Centre Director Dr Richard Howells‘ contribution to the Battle of Ideas debate on “Can the Arts Save The Economy” is now available via online audio at:

http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2009/session_detail/2548/

The event was held at the Royal College of Art in London: joining the discussion with Richard were James Boyle, former controller of BBC Radio 4, Angus Kennedy, IT consultant, Karl-Erik Norman the opera singer and Secretary General of the European Cultural Parliament, and Douglas Slater, the writer, critic, political strategist and policy advisor, co-founder, Stonewall.

You can hear Richard argue that the arts cannot save the economy -and neither should they be expected to either.

Centre Director Dr Richard Howells was an invited speaker at a UK Film Council event to launch their latest report: “Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film 1946-2006.”

Richard praised the allusion to Clifford Geertz in their title, but (controversially) criticised their focus on “impact” at the expense of “value” and “meaning”, which he found much more interesting and intellectually relevant. You can make your own mind up, of course, by reading the report online at http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/media/pdf/f/i/CIReport_010709.pdf

The other speakers were Professors Roy Boyne (Durham), Christine Geraghty (Glasgow) and Maire Messenger-Davies (Ulster). The panel chairs were Professor John Hill (Royal Holloway), and Sara Selwood, editor of Cultural Trends. The report was presented by the eminent film historian and commentator Professor Ian Christie.

Congratulations to 2008-9 MA CCI alumna Matilde Barroso, who is now working towards the launch of ADDICT (Agency for the Development of the Cultural and Creative Industries in Portugal)!

She is working in a small team in Porto, Portugal, which she believes will grow rapidly. Matilde says, “I believe I’ve found a great opportunity to progress in my career, learn more and put in practice many of the things the MA touched upon. It’s definitely an exciting next step.”

We wish her the best of luck!

On 5 November 2009, in the Czech Republic, CMCI Lecturer Dr. Harvey G. Cohen delivered a lecture entitled “Duke Ellington In His Own Words,” which previewed the main themes from his forthcoming book Duke Ellington’s America (University of Chicago Press, 2010), accompanied by rare audio clips and interview snippets of Ellington ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s.

The talk was for MA students from the Department of Production at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.  “It was particularly interesting to spend time with these students, because their program is similar to our MA Cultural & Creative Industries degree,” Cohen remarked.  “they specialise in arts management, in the areas of art, music and theatre, and delve into the art, theory and business perspectives of the creative industries, just as we do at MA CCI.” 

Because the university’s seminar rooms wouldn’t hold the people who wished to attend, the talk was held in the backroom of Cafe Toulouse, a nearby French cafe, marking the first time ever that students could have a smoke while watching Cohen lecture.  Mais oui!

By the by, since Cohen’s last Ellington-related appearance on this blog, the cover to his book has been finalised and is included in this post.

Music copyright is a very hot issue at the moment, and so Lost in CCI recommends a recently published and highly topical special issue of the journal Information, Communication and Society (Vol 12.2) edited by CMCI’s Professor Andy Pratt with Martin Kretschmer.
The article is titled: ‘ Copyright, and the Production of Music’, and here is a web cast of Martin and Andy in a discussion at the Oxford Internet Institute accessible from the journal web page, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g910534795

Martin and Andy’s editorial is ‘LEGAL FORM AND CULTURAL SYMBOL: Music, copyright, and information and communications studies’. In it they argue that writers in information and communication studies often assume the stability of objects under investigation: network nodes, databases, information. Legal writers in the intellectual property tradition often assume that cultural artefacts exist as objects prior to being governed by copyright law. Both assumptions are fallacious.

Their introduction conceptualizes the relationship of legal form and cultural symbol. Starting from an understanding of copyright law as part of systems of cultural production, it is argued that copyright law constructs the artefacts it seeks to regulate as objects that can be bought and sold. In doing so, the legal and aesthetic logic of cultural symbols may clash, as in the case of digital music (the central focus of this special issue).

Artists working in any medium and writers expressing themselves in any form or genre are invited to submit work for the fifth issue of ITCH Online. The “theme” is: ?*

ITCH is a creative submissions magazine started by CMCI’s own Dr Mehita Iqani and Bell-Roberts Publishing in 2003. It features a variety of writing as well as visual and multimedia work. It is South African-born but internationally relevant.

Submissions are loosely categorised as MetaText (non-fiction, essays, polemic, book reviews and more), SubText (narrative, short stories, plays and more), PreText (poetry, experimental writing, sound art and more) and NonText (graphics, drawings, photography, film, animation and more). ITCH aims to create a space for creative expression and exchange; it is an experimental media project and submissions are open to anyone.

*For details, including an explanation of the mysterious “?”, go to: http://itch.co.za/submissions/

We are delighted to welcome Tracey Jensen to the CMCI team as a Teaching Fellow on the MA in Cultural and Creative Industries.

Tracey got first class honours in Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge, and an MSc in Gender Studies with distinction at the LSE. She passed the Certificate in Learning and Teaching in HE with Merit. She went on to research a PhD in parenting advice in the media at the LSE/Open University under the supervision of our own new Professor Ros Gill who starts work here in January 2010.

Tracey has teaching experience at Southbank and Goldsmiths, together with publications both recent and forthcoming. Let’s all make her welcome.