Author Archives: Carola Boehm

Conference: Communities and Communication

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Staffordshire University’s new Department of Media and Performance (formerly Film, Media & Journalism, Humanities and Performing Arts)  is organising an international and interdisciplinary conference around the themes of Connections. It will take place online on 24th April 2021.

More information about the conference is at its own website.

This conference seeks to consider the ways in which creative digital communities start, develop and grow, what is created within those groups and how real connections are built through technology sharing and eventually within the virtual environment of online discussion and dissemination. We welcome contributions from across the sector from traditional print media forms to film and television, and gaming and interactive technology, offering the opportunity to explore both applied and theoretical explorations of this area of communities within the digital world. We aim to publish a selection of these contributions in an edited collection developed as a result of the conference. 

​Topics of interest:

  • ​Real-world versus digital communities 
  • Audio-visual communication practices
  • Interdisciplinary community-connections
  • What is the future of communities?
  • Visibility and identity in communities
  • Local vs global communities
  • Sports, digital media and communities
  • Healthcare and community
  • Community inclusion and exclusion
  • Performance

Deadline for submissions is 18th December 2020. For more details on how to submit please see the Call for Papers.

For any enquiries, please contact: Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk

Running Naked: University and private equity partnership launch a feature film

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Running naked is a feature film made in collaboration between private equity and Staffordshire University’s film production courses. The film has already screened at Beijing and Portland International Film festivals and is due for release in February 2021.

Running Naked is the story of two lifelong friends, pushed together through cancer. The story explores a period their life as one discovers the cancer has returned and their adventures as his illness unfolds.

The film was made in a unique way. The funding for the film came from private equity. This was combined with in-kind use of equipment, space, locations and crew from the University.

We, Andy Paton and Mike Knowles successfully combined a crew of industry professionals who mentored Staffordshire University students. The Crew included, Oscar nominated and Emmy winning director Victor Buhler. He directed Running Naked and Mike and Andy produced the film. The film’s score was composed by Craig Potter from Elbow

The film was all shot in and around the University in Stoke, utilising some of the buildings as locations and a production office, as well as many local businesses.

The cast start Andrew Gower(Carnival Row and Black Mirror) Tamzin Merchant(Carnival Row, Salem and Pride and Prejudice) Matthew Mcnulty (The Terror, Jamaica Inn and Deadwater Fell)

The project is an amazing example of how the University and private equity can be brought together to create a film that already has a distribution deal and international sales with an international release date in February 2021.

Watch this space for announcement of first screenings!

New Season of Factory Events launches with a talk about Creative Studios and Shared Spaces

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  • Topic: Creative Studios and Shared Spaces
  • When: October 9th, 10-11:00 am
  • Where: Zoom, once you register a Zoom link will be shared with you by email
  • Cost: Free
  • Sign up here – Sign-up Link

What is the next session about?
The Factory social relaunches October 9th focusing on creative studios and shared spaces. This session hopes to share the knowledge and perspective you need to figure out what kind of space might work for you, what you need as a creative and where you might be able to find it in Stoke-on-Trent. This conversation will be lead by Artist and Studio Manager Jo Ayre, British Ceramics Biennial (BCB) & Artist and Relationship Manager Dan Southward, ACAVA.

Who is this for?
This session is for: 

  • People who are considering taking the leap from home studio to a studio space but don’t know what form of studio might work for them or what other opportunities might come from it.
  • Students who want to think about how they can continue practice after school, college or university or want to connect with a community during their studies.
  • Creatives who are interested in connecting with other creatives and want to learn more about the different ways that can happen

Who’s delivering?
Artist and ACAVA Relationship Manager Dan Southward. Dan will share a wealth of knowledge and experience as an artist working from formal and informal studio spaces, in various buildings and locations. Dan will also share more with us about ACAVA Studios, who they are, what they do and what opportunities they offer creatives. 

Artist, BCB Studio Manager and Resident artist Jo Ayre initiated the BCB shared studio since joining the team in 2015. Since then the studio has grown to accommodating community groups, offering workshops and open studio days where a wonderful community of makers and artists (The Clay Comrades) make and laugh together. Jo will speak about shared studio spaces, the opportunities offered by the BCB Studio and how you can get involved if you’d like. 

Culture 3.0: Arts, Culture, Diversity and Gatekeeping

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On 21 September 2020 Carola Boehm (Professor of Arts and Higher Education, Staffordshire University) delivered a 15 minutes introductory session on Culture 3.0 concepts, and how they relate to the challenges of making arts and culture more accessible and more diverse.

It provides a good introduction to Luigi Sacco’s Culture 3.0 concepts, and Carola’s own application of these concepts to the UK creative industry contexts.

Abstract

The homicide of George Floyd in America, the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo campaigns have increased both the urgency and the profile of tackling discrimination, exclusionary practices, and institutionalised racism and thus provide a momentum that allows us all to push harder towards  achieving a more inclusive society with fair and equal access to our arts and culture sectors.. In this talk, I will not only explore the details of existing inequalities but put forward solutions for  shaping arts and culture towards becoming more diverse.

My own area is music technology, in general dominated by individuals who identify as being male. The whole cultural music sector, including classical music, has only 32% female artists. Museums on the other hand have 57%. Dance is an artistic practice that has the highest diversity with 18% BME workforce, compared to Museum having the lowest with 6%. Theatre and Visual Arts have the highest of LGBT artists with 9% with Museums only having 3%. This can also be sliced geographically, with  London having the highest diversity (15% BME), the Southwest having the lowest (6%), Midlands having the highest workforce (53%) identifying as female and London the lowest (42%) (ACE, 2019)

As individual creative professionals we often tend to think that the arts are ‘colour-blind’, but increasingly we have to accept that our cultural organisations, our creative funding models and our markers of quality provide barriers of access that are unevenly distributed in society. In this talk, I will present some initiatives and projects that Staffordshire University is carrying out in this area, all aimed to support Equality, Diversity and Inclusion challenges within our arts and cultural sectors. Terms I will use in this talk are co-production, cultural democracy, co-ownership and “Culture 1.0 to 3.0 ecosystems” (Boehm, 2016, 2017).

ACE (2019). Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case. A data report. ACE 2018 – 2019. [Online]. Manchester. Available from: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/ACE_DiversityReport_Final_03032020_0.pdf.

Boehm, C. (2016). Academia in Culture 3.0: A Crime Story of Death and Birth (but also of Curation, Innovation and Sector Mash-ups). REPERTARIO: Teatro & Danca. 19 (2). p.pp. 37–48.

Boehm, C. (2017). The end of a Golden Era of British Music? Exploration of educational gaps in the current UK creative industry strategy. In: R. Hepworth-Sawyer, J. Hodgson, J. Paterson, & R. Toulson (eds.). Innovation In Music: performance, production, technology and business. Taylor & Francis/Routledge.

Professor of Ceramics exhibits new work in home of china clay

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Whitegold winner Professor Neil Brownsword is joining makers across the world to exhibit his work in St Austell.

In these artworks Neil explores the entangled histories of St Austell and the Potteries of North Staffordshire, bound together by the mining of china clay and its transformation into ceramics.

‘Relic’ is the culmination of five-years of research during which Neil has archived the incredible hand skills of Stoke-on-Trent china flower maker Rita Floyd. He has captured every stage of the hand modelling involved in mass producing the many types of flower that Rita has in her repertoire, and enshrined them in a series of porcelain fragments.

A full press release can be read at https://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/2020/09/professor-of-ceramics-exhibits-new-work-in-home-of-china-clay

 

Yet another podcast?

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Prof Carola Boehm joins two co-hosts for the launch of a new podcast about education in audio, music production and music technology.

A new Routledge supported podcast exploring the intersection between the Creative Industry and Academia has been launched this weekend with Staffordshire University input. Sound Learnings is a podcast  about education in audio, music production and music technology. One of the Co-Hosts is Carola Boehm, Professor of Arts and Higher Education from the C3 Centre of Creative Industries and Creative Communities. 

“There are not many public discourses on how our contemporary worlds of industry and academia regularly interact, sometimes with specific frictions and sometimes with real positive impacts for both. We thought it timely and useful to do this in our area of creative practice, music technology and music production. And inviting various makers and shakers to our roundtable allows us to really go behind the scenes of how this connectivity between the two spheres play out in our creative sectors.” (Carola Boehm)

All three co-hosts are educators, researchers and have professional profiles in music and audio. The podcast has been sponsored by Routledge publishers. Tim Canfer, who initiated the project, is a Lecturer at Barnsley College Higher Education, an Author, Tech Developer and Musician. His main area of research is developing reactive devices for live performance. Russ Hepworth is a part time Senior Lecturer at York St John University with a research area of audio mastering education. He has his own studio and continually works within the industry as a mastering engineer.

In the first series of the SoundLearnings podcast, the co-hosts chat with guest from the world of either education or industry. The characteristic that connects them all is that they value education specifically, and that they relate to the world of industry.

Being in pre-production since May, the next episodes to drop feature interviews from Flying Colors manager Bill Evans, mastering engineers Mike Cave and Katie Tavini, educator and mix engineer for Pete Waterman – Tim ‘Spag’ Speight, and educator, researcher and Eurovision Song Contest contender, ‘Stereo Mike’ Exarchos. 

The ‘Keep Talking’ in lockdown podcast

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A new podcast highlights the pioneering work of community researchers tackling poverty in Stoke-on-Trent.The new podcast Keep Taking About… looks at the role of a community researcher, identifies some of the challenges they have overcome, both in their own lives and throughout the global pandemic, and how they have built a community which has supported the group’s wellbeing and cohesion.

Nicola Gratton, the Lead for Civic Engagement and Evaluation at Staffordshire University, led the project in which community researchers continued to engage with the Keep Talking project in a range of creative ways, including poetry, photography and baking – even creating a book of recipes that helped people through lockdown. They share these experiences in the podcast series which covers isolation, disability, creativity, friendship and family, and community.

A full press release can be read here https://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/2020/08/community-researchers-keep-talking-in-lockdown-podcast

C3 Centre Research Seminar: Tim Anderson – The Death of Liveness

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Stupid, Bang, Stupid is a film by Tim Anderson with music by Corrin Jamal (aka Tim Anderson), exploring authenticiy, presence and liveness in a locked down workd.

C3 Centre Research Seminar

The Death of Liveness – Can Concerts and Collaborations compete with Computerised Choirs and Covid19

Tim Anderson (PhD Candidate)

Thursday 16th July 2020 14:00 – 15:00 (See MS TEAMS link below)


 Keywords:   Aura    Liveness    Presence    Collaboration    Performance   Coronavirus

 Artworks have been traditionally valued by what Walter Benjamin described as their aura – a “magic” property connected with their authenticity, made recognisable in their provenance.  With performance art, the equivalent quality is liveness, or presence.

In the current pandemic,  live performance is placed on hold, with co-performers and collaborators kept at arms’ length.  This seminar considers possible strategies to create multimedia artworks under lockdown conditions.

Select References

  • Auslander, P. (2002) “Live from Cyberspace”, Performing Arts Journal: 70 pp. 16–21. MIT.
  • Bolter, J.D. MacIntyre, B. Gandy, M. and Schweitzer,P. (2006) “New Media and the Permanent Crisis of Aura”, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12, no. 1 pp.21–39.
  • Stupid, Bang, Stupid (20 June 2020) YouTube video, added by Corrin Jamal [Online]. Available at https://youtu.be/ULmvEEvduio [Accessed 1 July 2020].

 

16/07/2020 14:00 – 15:00 on TEAMS

 

FACTORY ONLINE MEET (3 July 2020, 10:30am)

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FACTORY Online Meet

To keep our creative communities in Staffordshire connected, FACTORY is organising online meets, where we have the opportunity to come together and chat informally about topics around current challenges for our Creative Communities. In the era of Covid19, we and our creative sectors have specific challenges when wanting to connect with audiences, creatives, customers, networks and each other.

Topic: Socially engaged art – extending your practice to work with the public
Experts: Alice Thatcher and Sarah Fraser
Friday  3 July 10:30am – 12 noon
Sign up for free at https://hopin.to/events/factory-online-meet-3-july-2020

Join BCB Associate artists Alice Thatcher and Sarah Fraser as they unpick motivations and methods for sharing your creative practice with a wider audience. This practical session is aimed at early-career artists and arts professionals who would like to extend their practice to work with people. We will be exploring what socially engaged practice is and why it is important. We will outline practical strategies for working inclusively with people, planning and delivering creative activities (online and in person) and how to develop a socially engaged practice as a career. 

Alice Thatcher Following her graduation from University of Sunderland in 2012, Alice Thatcher returned to Stoke-on-Trent. She is committed to her own role within the cultural and creative growth of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. Thatcher’s practice examines the similarity between “vulnerable” communities and the properties of clay. She is interested in how people can use clay to communicate their identities, learn new cultural, social and creative ideas from one another, and experience the versatility, beauty and heritage of clay and ceramics. 

Sarah Fraser Sarah Fraser studied visual arts at the University of South Africa. After working in further education with adults with learning difficulties and disabilities for over ten years, she has shifted to combining her practice as an artist with studio based community work over the past 3 years. Since 2019, Fraser has worked in Stoke-on-Trent, leading on a community co-production project of Staffordshire flatback figurines; conceptualising and delivering and arts and health projects (on and offline); and collaborating with the Portland Inn Project fellowship project in 2020. 

Photo: Production line space as part of BCB Festival 2019. Credit: Jenny Harper