discussion of projects is regularly conditioned by the phrase ‘in the current climate’, indicating the belt-tightening affecting us all.

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Asking Questions of 4iP

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4iP is a “public service media” initiative from Channel 4.  Described as a fund it aims:

to deliver publicly valuable content and services on digital media platforms with significant impact and in sustainable ways. It represents one of the biggest and most exciting calls-to-action for new and emergent digital media companies in the UK.
http://www.4ip.org.uk/about

If 4iP has a public service remit, it merits critical scrutiny in order to evaluate how far it succeeds in fulfilling its remit to people like me and you – the public.

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