We’ve launched our new department website!

We are delighted to let you know that we have launched a new website for the Culture, Media and Creative Industries Department. Our new website provide news updates as well as research-focused posts. We highlight the research activities of academic staff and PhD students, offering access to some of the latest external work produced along with events organised and attended. Consequently, this blog will no longer be updated.

You may also like to subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly news updates.

Two new Lecturer Posts at CMCI

We are delighted to be recruiting two lecturer posts – Lecturer in Culture, Media & Creative Industries (Media), and Lecturer in Culture, Media & Creative Industries (Creative Industries).

Deadline for applications: 15th January 2021

For more details please see the links below:  

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CDF985/lecturer-in-culture-media-and-creative-industries-creative-industries

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CDF979/lecturer-in-culture-media-and-creative-industries-media

AHRC Award for Experiential Translation Network

We are pleased to announce that CMCI’s Dr Ricarda Vidal has been awarded an AHRC Network grant. As Principal Investigator Ricarda will set up the international Experiential Translation network together with Dr Madeleine Campbell (University of Edinburgh) as Co-Investigator. The network includes academics, artists and translators from the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hong Kong, Hungary and Poland.
Together, they will explore translation between languages (interlingual) but also between media (intersemiotic) as a method of creation and communication, as a method for learning and teaching, collaboration and participation within multilingual, multicultural and multimodal settings. This includes understanding the many modes and modalities that contribute to meaning-making in cross-cultural communication (online & offline), language education and translation, and embracing the role of individual imagination and artistic creation in education and arts institutions (e.g. libraries, galleries, museums). They will employ arts-based and collaborative research methods including creative public workshops at libraries, museums, galleries, schools and universities.
The Network will commence in March 2021 and run until September 2022 – watch this space for announcements of workshops and a final exhibition and international conference in June 2022.

NEW BOOK by Anna Woodham on “unloved” museum collections

We’re pleased to announce that CMCI lecturer Dr Anna Woodham’s new edited book has just been published: Exploring Emotion, Care and Enthusiasm in “Unloved” Museum Collections. Edited with Dr Rianedd Smith and Dr Alison Hess, the book focuses on the millions of items that are held in museum collections around the world but which are not currently or never will be put on display. These stored objects are certainly not neglected by their professional custodians, and they are loved with a great intensity by some curators and enthusiasts. However, for all but a tiny proportion of the population they have little or no personal meaning. The book goes beyond strategic discussions of access to museum stores, information enhancement, or collections rationalization and focuses on the emotional potential of these objects. The authors explore how “care” for objects has varied over time and consider who cares for objects that are generally considered to be unsuitable for display and why they care. The authors also consider how inter-generational and inter-disciplinary dialogue can enhance or engender engagement with “unloved” collections and offer strategies and reflection on interpreting stored collections.

This book will be essential reading for scholars, students, and professionals in museums, especially those concerned with curation and collections. The volume contains contributions from both academics and museum practitioners including Dr Sheila Watson, Dr Alexandra Woodall and Mark Carnall (Oxford University Museum of Natural History) among others.

Roger Fry, Bloomsbury, Transfer Lithography and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collection

Roger Fry, “St Jacques, Dieppes”, 1927

Richard Howells, CMCI’s Professor of Cultural Sociology has a new research article published on Roger Fry, Bloomsbury, and transfer lithography.  Here, he has filled a gap in the existing literature, locating Fry’s use of the medium within the context of Bloomsbury innovation before the Second World War.

 

Special attention is then paid to the 13 Fry lithographs in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collection, donated by Rex Nan Kivell and Pamela Diamand, the artist’s daughter. He shows why these items by a very English artist were donated to a museum in New Zealand, especially by his only daughter in the UK. It concludes by considering the importance of these lithographs, arguing ultimately that they should be understood within the context of Roger Fry rather than simply by viewing the artist within the context of Bloomsbury.

 

Richard’s students will already be aware of his interest in Fry and Bloomsbury, and one of his recent MA Visual Culture students, Lina Fradin, is acknowledged for her help in identifying one of the scenes depicted in Paris.

The full citation is: Richard Howells, “Roger Fry, Bloomsbury and Transfer Lithography” in Tuhinga: Records of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 31, 2020, pp 5-18. ISSN: 1173-4337.

Decolonize classical music!

The mixed-race English conductor and composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912). Photograph: Hulton Getty

The exam board of Britain’s royal schools of music is being urged to address the legacy of its colonial origins after research found 99% of pieces on its syllabuses were by white composers” writes the Guardian in a recent article discussing the decolonization of classical music. The articles also draws on the work by CMCI researcher and PhD student Scott Craizley who argues that “the exclusion of black composers amounted to systemic racism, and the ABRSM [Associated Board of the Royal Schoolsof Music]should make its syllabuses less white if it was “committed to seeing a more racially diverse intake of students entering conservatoires”.

Read the full article here.

 

Curating Expertise Museum Survey

Are you a current or former museum and gallery professional working in the UK or internationally? Dr Serena Iervolino (CMCI) and Dr Stuart Dunn (DDH) are inviting colleagues in the sector to complete a survey that aims to explore the perspectives and experiences of current and former museum and gallery professionals in relation to graduate employability in the sector.

The survey can be accessed at here (closing date: 18^th of June).
Please take the time to complete the survey and circulate it amongst your colleagues.  

Serena and Stuart are particularly keen to hear from those interested in contributing, in one form or another, to the delivery of a future London-based but globally focused new Museum Studies teaching provision at King’s. They are interested in collaborating with London-based institutions / professionals, but would be delighted to also hear from colleagues across the UK and internationally. 

Whilst they appreciate this is a time of uncertainty for the sector, they believe it is a critical moment to reflect on how we can train future generations of resilient museum professionals.  

If you wish to get in touch, please email serena.iervolino@kcl.uc.uk and stuart.dunn@kcl.ac.uk.  

 

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES RESEARCH FRONTIERS: SEMINAR SERIES – now online

We are delighted to announce that the Creative Industries Research Frontiers seminar series, which is co-organised by King’s College London and the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), has now moved fully ONLINE.

There are two sessions coming up in June. Don’t miss presentations by CMCI’s Kate McMillan and Tamsyn Dent on 1st June.

Seminar 3: Creative work and gender: barriers and activism 

1st June 2020  2-3.30pm

You can read the programme and register here:  https://events.nesta.org.uk/creativeworkandgender

Seminar 4: Creative industries and intersectional barriers:  Exploring class and race

8th June 2020  2-3.30pmYou can read the programme and register here: https://events.nesta.org.uk/creativeindustriesintersectional

Dancing in isolation

CMCI student Hui Zhang is doing one Chinese folk dance a day during the pandemic. Here is a Dai ethnic dance. Follow her an instagram to see more of her choreography.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_QYJJCDUL7/?igshid=102khmkzvufkz

COVID-19, Society & the Elderly – some ugly truths

In times of public emergency, social truths are revealed. The coronavirus crisis is one such emergency, and it reveals that the lives of the elderly appear to matter less and, in some cases, are even deemed disposable”, writes CMCI PhD-student Shir Shimoni. Her chilling article “How coronavirus exposes the way we regard ageing and old people” draws on her PhD research and was recently published in The Conversation. Read the full piece here.