Associate Professor and C3 Centre member Rob Marsden’s text ‘Inside the Rehearsal Room‘ is now out, published by Bloomsbury/ Methuen Drama.
Book launch at Wednesday 2nd March at 6.30 at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. RSVP to r.j.marsden@staffs.ac.uk email
Inside the Rehearsal Roomis both an instructional and conceptual examination of the rehearsal process.
Drawing on professional practice and underpinned by theory, this book moves through each stage of rehearsals, considering the inter-connectivity between the actor, director, designers and the backstage team, and how the cumulative effect of the weeks in rehearsal influences the final production. The text also includes: – Auto-ethnographic and fully ethno-graphic case study approaches to different rehearsal rooms – Interviews with directors, actors, designers and actor trainers – A consideration of the ethics of the rehearsal room and material selected for production – Practical exercises on how to creatively read a text from an acting and directing perspective.
Informed by over 20 years of directing experience in the UK and Europe, Robert Marsden’s book offers a practical guide that ultimately demystifies the rehearsal process and challenges how the rehearsal room should be run in the 21st Century.
Interviews include with Rufus Norris, Kate Wasserberg, Kirstie Davis, Ivo van Hove, Roy Alexander Weise, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Steven Boden, RC-Annie, Katrina Lindsay, Paule Constable, Stephen Mear and many more…
Even before the pandemic the UK, along with many other countries, has seen a shift in how we want to value the way we engage in cultural activities, culminating in the Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy of “Let’s Create”, firmly focussing on supporting access of communities and individuals to cultural production.
For Carola Boehm, a self-described musician-tech-academic, Luigi Sacco’s concept of Culture 3.0 is a key one, 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 gatekeeping systems supports access, diversity and is evidenced to simply make all our lives healthier, happier, more creative and more resilient.
In testing that notion, she took some walks and documented them in a few twitter threads. These culture30 walks aimed at making visible how places that have attended specifically to cultural policy have almost unknowingly enhanced the everyday creativity that one encounters on a simple 30 minute walk to work. One by one, a #culture30walk told her a story of how culture30 a city really was.
Professor Ian Brown will base his presentation on a series of artworks produced as part of artists’ group Common Culture (Ian Brown, David Campbell, Mark Durden). The work uses appropriation and the ready-made to engage audiences in a critical assessment of a celebrity culture which functions by commodifying its audience’s attention, leading to questions on its cultural and social value.
OMG I love common culture !!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️ and ME, The Total Show were made in response to an American internet celebrity who capitalized on the intimate relationship he had built with his online followers by trademarking the name ‘Common Culture’ to brand, promote and sell a range of products. The Die Raum gallery was turned into a Common Culture shopfront, with logo, weblink and an accumulation of graphic stickers based on the online posts of the celebrity’s fan base. The Rampa gallery collates appropriated and translated material into an enclosed interior space for consumption. The two exhibitions involve a parodic mimicry of the internet celebrity’s commodification of his audience, himself and his products. This explores how the aesthetics, interactions and transactional intimacy built by internet personalities are ruthlessly deployed to convert followers into consumers and attention capital.
OMG I love common culture!!!!♥♥♥♥ Die Raum, Berlin, Germany. 29th Feb — 19th April 2020
Hosted by Carola Boehm, the International Society for Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education organising virtual social meets, where we come together and chat informally about topics around current challenges for Higher Education and for our Higher Education Futures.
SEASON THEME: Colonisation, Coloniality and Whiteness in the Academy
Led by Dr Thushari Welikala, St. George’s, University of London, UK & facilitated by Prof Carola Boehm, Staffordshire University, UK
Season 4 Online Social Meets focus on how the continuing processes of colonisation, coloniality and whiteness are being utilised by the geo-political Centres to create a particular type of ‘global’ higher education. Colonisation and coloniality are processes that perpetuate the hegemony and the supremacy of whiteness within higher education systems across contexts. Whiteness reflects a set of “narrative structural positions, rhetorical tropes and habits of perception” (Dyer, 1997, p. 12) that enable power structures to continue different forms of coloniality of knowing within higher education institutions, despite the absence of white bodies (Shahjahan and Edwards, 2021).
Audre Lorde (2007) identifies whiteness as a mythical norm that enforces the supremacy of whiteness over others’ life and thought, maintaining the core of white dominance brought on by colonization and enslavement. Whiteness, as the colonial superstructure (Quijano, 2000), operates within current higher education under the guise of global university rankings, globalisation, internationalisation and projects on decolonisation and inclusion, shaping our social and educational imaginary and futurity through colonial ontologies and epistemologies (Christian, 2019).
The global higher education magnifies white supremacy through racial neo-liberalisation, capitalism and competition, constructing particular values and beliefs about what is meant by learning, teaching and Being human. In question here is, how the often invisible and uncontested whiteness moulds the social- cultural and intellectual imaginaries within higher education and their impact on the process of maintaining and continuing the coloniality of knowing, supressing alternative ways of perceiving the world.
References
Christian, M. (2019). A Global Critical Race and Racism Framework: Racial Entanglements and Deep and Malleable Whiteness. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2019, 5(2) 169–185
Dyer, R. (1997). White. Routledge.
Lorde, A. (2007). An Open Letter to Mary Daly, in Sister Outsider. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, pp.57-62.
Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580.
Shahjahan, R. A. and Edwards, K. T. (2021). Whiteness as futurity and globalization of higher education, Higher Education 10.1007/s10734-021-00702-x
Saturday 16 October 2021, 9am to 5pm Potteries Museum & Art Gallery
Bethesda Street, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent ST1 3DW
Beyond Preservation: re-evaluating Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK Ceramic Industry
Global economics and advances in automation technology have radically transformed the landscape of the UK’s ceramic industry in recent decades. Whilst these transitions have facilitated greater productivity, once commonplace skills associated with ceramic manufacture have now been displaced, threatening the continuation of much traditional knowledge. Should such practices, deemed outmoded or economically unviable for contemporary ceramic production be simply relegated to history or the trails of heritage tourism? What value is there in safeguarding this knowledge for the future? How can traditional practices be revived through new modes of thinking and creativity in a digital age?
This symposium builds upon these questions, and highlights specialist skills at significant risk of being lost from the industry, surveyed through recent research for the Heritage Craft Association’s Red List of Endangered Crafts. Making particular reference to North Staffordshire’s intangible cultural heritage*, scholars together with former employees and current representatives from the ceramics industry, will explore a variety of perspectives concerning a re-evaluation of the industrial crafts and their revitalisation through contemporary exchange and adaptation.
Although the symposium will be taking place within a cultural event, it will discuss ways to connect with the local community beyond cultural institutions, so that they can develop, engage and participate in ‘their’ intangible heritage. It is hoped that this event will introduce new ways of valuing industrial ceramics skills that are not influenced by the immutable heritage discourse of experts, by facilitating those that were and are still involved in the industry to articulate the value of their own heritage.
Our Fine Arts department has the pleasure of inviting you to the ‘Staffordshire University Arts Collection Exhibition’ and an exhibition of two of our MAns Fine Art students ‘ Loss of information’
The Staffordshire University Art Collection exhibition showcases some of the work from the University Arts Collection in the Cadman Fine Art Space, featuring the work of past students, staff and even some of our current technical team. Michael Branthwaite and Fine Art Students Eve Travis and Lorna Lakin have been combing through the collection gathering the names and dates and creating a new archive of the collection. To extend their life, and find new locations to share this diverse range of artworks, this exhibition will allow university staff to ‘loan’ artworks from the collection, they will then be installed in their new location and recorded in the archive. As well as the physical collection there is also an entire slide collection and degree show catalogues stretching back to the 1980’s. This project is very much the beginning of a longer-term ambition to track the history of Fine Art at Staffordshire University back to its inception at the Bartlem School of Art in the early 1900’s.
How it works, firstly please come and enjoy the exhibition! 10-17:00 22-25th September. On the 28th September you are welcome to the closing event 17:00-18:30 to enjoy some refreshments as well as the MAns exhibition. At the event we will be on-hand to take details of the work University staff want to loan and will then work with estates to have it brought to you and installed.. ( We will need full name, email and a room number.)
We are pleased to announce that NoiseFloor will once again be hosted by the Music and Sound department in our Cadman Studio Complex at Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK.
Dates: May 7th and 8th 2019
Deadline for abstract submission: 18th January 2019
Deadline for Registration: 15th March 2019
NoiseFloor is an interdisciplinary event with a focus on experimental composition. This year we are pleased to announce our KEYNOTE PRESENTATION from SIMON EMMERSON, professor in Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Our theme this year is Engagement.
“Who cares if you listen” is the title of an article from 1958, famously misattributed to the American composer Milton Babbitt. (Babbitt wrote the article, but the title was imposed by an editor).
60 years after Babbitt’s article, experimental or contemporary music is still often perceived as being “difficult”, “irrelevant”, or “out of touch”. To what extent are these conceptions and stereotypes merited? Should we as practitioners make more effort to engage with wider communities? Can this be achieved without diluting our work? Or is there an argument that our work should be governed by purely academic or aesthetic concerns? More generally, how can “challenging” art works or academic outputs reach wider audiences while still retaining their integrity? To what extent should our work engage with our social and environmental surroundings?
Works (compositions and performances) and proposals (for papers, lectures/recitals, panel discussions, workshops and other ideas) addressing this theme are particularly welcome. Of course, proposals for other relevant topics will also be considered. Submissions are invited from composers, academics, practitioners, individual researchers, postgraduates and any other interested parties.
Submissions should fall into one of the following categories:
20-minute paper presentation (with 5 minutes for questions)
Fixed acousmatic works (up to 8 channel)
Acoustic instruments and electronics
Popular music and interactive systems (2 channel audio with video)
Fixed audio visual music (2 channel audio with video)
Workshop
Panel discussion
Please submit details of your composition, performance or proposal in the form of an abstract of between 250-300 words, together with brief biography (150 words), programme notes, and, where relevant, any links to audio/video examples of your work to our online submission form at:
Registration: The fees are £60 for presenters and for attendees, £35 for students. Concessions will be available for students of Staffordshire University. There is no submission fee.
Please note that you will need to provide your own performers and instruments and that contributors will be required to attend the event. More information is available at http://noisefloor.org.uk/ or by contacting a member of the organizing committee:
The experimental music and moving image Festival, Noisefloor, hosted by the music and film departments, begins next Tuesday 8th May. All events are taking place in our purpose built TV studios in the Cadman Studios complex, College Road, Stoke on Trent.
Noisefloor has become an important annual event in the experimental music and moving image calendar and attracts submissions and artists from around the world. It’s a chance for our own students to perform with other local and international artists and showcases some of the best talent around.
All events are open to the local community and we’re keen for people to take the opportunity to attend and experience some excellent concerts the see great facilities we have here.
