Congratulations!

We are delighted to annnounce the birth of David Geno Parfect, born 28 April 2008 10.36am, at 5lb 13oz (2.7kg).

David is now the second child of Lost in CCI editor and centre manager Dr Ralph Parfect. As Ralph is (understandably) away on paternity leave, his collegaues have taken the liberty of posting this welcome announcement in his absence.

Our congratulations to Ralph, Natalie, William and, of course, David.

The Adman Commeth

Our friends at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) are launching their Summer School 2008, which includes work experience in a top London agency.

The summer school will run during summer 2008. It’s mostly aimed at undergraduates, but we are assured that MA CCI students are more than welcome to apply. In addition to the work placement, the summer school will also provide a series of special evening seminars and social events. The IPA will coordinate the placements in “top agencies in London”. Places are limited so they expect demand, and therefore competition, to be fierce.

To select the right candidates the IPA is staging a competition. You would have to submit a short essay or a sample of your own creative writing. A specific brief has been prepared which you would have to answer. The closing date for submissions is Tuesday 27th May. The successful students will spend the summer working in an agency -and be paid £1,000 plus reasonable travel expenses.

For more information, the competition brief and copies of materials go to:

http://newsweaver.co.uk/ipaadvertising/e_article001040645.cfm?x=bckjTSj,b7kLgngq,w

or e-mail them at summerschool@ipa.co.uk

Lost in CCI has good relations with the IPA as centre director Dr Richard Howells was one of their advertising awards judges last summer.

Manga and Anime

Lost in CCI readers are very welcome to attend a research seminar at King’s College London exploring the Japanese comic book and animation industries.

Entitled ‘Japan’s Manga and Anime Industries: Creativity and the Global Marketplace’, and taking place 1–6pm on Friday 16 May 2008, Room K2.31, Strand Building, Strand Campus, King’s College London, the seminar will look at the increasing popularity of manga and amime outside Japan, and unpick “the complex cultural and commercial logic of these industries, at once manifestly country-specific and globally successful”.

The seminar is organised by Dr Hye-Kyung Lee, who will also give a paper on manga ’scanlation’, the adaptation or of texts by manga fans. Four further speakers will give papers: Andrew Osmond, freelance journalist and author of the upcoming book BFI Film Classics: Spirited Away (‘Anime: The Anti-Cartoon?’); Dr Rayna Denison, Lecturer, Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia (‘Advertising anime: Global-local advertising and the Tokyo International Anime Fair’); Yoko Ono, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Humanities, Oxford Brookes University (‘”Such stuff as dreams are made on”: Dystopian vision of the future in Japanese manga and anime’); and Emma Hayley, Director, SelfMadeHero, Metro Media Ltd (‘Manga in the UK: Can manga reinvent Shakespeare?’).

The seminar venue is located on the first floor of the King’s Building, Strand Campus, King’s College London. Further details and a map are here. Please ask at reception for directions. For further information please contact Dr Hye-Kyung Lee (hk.lee@kcl.ac.uk) or Silvio Pezzana (s.pezzana@lcc.arts.ac.uk). If you would like to attend, please just send an email to cci@kcl.ac.uk.

The seminar forms part of an ongoing series of research symposia on Asian cultural industries at the King’s College London Centre for Cultural, Media and Creative Industries Research. It is organised in partnership with the Creative Industries Observatory.

Creative China

Lost in CCI is proud to announce its involvement in a major international conference, Creative China: Visual Culture, Architecture and Design, taking place this summer, on the 6 and 7 of June, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

The conference is part of the V&A’s current China Design Now exhibition, which illustrates some of the key developments in graphic design, lifestyle and architecture in mainland China since its opening up in the early 1980s.

Lost in CCI editors Ralph Parfect and Alicia Liu are working with the V&A to produce a two-day programme with twenty-five speakers from China, Europe and the UK, looking not only at design but at fine art, photography, film and video, fashion and urban visual culture. Speakers include designers and filmmakers as well as leading academic and professional experts on Chinese visual culture from Beijing, Shanghai and London.

We will be asking a range of questions such as: Why have Chinese artists been internationally so much in demand in recent years? What kinds of films are being made, and watched, in China? What are the current trends in graphic design, product design, fashion and lifestyle? And how sustainable is the phenomenal growth of China’s cities?

A full programme for the conference can be downloaded here, and a conference flyer here.

Tickets are already selling fast, but we hope to see some readers of Lost in CCI at the conference. The cost is £110 for the two days (£55 for one day), with concessions available. See the V&A website for further details of how to book.

The Value of Arts and Humanities Research

Centre Director Dr Richard Howells is one of “a small number of eminent UK arts and humanities scholars” commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to write an essay on the value of academic research in the arts and humanities.

The commission is to show “in language accessible to non-specialists” how arts and humanities research provides value or makes “a difference to contemporary life.”

This is a topic dear to Richard’s heart –especially the idea that the arts and humanities have a value to us all beyond the simply economic.

The finished piece is due on the date traditionally observed as Shakespeare’s birthday (April 23rd), so Richard doubly hopes that the muse (if not the bard himself) will be with him as he writes.