Leading the World

Centre Director Dr Richard Howells gets an honourable mention in the new AHRC report: “Leading the World: The Economic Impact of UK Arts and Humanities Research”, which is just out.

He was among the 33 UK arts and humanities researchers selected by the AHRC to contribute essays on the value of arts and humanities research.

The editors say: “The word ‘value’ was deliberately chosen in place if ‘impact’ because it is arguably closer to the instincts and interests of these researchers.”

Too right it is!

Professor Jonathan Bate, the eminent Shakespeare Scholar and Fellow of the British Academy, is now editing them for publication.

Avant guitar

Readers of Lost in CCI are encouraged to attend a £5 concert at Cafe Oto on Wednesday 24th June 2009 which is being produced by a graduate of the MA Cultural and Creative Industries programme, Rita Vozone (2007-8).

The concert features two guitarists from Rita’s homeland of Portugual, Manuel Mota and Nortberto Lobo. Mota, we read, is an experimental lo-fi blues guitarist, while Lobo blends traditional Portuguese music with John Fahey (a personal hero of Lost in CCI’s).

We have to say, it all sounds pretty damn good. Hope to see you there!

More details: http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/programme/MANUELMOTA.shtm

Some Other Way Forward

CMCI staff member Dr Ruth Adams chaired a panel on Tuesday this week at a conference entitled ‘Some Other Way Forward: The Legacy’ held at the Southbank Centre. Some Other Way Forward, or SOWF, is a treasury funded project of the South Bank and Bankside Cultural Quarter – of which King’s College is an educational partner – which “aims to put young people at the heart of the arts as visitors, creators and advocates.” Ruth chaired the session which examined the outcomes of the ‘Street Genius’ project, which offers creative placements for (often disadvantaged) young people at the arts organisations which make up the South Bank Cultural Quarter.

The panel consisted of representatives from the London Sinfonietta, BFI Southbank and Rambert Dance, and the young people who had worked with them. All the panelists spoke candidly of the challenges and difficulties they had encountered along the way, not least dealing with people and situations outside their normal experience, but all talked also of how much had been learned and gained from the endeavor. The young people’s stories were inspiring, and they had clearly made the most of the opportunities they had been given, and were well on their way to careers in filmmaking, contemporary dance and music. The institutions involved all said that taking the young people into their organisations had made them look at the way they did things anew, and some had made, or planned to make, quite serious adjustments to their personnel, programming and marketing in order to reach previously overlooked communities.

Ruth was asked to chair the session as she has been involved in the project in a consultancy role since its inception.

Present at the conference were a wide variety of representatives from schools, colleges and universities within the Cultural Quarter, together with many arts organisations, youth charities, and local and national government. Other speakers included Baroness Estelle Morris and Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre.

More information on SOWF, Street Genius and the Legacy Conference can be found here.

Making Meaning, Making Money

All our PhD and MA students are invited to a book launch and panel discussion which the centre is putting on in collaboration with the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and in partnership with the National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University.

The book is Making Meaning, Making Money, an Anglo-Australian volume edited by Lisa Andersen and Kate Oakley, who is a friend of Lost in CCI.

It will be launched at the event by John Newbigin, cultural entrepreneur and former policy advisor to Labour Party figures Chris Smith, Neil Kinnock and Lord Putnam. The panel will then discuss: “Culture or Coal? Will Creative Industries lead the Australian Economic Recovery? What can the Australian Government learn from Britain’s approach to the arts? And should this be reflected in a Cultural Policy?”

The panelists are:

Professor Kate Oakley, University of the Arts and City University London
Professor David Throsby, Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney
Dr Tony Moore, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne
Professor Justin O’Connor, Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology

The event runs from 6-8pm on Wednesday 24 June 2009 at the Council Room, King’s College London. RSVP by 22 June to: menzies.centre@kcl.ac

New Book from CMCI Director

Lost in CCI is delighted to report the publication of centre director Dr Richard Howells’ latest book: Using Visual Evidence. It’s just out from the Open University Press in the UK and McGraw Hill in the United States.

Using Visual Evidence is a collection of specially commissioned essays from scholars around the world. It seeks to persuade historians, social scientists and humanities researchers that the visual image is not simply an illustration of the written word. Often, it is the text itself and so should not always be relegated to a supporting role in academic analysis.

The specialist chapters focus on painting, cartoons, photography, photography, television, film and advertising, and the contributors come from the UK, the USA, Canada and France. Institutions represented include Brown, the Sorbonne, Duke, The British Library and (of course) King’s.

Richard’s co-editor is Professor Robert Matson, a historian from the University of Pittsburgh. The idea for the book was cooked up together while Richard was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Centre for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. In addition to organising the contributions, Howells and Matson have also written the introduction. Full details can be found at:
http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/033522864X.html

MA CCI students -especially those taking Visual Culture or writing dissertations on visual media might find it particularly useful. The argument that visual evidence helps us understand not only the past but also the present day remains close to the authors’ hearts.

A License to Inform…

CMCI Director Dr Richard Howells has been interviewed by Finnish national public service broadcasting service YLE. Like the BBC, YLE is funded by a license fee and carries no advertising.

Appropriately, Richard’s interview was about the license fee system in the UK, which is a topical issue in Finland due to proposed changes in the system over there. Richard is a strong supporter of independent, public service broadcasting.

YLE runs four national television channels and six radio channels, together with 25 regional radio operations.

The interview was conducted in English, but as YLE broadcasts in Finnish and Swedish (together with some Sámi) translation is afoot before the feature is broadcast in Finland.

Manga scanlation interview

CMCI’s Dr Hye-Kyung Lee recently gave an interview to a Japanese news agency about the scanlation of manga (comic books), on which she has been doing some research. Scanlation is defined by Wikipedia as ‘the unauthorised scanning, translation, editing and distribution of comics from a foreign language into the language of the distributors’. An article based on Dr Lee’s interview appears in the Japan Times online.

In the Loop

CMCI academics Dr Richard Howells and Dr Harvey Cohen enjoyed a preview screening of “In the Loop”, the Anglo-American political comedy-satire directed by Armando Iannucci and starring (among others) James Gandolfini.

There’s a lot of (hugely enjoyable) high calibre swearing combined with razor-sharp personal insults, and there has been much speculation on how much basis this film has on real people and real events.

But Drs Howells and Cohen warn that this is a satire and not a documentary (despite its deceptively authentic fly on the wall style). But you can’t help wondering…. And the timing is perfect.

“In the Loop” goes on general release April 17th.

Goody Goody

CMCI Director Dr Richard Howells was a live guest on Sky Television News following the furore over Sir Michael Parkinson’s remarks about Jade Goody in next week’s Radio Times.

Parkinson, the veteran journalist and former chat show host, said that reality TV star Goody, who died recently of cancer aged 27, represented “all that’s paltry and wretched about Britain”. He continued: “Her death is as sad as the death of any young person but it’s not the passing of a martyr or a saint or, God help us, Princess Di”.

Goody was “barely educated, ignorant and puerile”, wrote Parkinson. “Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and, from that point on, became a media chattel to be manipulated and exploited till the day she died”.

Howells told host Matt Smith that while he –and many viewers- actually agreed with much of what Sir Michael had said, he disagreed on one important point. Jade Goody was not an innocent victim of media exploitation: the exploitation had been entirely mutual. By actively inviting the public into her private life, she had known exactly what she was doing and why.

Our director went on sociologically to explain the Jade Goody phenomenon and argued that she had already –quite literally- become a “text book case” whose academic existence might actually (and ironically) outlive her celebrity persona.

The power of cultural learning

Lost in CCI readers might be interested in a public debate taking place at the Royal Society of the Arts later this month, to launch the first report of the Culture and Learning Consortium.

The keynote Speaker is Maggie Atkinson, group director for Learning and Children, Gateshead Council, and President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. The panel discussion is chaired by Paul Roberts OBE, Chair, Creativity, Culture and Education. Panellists are to include: Vikki Heywood, executive director, Royal Shakespeare Company and Julia Peyton-Jones OBE, director, Serpentine Gallery.

The event starts at 18:15 on 27th Apr 2009. Further information here.