Gigabitesback – CMCI community – sharing resilience

At a time like this, our first thoughts are for everyone’s health and wellbeing. We are a community of students, staff and alumni drawn from many parts of the world, and our experiences of the current crisis will take many forms depending on our own circumstances and current conditions of ’social distancing’ and ‘isolation’. Nevertheless, we are brought together by the interests and commitments that we have in common –  not least those that come under the label of ‘Culture, Media and Creative Industries’ – CMCI. It is in light of these shared interests that we are writing to you now to introduce ‘Gigabitesback’.

At its simplest – Gigabitesback is an online forum dedicated to the CMCI community for saying ‘hello’, connecting with each other, and sharing ideas. We’d like it ‘to make a difference’.

The name ‘Gigabitesback’ references a) the gig economy – where so many in arts and culture work and are facing great uncertainty in their futures; b) the online space we are now working (requiring gigabytes of memory); and c) the opportunity, or perhaps requirement we feel to use our collective skills, knowledge and enthusiasm to do something to help – to be resilient – to ‘bite back’!

So – how can YOU get involved. Join one of our initial meetings to find out. The plan is to hold these every Wednesday over the coming weeks at 10.00 and then repeated at 16.00 GMT (to accommodate different time zones).

Links to join the meetings are below:

Join at 10.00 GMT on Wednesdays

Join at 16.00 GMT  on Wednesdays

Between us we have an extraordinary wealth of knowledge, experience and creativity to bring to the current situation. We’d like to support people working across the arts, cultural, media and creative sectors (including many of our alumni). Share both your challenges and your solutions – your great ideas – with others across the CMCI community. You can do this by posting a short note on our Gigabitesback note-wall here (alumni will have ‘guest’ access so posts will be anonymous – but you can add your professional contact details in your note – if you’re happy for this to be shared across the CMCI community).

Take care everyone, and thank you!

CMCI Gigabites team

Children’s TV and the BBC Licence Fee

TV licence fee: What would happen to children’s TV if CBeebies and CBBC are axed?
Read what CMCI Professor Jeanette Steemers has to say on the matter in inews and the Times.

 

 

 

 

 

INAUGURAL LECTURE: This Thing Called Art – Nick Wilson, Professor of Culture & Creativity

The Great Hall, King’s College London, 12 February, 18.30-21.30

If you’re wondering what we mean by ‘this thing called art’, then join us in the Great Hall on 12th February and listen to the inaugural lecture by CMCI Professor Nick Wilson. Prof. Wilson suggests there is much more at stake than the creation and enjoyment of artworks, the specialised work of professional artists, or, indeed, the sector we call the arts. In a wide-ranging and personal talk, he argues for a radical new account of art that acknowledges its central role in experiencing, valuing and connecting with self, with each-other, and with the world. How we respond to the major challenges of our time, including the persecutory nature of contemporary global society and climate emergency, depends upon our coming to recognise the value of this aesthetic knowing for ourselves.

The lecture is free, but places are limited, so please book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/this-thing-called-art-nick-wilsons-inaugural-lecture-tickets-89979803013

TALK: Environmental Racism in the United States

Thursday 6th February, 6.30pm-7.45pm

This event is part of the British Academy’s season on Sustainable Futures

Environmental racism is on the rise in the United States, with minority and impoverished communities much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. In this event, CMCI Senior Lecturer Jessica Rapson (CMCI) and co-researcher Lucy Bond and will draw on their recent research to highlight how the tourist and heritage industry in the American Gulf States (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas) is helping to conceal environmental racism as well as being complicit in the air and water pollution crisis that is blighting predominantly African American neighbourhoods.

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/environmental-racism-united-states

“Gogglebox” and Brexit

Here is a view from The New Yorker on “Gogglebox” and how this has become “a chronicle of Brexit fatigue” as Brits watch other Brits watching their country self-destruct in the long drawn-out drama of Brexit. CMCI professor Richard Howells was interviewed by The New Yorker’s Anna Russell for this article.

Click here and enjoy the read.

Climate Change, Feminism, Creativity & Memory – a CFP & an Exhibition

Kate McMillan, 2019

Symposium: 30 Jan. 2020, 10:00 to 18:00

Deadline for Proposals of 200-300 words:
13th Dec. 2019

Exhibition: 13 Jan. – 28 Feb. 2020

Bush House Arcade, London

On 30 January 2020, the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London will present a symposium organised by CMCI lecturer and artist Kate McMillan. They are currently taking submissions for the symposium from across disciplines, within and outside of academia, that explore the interconnections between concepts such as the Anthropocene, climate change, memory, feminism and art.  For the full CFP see here

The symposium accompanies Kate McMillan’s film-based installation The Lost Girl, which will be on show at the Arcade at Bush House from 13th January to 28th February.

Find out more about The Lost Girl exhibition and programme here.

Supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Institute, King’s College London and the following funders: Arts Council England, Australia Council for the Arts.

NEW BOOK: Screen Media for Arab and European Children

We’re pleased to announce that CMCI Prof Jeanette Steemers’s new book has just been published: Screen Media for Arab and European Children: Policy and Production Encounters in a Multiplatform Era addresses gaps in our understanding of processes that underpin the making and circulation of children’s screen contents across the Arab region and Europe. Taking account of recent disruptive shifts in geopolitics that call for new thinking about how children’s media policy and production should proceed after large-scale forced migration in both regions, the book asks to what extent children in Europe and the Arab World are engaging with the same content. Who is funding new content and who is making it, according to whose criteria? Whose voices are loudest when it comes to pressures for regulation of children’s screen content, and what exactly do they want? The answers to these questions matter for anyone seeking insights into diverse cross-cultural collaborations and content innovations that are shaping new investment and production relationships.

The book is linked to our  AHRC-funded project Children’s Screen Content in an Era of Forced Migration: Facilitating Arab-European Dialogue (www.euroarabchildrensmedia.org).

Future of Film Summit 2019

King’s is partnering with Future of Film Summit 2019 on a one-day conference designed to shape and create the future of film and storytelling.

Taking place at BFI Southbank in London on 26 November, the event will feature world-class speakers behind works such as Ad Astra, Blade Runner 2049 and Black Mirror as well as hands-on sessions on the latest tech/strategies including virtual production, worldbuilding, interactive storytelling and brand-funding.

CMCI’s Professor Sarah Atkinson will be hosting the inaugural  Future of Film Think Tank with speakers from the event and collaborating with them on a report on the future of film set to be published in early 2020.

The summit will also see the launch of Professor Sarah Atkinson’s film ‘Live Cinema – Walking the tightrope between stage and screen’ which examines the growing prominence of live cinema phenomena in the global film experience economy. The film features interviews with pioneers at the vanguard of live cinema, including Oscar-nominated actor Woody Harrelson, and contributions from the National Theatre Live, Royal Opera House Live, The Light Surgeons, Live Cinema UK and Blast Theory.

Radical Education by the Sea

Raphael Sieraczek (PhD student at CMCI) together with his colleague Uwe Derksen have successfully established a radical educational project in the vibrant town of Margate (Kent) described by journalists as ‘Shoreditch-on-Sea’. The Margate School (TMS) is an independent liberal art school with post-graduate provision and community outreach offering a wide range of short courses as well as the innovative MA in Fine Art programme ‘Art, Society, Nature’ that started in October this year. The school is based in the former Woolworths building on the Margate High Street and has been described as the ‘soul of Margate’ being open to the local community and frequently visited by internationally renowned artists, philosophers as well as academic researchers who already compare The Margate School to revolutionary educational initiatives, such as, the Black Mountain College. If interested in visiting the school please get in touch directly with Raphael at raph@themargateschool.com.

 

For more information about TMS please visit the school’s website and the facebook page;

www.themargateschool.com
www.facebook.com/themargateschool

Poetry Book Launch: Home on the Move

4th October
Ledbury Book Festival’s Poetry Salon at Ledbury Books and Maps
Ledbury High Street, Ledbury,
7-9pm

Ricarda Vidal (an academic at CMCI) and Manuela Perteghella will be launching their poetry collection Home on the Move: Two Poems go on a Journey with an introduction, poetry readings and a roundtable discussion, followed by Q&A. The evening will also include the ever popular Ledbury Open Mic! Tickets £5 on the door (includes a drink). For more info please see the Facebook Event page.

The book is the result of Ricarda and Manuela’s multilingual touring project Talking Transformations: Home on the Move, which employed poetry, community workshops, film art, translation and a travelling exhibition to get people talking about home and migration in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.

The creative responses collected in the book were created on a journey undertaken by two poems about ‘home’: Deryn Rees-Jones’ poem travelled from the UK via France to Spain and back whilst Polish poet Rafał Gawin’s travelled to the UK via Romania and back to Poland. During each journey, the poems were translated by a literary translator and a local film artist. The original English poem was translated by CMCI’s Kate McMillan.

The poems and their literary and artistic translations toured England in summer 2018 and were translated into new poetry in English and other languages in a series of workshops. A selection of these retranslations is included in Home on the Move.

The book also contains film stills and QR codes for the artist videos.

‘One of the most inventive and necessary poetry projects of recent years, a reminder of Ted Hughes’s assertion that poetry “is a universal language in which we can all hope to meet”’ – Chris McCabe