Category Archives: C3 Live Recorded

‘Un-Podcasting’: C3’s Carola Boehm proposes a new definition for ‘podcasting’ at EPOD 2025 in London

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At this year’s EPOD2025 in London in June, C3 Centre Co-Lead and Member, Professor Carola Boehm put forward a new defintion of what a podcast is: 

“Podcasting is an audio-focussed cultural form that is constructed by social innovation in content production”

Below is a recording of a presentation Prof Carola Boehm,  gave live in London. In the presentation, she focussed on the process of exploring the definitional boundaries of the term podcasting, drawing from the literature (Rime et al., 2022; McGregor, 2022; Chan-Olmsted & Wang, 2022; Smith et al., 2021) and her own current experimental ‘un-podcasting’ practice.

As she suggests, “this practice explores the still seldom-used music-talk show format available currently on only a few platforms, which incorporate legal music licensing. My ‘podcast’ – which some might suggest is not really a ‘podcast’ – includes music immersion with a reflective audio-narrative, recorded outside on various runs and provides audio-coached training guidance for ‘learning how to run’. It provides a follow-along, 6-week, return-to-running plan geared towards hypothyroid challenged runners that are in the process of building back up after a break.

The above rather un-snappy elevator pitch for my current experimental podcasting project (CBDB & Boehm, 2022–2024, 2025) expresses one example of the rich and creative opportunities within diverse podcasting practices enabled by different technologies or platforms, and as such, can represent an element of an ‘experimental lab’ in which – in my case – various cultural concepts are interrogated by a practice that pulls along new knowledge, new critical concepts and new conceptual frameworks for the intersections between education and training, entertainment and creative self-expression, personal but public learning journeys”.

This most recent and 4th podcast project of Boehm does not conform to the podcast definition that she herself set out at last year’s EPOD conference and which was – as she put it – outdated the moment it was written: “an audio-first show, made available in digital format via the internet through RSS feeds, stored in mp3, hosted on dedicated or shared or distributed server spaces” (Boehm, 2025). However, this project is an audio-first experience.

Considering the rise of conceptualising podcasting as a cultural phenomenon rather than a technologically enhanced medium, calling it a podcast could be argued to be the right way forward. However, pondering about the validity of what it is she created allowed her to unpick the accepted definitions and meanings, thus shining a light on the term, also signified by using the word of ‘un-podcasting’ in the title.

Using this current ‘un-podcasting’ practice as a case study, the presentation thus explored questions at the heart of this year’s theme of the EPOD Conference. First, it explored critical and conceptual frameworks to support the formation of a broader definition for the term ‘podcast’. Then it considered the tensions inherent in some explorative, personal learning journeys provided by or to a broader community, situating such podcasts between education, entertainment and music listening. Boehm argued  for its potential of minding the gap between formal education and informal learning and how it bridges the different ways of listening from music immersion to guided audio-coached training. Practices like these thus could be understood to situate itself within either commercial, private or public use contexts.

The presentation made use of existing concepts, such as Sacco’s Culture 3.0 (Sacco et al., 2018) and the author’s University 3.0 (Boehm, 2022, chap.4) for unpicking some of the nuances around the above-described tensions.

As an outcome, she puts forward a new definition for the concept of ‘podcasting’, to ensure there is a definition that is inclusive of audio innovations and experiments of expanding innovative podcasting features . 

She thus put forward a new definition:  Podcasting is an audio-focussed cultural form that is constructed by social innovations in content production.

Links: Run/Listen with Carola at CBCB Runs https://www.mixcloud.com/CeeBeeDeeBee/

REBELLIOUS RESEARCH: Create Practice Research Seminar Series – Round 4

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Welcome to Round 4  of the Rebellious Research Seminar Series focusing on Creative Practice Research. The seminar series returns yet again, with some truly exquisite guests. As always, free and open to all (all sessions run online via MS Teams), this initiative aims at widening support and understanding around practice research in a friendly and inclusive manner, with some top experts sharing their experience and advice.

Download your Round 4 (2024/2025) PROGRAMME 

For more info and to be added to the mailing list please contact Agata Lulkowska (Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk)

Download your Round 4 (2024/2025) PROGRAMME 

​All the past sessions are available on a dedicated YouTube channel

Any changes ot the programme will be announced on: https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series

New Book and Book Launch Event: The role of landscape and place in creative writing

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Writing Landscape and Setting in the Anthropocene: Britain and Beyond

Editors: Philippa Holloway and Craig Jordan-Baker. Including contributions from Mark Brown, Martin Brown, Lisa Mansell, Mel Ebdon, Philippa Holloway, and many others.

  • Explores the role of landscape and place in creative writing, in a world deeply affected by human interventions
  • Includes case studies from Britain and beyond, as well as theoretical chapters examining creative practice and process
  • Responds to current debates about the writer’s practice and social conversations about our relationship to nature

The new book has been published by an international group of academics, including C3 members that focus on Stoke-on-Trent as a place. The book launch took place on 10/07/2024, and the recording will be linked soon.

This edited collection offers an in-depth exploration of the role of landscape and place as literary ‘settings’. It examines the multifaceted relationships between authors, narrators, and characters to their locales, as well as broader considerations of the significance of the representation of landscape in a world deeply affected by human interventions. Consisting of case studies of projects that engage with these questions, as well as research examining the theoretical underpinnings of both creative practices/processes and post-textual analysis of published works, this volume is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in scope. In the context of the climate crisis and a pandemic which has caused us to re-evaluate the significance of landscape and the environment, it responds to the need to engage current trends within the academy and in broader social debate about our relationship to the natural world.


The books available from from Springer at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-49955-5 and from our Staffordshire University Library Catalogue from this LINK.

Online Book Launch Event and Readings from 10/07/2024.

Catch-Up: #RebelliousResearch #1: Agnieszka Piotrowska

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The recording from the first session of ‘Rebellious Research’ (Arts/practice-based research seminar series) is now available to watch online: ‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gesture by Agnieszka Piotrowska.

You can find the recordings from the last year’s edition of the series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlngmRq1T-8&list=PLMUvev1_9LqMfwY4BBRR71vwa5YQaKxWw

‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gesture by

Agnieszka Piotrowska (Reader in Film, SODA, MMU & Professor, Film and Cultural Studies, The University of Gdańsk). Wednesday 26th October 2022, 15:30-17:00 (GMT)

 In this talk, Agnieszka Piotrowska considere the notion of what ‘knowledge’ might be for a creative research practitioner and how ‘high theory’ might be of assistance in inspiring ideas and creative strategies. She will share her most recent experience of working across disciplines with the new experimental film Wash (2022). It is a hybrid documentary with element of animation and drama dealing with serious issues of development in Zimbabwe, a country in which she has done much work over the years. The piece of work has been funded by Strategic England Research 2021 and the University of Edinburgh.

Age of Creativity: Place Making of Making Place

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This partnership, recorded on 19 May 2022, was co-devised by colleagues at Keele University, Staffordshire University and Age UK Oxfordshire, as part of the Age of Creativity Festival 2022 and Creative Later Life 2025.

The keynote presentations and panel discussions around creative aging and placemaking, is now avaiable from the link above.

C3 Centre’s Professor Carola Boehm gave a talk on #Culture30Walks: How Creative is your Place?

Speakers included:

  • Professor David Amigoni FEA- Director, Keele Institute for Social Inclusion (KISI), Keele Deal Culture & ArtsKeele (chair)
  • Carola Boehm– Professor of Arts and Higher Education, Staffordshire University
  • Rose Gilroy-Professor of Ageing Planning and Policy, Chair of Future Homes Alliance, School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
  • Steven Millington– Director/ Senior Fellow at The Institute of Place Management and Reader in Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University
  • Jason Jones-Hall– Director of Development, Five10Twelve
  • Neil Johnson– Engagement Project Lead, Liverpool City Region

It covers topics and case studies exploring the following:

  • How does creativity/ culture contribute to ‘vibrant’ places for older people beyond local tourism?
  • What constitutes a creative/ cultural ‘asset’ to older communities experiencing inequality?
  • What ‘value’ do we give creativity/culture and older communities experiencing inequalities in rebranding places?
  • What role does place based leadership have in making places both ‘Creative/ Cultural’ and ‘Age Friendly’?
  • How can inequalities be tackled by ‘making’ in place and is this place leadership?

Catch-Up: Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series #6 – Research Impact: Making a Difference through Practice-Based Research.

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Guest Speakers: Dr Jackie Reynolds and Colette Dobson who will talk about 

This session focuses on research that leads to benefits beyond academia. It examines the challenges and opportunities for developing impact case studies based on practice-based research for the REF (Research Excellence Framework). Colette Dobson will discuss the impact of her collaborative research that addressed a need for better communication between patients and health care professionals about the sexual consequences of treatments for cancer. She will share her insights gained from the process of collecting impact evidence and developing a REF2021 impact case study.

Catch-Up: Carola Boehm at the ISUC Plaza Series 3 (International Women’s Day Edition)

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Live Streamed from our APU partners in Malaysia, the International Women’s Day Edition of the ISUC Plaza Series presented three keynotes by women leaders, including C3 Centre’s Carola Boeh,.

Carola Boehm’s keynote, as part of the three keynotes presented, was titled:

Culture 3.0 saves the world: Sustainability & Diversity in an era of Co-creation

Abstract:
Even before the pandemic, along with many other countries, the UK was beginning to see a shift in how we valued our engagement in cultural activities, culminating in the 2021 Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy of “Let’s Create” (ACE, 2021). For communities and individuals, it firmly focussed resources to support active participation in arts and culture. This represented a move of investment towards civil society engaging actively in cultural production, rather than merely being passive cultural consumers. In Luigi Sacco’s words, this is a cultural struggle between what he calls Culture 1.0 versus Culture 3.0.

In Sacco’s conceptualisation, Culture 1.0 is characterised by patronage,  limited audiences,  gate keepers, value absorption and limited structural markets (Sacco, 2013). Thus, Culture 1.0 is seen to be highly elitist and exclusionary,  it has resulted in arts audiences and leadership of our European top cultural institutions to  be predominantly white and upper middle class (ACE, 2019). And this is a problem, according to Sacco. With Europe being ‘hung up on Culture 1.0’, it is holding Europe back in its innovation and productivity potential  (Sacco, 2011). The UK and the US has taken a slightly different path since the late 90s, influenced by its focus on the creative industries, with its emphasis on IP and copyright (BEIS, 2018; Flew, 2011; Cunningham, 2014). This is Culture 2.0, and I have written about how the UK and US are in turn hung up on Culture 2.0, supporting extractive and exploitative models that have inherent gatekeeping functions. This is in turn holding both the UK and the US back to allow its creative and cultural activities to benefit its societies in equitable, fair and diversity-supporting manner (Boehm, 2017, 2016).  However, Culture 3.0 is fast becoming the dominant type of cultural engagement to make arts and culture more inclusive and more impactful. It is characterised by ‘everyday creativity’,  co-creation, open platforms, ubiquitously available production tools and individuals constantly shifting and renegotiating their roles between producing and consuming content. This ‘doing away’ with gatekeepers supports access, diversity and is evidenced to simply make all our lives healthier, happier, more creative and more resilient.

Whereas having predominantly Culture 1.0 types of cultural engagement will result in elitism and exclusivity. Culture 2.0 creates a highly neo-liberal, worker-exploitative model. But Culture 3.0 has the promise of providing the balance and Sacco suggests the new power centres of this type of cultural engagement are emerging in Asia, and is characterised by mass production, unlimited reproducibility, large audiences, and significant turnover and profits. So in this presentation, using the lenses of Culture 1.0 to 3.0,  I will explore solutions for  shaping our creative sectors and industries in our creative cities towards becoming more sustainable, more fair and more diverse. (Boehm, 2022)

References

  • ACE (2019). Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case. A data report. ACE 2018 – 2019. [Online]. Manchester.
  • ACE (2021). Let’s Create: Our strategy 2020-2030 | Arts Council England. [Online]. Manchester, UK..
  • BEIS (2018). UK Creative Industries Sector Deal.
  • Boehm, C. (2016). Academia in Culture 3.0: a Crime story of Death and Rebirth (but also of Curation, Innovation and Sector Mash-ups). REPERTÓRIO: Teatro & Dança. 19 (27). p.pp. 37–48.
  • Boehm, C. (2022). Arts and Academia. Emerald Publishing. To be published in 2022.
  • 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.
  • Cunningham, S. (2014). ‘Hidden Innovation: Industry, Policy and the Creative Sector.’ Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
  • Flew, T. (2011). The Creative Industries: Culture and Policy. 1st edition. SAGE Publications Ltd.
  • Sacco, P.L. (2011). Web Page. Culture 3.0: A new perspective for the EU 2014 -2020 structural funding programming.
  • Sacco, P.L. (2013). Culture 3.0: The impact of culture on social and economic development, & how to measure it. Prepared for Scientific support for growth and jobs:  Cultural and creative industries  Conference. p.p. 21.

Catch-Up: New Civic Imaginaries (#2) Andrew Stubbs and Becky Nunes

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In this session, we consider existing strategies for cultural production that masquerade as avantgarde, while potentially in fact perpetuating an ideological status-quo. The role of the auteur is implicated in these strategies and examined in both presentations. The question is asked: what sort of art is really  needed for our future societies?

In this session:
Wednesday 2 March 2022, Room T101

  • Dr. Andrew Stubbs: Talent Managers and their Indie-Auteur Clients: Understanding the Conematization of Television
  • Becky Nunes: 15 Minutes of Fame. Andy Warhol, Facebooks and the Work of Luke Willlis Thomspn

 

Catch-Up: Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series #5 – Who is it for and how can we communicate it?

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Guest Speaker: Dr Charlie Tweed
With the traditional publications still defining many academic careers, it becomes a challenging task for researchers working with practice-based methods. Luckily, the emergence of alternative platforms for dissemination makes this task more attainable and relevant to various non-conventional outputs. This session explores the possibilities and challenges of practice-based focused online journals and other platforms focusing on alternative forms of research-based in creative methods.