New Volume Published: Global Creative Ecosystems – A critical understanding of sustainable creative and cultural production 

We are pleased to share that Associate Professor of Creative Industries, Tarek Virani, has published Global Creative Ecosystems: A Critical Understanding of Sustainable Creative and Cultural Production as part of the book series: Dynamics of Virtual Work (DVW).

This volume offers a distinctive, in-depth understanding of how creative and cultural policy works in cities from around the world – not solely from academic or policy perspectives but including practitioners as well. The book aims to question and reformulate policy as it has been developed through creative industries approaches and instead offer up different examples and approaches to regional development with a focus on cultural production. The book carves a creative economy policy-oriented path of development that reflects the real world.

Introducing the new Patterns in Practice Artist Resident

October 2023 – January 2024

We are pleased to introduce you to the new Patterns in Practice resident, Craig Scott.  Craig is a composer, improvising guitarist and sound artist. Working with human performers, robotics, custom built digital and analogue hardware, his work reflects on the tension that exists between human and machine made music.

For this residency, Craig will explore our evolving human relationship with technological appendages, its effect on personal and collective mental health, perception of reality and how we relate to our own bodies, tools and each other.

Run by UWE, alongside DCRC Member Erinma Ochu (they/them) Patterns in Practice is a research project exploring the cultures of machine learning practice across science, education, and the arts. It is led by the University of Sheffield and UWE Bristol in partnership with Watershed, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Bristol and Bath Screen Summit 2023

8th November 2023, 13.30-20.00

Leading filmmakers, producers and writers will join production companies, commissioners, and politicians at the second Bristol and Bath Screen Summit at Arnolfini to celebrate the rise of the screen industry’s regional voice and explore the opportunities to drive growth and talent in the city region.

The event will take the form of a series of panel discussions, one of which includes ‘AI in practice’, which will be hosted by DCRC Member Erinma Ochu and will feature DCRC Member Verity Mcintosh, as they explore how AI can transform productions.

The overall event is hosted by TV presenter and writer, Sarah Beeny and produced by UWE Bristol Screen Industries Research.

An exhibition of retrospective work from leading video artist Terry Flaxton

7th October – 5th November, 2023

An exhibition featuring the work of DCRC Member  Terry Flaxton, one of the UK’s leading video artists, launches in Bath on Friday 6 October. The exhibition is a retrospective survey of 50 years of continuous practice in the moving image featuring 66 works created between 1977 and 2023, and will take place at the Roseberry Road Studios in Bath.

Terry, who lives in Wells, has exhibited internationally and been a cinematographer to artists such as Grace Jones, Sting, Queen Latifa, Van Morrison and Madonna, and was a writer and director for the BBC and Channel 4 before moving into academia.

At UWE Bristol, he was Professor of Cinematography and Director of the DCRC that helped shepherd in contemporary HDR, before becoming a Visiting Professor and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy on the production and consumption of moving images in 2019.

His installations have exhibited five times to audiences of over a million in New York at the Cathedral of St John the Divine. He is a lifetime Academician at the Royal West of England Academy of Art and a lifetime Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

Virtual Reality user testers needed 

10th – 13th October, 2023

Try out a short virtual reality (VR) experience from two of the world’s best immersive arts studios, Marshmallow Laser Feast and All Seeing Eye.

The piece is an excerpt from a collective virtual reality experience which drops audiences deep inside the landscape of the body, following the flow of oxygen through our branching ecosystem, to a single ‘breathing’ cell.

You will experience the VR as part of a small group – six to twelve people at a time. This user test is part of a collaborative research project with UWE Bristol and afterwards we will ask you for your thoughts and feedback. More on the wider research project, STREAM here.

STREAM is funded by UKRI as part of the MyWorld Collaborative R&D scheme, in partnership with Digital Catapult and Innovative UK.

The session will take approximately 1 hour and you must be ages 18+ to be involved.

Urban Hosts’ 10th Anniversary

16th October 2023, 18.30-21.30

Urban Hosts is a practice-centred, public programme that provokes and promotes alternatives, to how we currently govern and live in cities. For the last 10 years the programme has been exploring, how the design of conversational formats and the art of hosting, can scaffold and support, imagining, collective and equitable urban futures.

Celebrating the programmes 10th anniversary, on the 16th Oct, programme director Professor of City Futures, Teresa Dillon, in partnership with Grounding Technologies and the DCRC, will be hosting an evening of talks and happenings at the old M&S building, now called Sparks, in Bristol, Broadmead. Focusing on the question of designing mass participative actions for urban, social and environmental change.

Invited speakers include: Designer, facilitator and researcher, Claire Mellier, who will discuss the strengths and limitations of citizens’ assemblies as participatory, deliberative strategies for climate action. Creative Director and co-founder of Trigger, Angie Bual, shares the companies approach to community engagement and how its informed their large-scale public art works. Joining from Berlin, film maker, activist and co-founder of Tactical Tech, Marek Tuszynski reflects on over two decades of creating critical interventions about technology and its impact on society.

Moderated by Professor Dillon, the evening opens up a season of Urban Hosts events, plus brings together the Grounding Technologies network members.

Game Engines: Adoption and Adaptation

16th October 2023, 17.30-19.00

Join us for a lively roundtable discussion exploring the impact of game engine technology on the ways in which media is made and experienced.

Hosted by the DCRC with the support of MyWorld, funded by UKRI and Strength in Places Fund (SIPF), a panel of industry professionals and academic experts have convened to explore the processes of adoption and adaptation taking place in the wake of game engine technology’s proliferating utility. Game engines have been around for years: why has their impact become so accelerated and how is this affecting creators and consumers? What are the drivers for adoption within the creative industries? What adaptations will audiences and end-users make within this evolving media environment?

The event will be chaired by DCRC Member Tom Livingstone and will feature a series of speakers from Dr Aleena Chia from Goldsmiths, who researches creative cultures in game development and computational wellness, to Dan Efergan, the Executive Creative Director of Interactive at Aardman Animations.

(Image credit: Tom Livingstone)

Turning the Collar (2022)

Directed and narrated by DCRC Member Teresa Dillon and produced by Repair Acts, ‘Turning the Collar’ is a documentary taking the form of a road trip around the midlands country of Westmeath, in Ireland. On the journey craft, restoration, and repair professionals speak about their work. Touching on the values that underpin what we choose to care for and mend, the ‘Turning the Collar’ highlights the poetic and situated nature of such work and the joys and struggles that skilled trade professions now face. Closing reflections speak to planned obsolescence, the global Right to Repair movement and associated changes in law and legislation.

On 22nd September 2023, the documentary will be screened at the Floating University, Berlin, followed by a post screening talk with Marek Tuszynski and Tactical Tech. This will repeat on the 30th September, with the documentary screening at FixFest in Cardiff, again followed by a post screening talk.

(Image credit: Teresa Dillon)

3D3 Doctoral Training Partnership

We are delighted to announce the 3D3 legacy symposium and exhibition, Digital Flow/s, sharing research from our cohort of interdisciplinary practitioner-researchers via practice, performance lectures, papers, and panel discussions.

The 3D3 Centre for Doctoral Training is a partnership between Falmouth University, Plymouth University and the University of the West of England, Bristol. Launched in 2014, its aim is to train a new generation of interdisciplinary practitioner-researchers. These three universities, all located in South West England, are committed to fostering innovation through practice-led research in the creative and performing arts, especially the interrelated fields of digital design, digital media and digital arts (including music and performance). Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 3D3 has trained researchers to meet the creative and design opportunities of the future, exploring the possibilities and challenges presented by rapidly evolving technologies, including the interface between digital processes and traditional methods. It offers a unique opportunity for creative scholar-practitioners working at the forefront of a rapidly expanding research landscape.

Job Vacancy – Research Associate: Patterns in Practice

Application deadline: 04/09/2023

UWE is looking for a Research Associate!

Run by UWE, alongside DCRC Member Erinma Ochu (they/them), the role aims to support the impact, on practitioners and public audiences, of a research project exploring the cultures of machine learning practice across science, education, and the arts. Patterns in Practice is led by the University of Sheffield and UWE Bristol in partnership with Watershed, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Based within Watershed, which is home to the Pervasive Media Studio, you will be expected to conduct research and impact activities to meet the objectives of the project. This includes: supporting and evaluating an artist residency and commission informed by research insights from findings across three research case studies and planning, designing, delivering and evaluating a series of up to 4 dialogue events to empower practitioners and public audiences to consider the implications of the findings.

Autumn Season, Cary Grant Festival 2023 

October to November, 2023

The Cary Grant Festival announces their Autumn Program, 2023!

Cary Comes Home is a celebration born out of a shared passion for Bristol’s vibrant cinema culture between DCRC Member Charlotte Crofts and Fern Dunn. The Autumn program kicks off with a screening of Night and Day on the 21st October, 2023 at the historic St. Mary Redcliffe Church. In this classic, Grant takes centre stage in the fictionalised account of the iconic American composer and songwriter Cole Porter who shaped the classic American sound.

This will be followed by an extra special pilot of an all-new immersive actor-led theatre walk with Show Of Strength Theatre Company, using language and location to explore the transformation of Bristol boy Archie Leach into Cary Grant, the world’s most famous movie star.

There will be themed cocktails and local choirs serenading you on entry, so bring down your best vintage glamour and fasten your seatbelts and enjoy!

Patterns in Practice Artist Residency 

Closing Date: Mon 4 September, 2023, 09:00 BST

We are thrilled to announce an open call for our Patterns in Practice Artist Residency, hosted by the University of Sheffield and UWE Bristol in partnership with Watershed, and funded by AHRC, suitable for an artist who is interested in data mining and/or machine learning to develop artistic ideas and conversations.

Patterns in Practice is a research project that seeks to understand how practitioner beliefs, values and emotions shape practitioner engagements with machine learning in drug discovery, higher education, and the arts.

The Residency will take place over (at least) 32 flexible days between mid-October 2023 and end of January 2024, with a public sharing of research and ideas in January 2024.

It will be hosted at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio.

Lunchtime Talk: Inhabiting The Lantern Room – Synchronised Theatre for Durational Narratives 

14th July 2023, 13:00-14:00, PM Studio / Online

DCRC Member and Creative Director of Raucous, Sharon Clark hosts lunchtime talk alongside Raucous and Toronto based company Lost & Gone, to consider a synchronised performance that spans an ocean and a five hour time difference.

With international touring becoming prohibitively expensive and flying resources and people round the globe contributing to climate catastrophe is there a way we can construct new processes that allow for remote collaborative co-creation? Furthermore, can we build a production where audiences feel as if they are occupying the same physical space at the same time? How could we reinterpret notions of liveness? And if we do, is that ‘cheating’?

In this lunchtime talk the Raucous and Lost & Gone teams will discuss the ideas they tested (and are still testing) with The Lantern Room. They will share what these periods of exploration helped us discover and how those discoveries will influence the work as we move forward in our partnership.

New project aims to use AI to help people with Type 2 Diabetes manage their health

Writer and maker of conversational systems and member of the DCRC, Rik Lander is developing a ground-breaking AI system designed with patients and their needs at its heart, to support people with type 2 diabetes in taking control of their health, joined by Bristol-based team funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Structured diabetes education is a critical component of national efforts to improve health outcomes for people with the condition. The new software named ROMI (Relational Online Motivational Intervention) will deliver just that by providing patients with personalised accessible advice and support. ROMI is a conversational AI that can deliver educational content – either verbally, as a text or as a graphic. Health care professionals and patients, including those from under-served communities which research shows have a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes, will be involved in the design process from the start.

The team behind ROMI is made up of researchers from the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) and the NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Bristol BRC) and Elzware, a technology company that has been developing conversational AI since 2002.

I am ECHOBORG 100 

28th June 2023, Arnolfini, Bristol

Seven years since the very first audience test, we are extremely proud to present the 100th performance of I am Echoborg.

I am Echoborg is a funny, thought-provoking live show created afresh each time by the audience in conversation with an artificial intelligence.

Are you ready to join a team of brave souls to negotiate the future of humanity with a sassy, know-it-all artificial intelligence on the cusp of what looks like sentience? The content and tone of each show, as well as the ending are different each time depending on the conversation they have.

The event, which will be filmed, will be supported by the Digital Cultures Research Centre of the University of the West of England. Marie-Helene Boyd will be the echoborg and Dan Obi will host. Rik Lander and Phil D. Hall will also welcome the originators of the echoborg concept, Kevin Corti, PhD and Prof. Alex Gillespie, as special guests.

Doors open 7:45, show at 8pm.

Lunchtime Talk: From Bitter Ground – Form, Function and Creating the Uncanny Experience

23rd June 2023, 13:00 – 14:00, PM Studio / Online

Join DCRC Director and interdisciplinary artist working with print, mixed media, and immersion, Tom Abba, for a Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime Talk in the studio or online.

From Bitter Ground reflects the space between the weird and what we think of as real, composed as a set of artists’ books providing a bridge into an immersive, location-responsive experience. Tom discusses the creation of the project and explores the opportunities present in making immersive work without a stage, voices, or VR.

The Possible Worlds of VR Documentary

19th June 2023, 8pm (CET), online

Next month, DCRC member, Professor Mandy Rose will be speaking as part of DiD’s lecture series, “Expanded Documentary – ecologies of images | images of ecology”. 

Mandy will discuss her paper, “The Possible Worlds of VR Documentary”,  which explores VR worlds as critical spaces, through case studies of works that conjure temporal imaginaries and more-than-human worlds.

Launch of The Documentary Film Council

17th June 2023, Sheffield DocFest

The Documentary Film Council launches at Sheffield DocFest on Saturday 17th June.

The DFC is a new sector-wide organisation for the UK’s independent documentary film industry. It’s vision is to change the industry into one characterised by a dedication to sustainability, diversity of people, films, audiences and revenue streams. They want to build an organisation that will listen to the community, amplify its views and take action, in an age where the space for independent, creative nonfiction filmmaking is shrinking, and many filmmakers are struggling to survive.

The concept of the DFC stems from the UK Feature Docs research project, which was funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by academics at UWE Bristol from 2018-2021, including professor of Filmmaking and DCRC Member, Steve Presence.

Spoken Memories Project exhibiting at Bristol Central Library

6th – 11th May 2023

Bristol Central Library, College Green, BS1 5TL

Every part of Bristol has a story to tell.

The exhibition is a celebration of the experience and narratives of Bristol citizens for whom these places are important. It is free to attend & no booking is required. 

Spoken Memories is a UWE-funded research project led by Professor Shawn Sobers and Associate Professor Estella Tincknell.  It is linked to Bristol’s History Commission, which was set up by Mayor Marvin Rees in response to the events and debates surrounding the Colston toppling. The commission is tasked with ensuring all of Bristol’s citizens feel their experiences and narratives are recognised in the stories the city tells about itself.   

An immersive theatre experience co-created between Bristol and Canada

by Sharon Clark

DCRC member, Creative Director, award-winning playwright and dramaturg Sharon Clark has written a blog on their experience with remote creative collaboration between Bristol & Canada.

In the blog, Sharon looks back on Raucous’ international collaboration with Canadian theatre company Lost & Gone, and discusses their key learnings, processes and what they hope to achieve in the future.

(Image Credit: Jon Aitken)

CKC 2023: New Futures for Creative Economies – programme is now live!

29th + 30th March 2023, in-person and online

CKC 2023: New Futures for Creative Economies is dedicated to making visible different ways of ‘doing’ the creative economy. The conference aims to draw on the experiences, narratives, research, thinking, and stories of academics, makers, activists, and thinkers to imagine an alternative to our current model of creative work. Can we make an economy that is greener, more democratic and more inclusive?

Join us at Watershed in Bristol on 29th and 30th March, 2023 for a critical look at these issues. We will be joined by Emeritus Professor Angela McRobbie for a plenary session on day two and across both days there will be a range of sessions, from paper presentations, to workshops and film screenings.

We also have an online programme for those wishing to join remotely.

Immerse UK Lunchtime Live – Ethics and XR

25th January 2023, 12:30 – 13:30, online

January Lunchtime Live with Verity McIntosh.

With metaverse shortlisted for 2022’s Oxford Word of the Year and the Online Safety Bill intended to become law in the UK before next summer, building safe immersive virtual environments and championing collective opportunity to create a better and safer future is vital as multiple technologies intersect to form the building blocks; from immersive technologies like VR and AR to blockchain and cryptocurrencies to AI.

Book now to learn about challenges, opportunities, collective action and what’s on the horizon for 2023 from speakers at the forefront of the discussions.

Job Vacancy – Project Manager: The Documentary Film Council Project

Application deadline 29/01/2023

We are seeking a Project Manager to support the development of the Documentary Film Council (DFC), a new national organisation for the UK documentary community. This project represents an exciting opportunity to establish a new democratic infrastructure for the sector. One that will facilitate coordinated action on the issues that matter, and help build a more sustainable, diverse and inclusive documentary culture and industry.

Unbounded: Virtual and Extended Realities Degree Show

Friday 9th December 2022, 12:00 – 20:40

Unbounded offers a first glimpse at the immersive storytelling works in progress created by UWE Bristol’s Virtual and Extended Realities master’s students.

Take a journey beneath the forest floor, to the unreachable top shelf of the supermarket, and to the depths of the ocean. Contemplate the role of NFTs in society, travel down the corridors of a covid ward and confine yourself once again to a lockdown that never ends.

In this one day only showcase spanning Arnolfini’s second floor, you are invited to explore the full spectrum of your emotions, unlock hidden joy, and navigate the more surreal corners of your imagination.

Channel 4 at 40: The TV Revolution in Bristol

Saturday 3rd December 2022, 11:00 – 17:30

Part of a nationwide series of events, ‘Channel 4 at 40: The TV Revolution in Bristol’ explores what Channel 4 has contributed to UK broadcasting and its close connections with Bristol from the earliest days to the present.

Through a series of talks, academics, filmmakers and industry professionals will discuss Channel 4’s Bristol-based programmes across various genres – animation, factual/documentary and drama showing what was innovative and distinctive about them. We’ll also consider how the broadcaster’s relationship to Bristol has changed over time, including establishing a Creative Hub in the city.

This event offers an unrivalled opportunity to understand Channel 4, how it works and what it tries to do, and its importance to Bristol. Following the daytime event will be a full screening of The Falklands War: The Untold Story (2022).

Collective Wisdom & Co-Creation – Lunchtime talk

Friday 2nd December 2022, 13:00 – 14:00

Join us at Pervasive Media Studio or online for a talk with some of the authors / co-authors of Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media for Equity and Justice which observes that co-creation is everywhere; from massive prehistoric rock carvings to the birth of the internet…

But it’s easy to miss. Individuals often take credit for—and profit from—collective forms of authorship, erasing whole cultures and narratives as they do so. Collective Wisdom offers the first guide to co-creation as a concept and as a practice, tracing co-creation from collaborative journalism to human–AI partnership.

This talk is presented in partnership with i-Docs and will be chaired by Mandy Rose, Professor of Documentary & Digital Cultures at UWE Bristol and Co-Convenor of the i-Docs Symposium.

MyWorld CR&D Projects Announcement

The MyWorld programme in partnership with Digital Catapult have announced the results of the first Collaborative Research & Development (CR&D) funding call.

Of the six awards, 3 are from UWE Bristol, with 2 featuring DCRC researcher Verity McIntosh as the academic lead. The projects will explore a range of ambitious ideas addressing emerging challenges from across different areas of the Creative Industries.

Cary Comes Home Festival

Associate Professor of Filmmaking and Festival Director, Dr Charlotte Crofts, has announced that this year’s festival programme is now live.

The Fifth Cary Comes Home Festival takes its theme as “Class”, with accessible and inclusive film screenings, panel discussions and expanded cinema events that celebrate the working-class heritage of Archibald Leach.

For all IMAX screenings the festival is piloting a sliding Pay What You Can Afford ticket scale – recognising the cost-of-living crisis, in an effort to practice what we preach and bring Cary Grant to the widest possible audience.

Shari Frilot in Conversation

As part of Encounters Film Festival 2022, Shari Frilot, Senior Programmer at Sundance Film Festival and Chief Curator of New Frontier, will be joining Verity McIntosh, Researcher and Senior Lecturer for Virtual and Extended Realities at UWE, in conversation. Shari will be sharing her career trajectory and speaking about the amazing work she does championing emerging talent and leading a global conversation around inclusive and equitable futures for the immersive sector. This event is presented in partnership with the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE Bristol.

Art, and Intelligence (Artificial or Otherwise)

AI Art Engines have swarmed across social media feeds this summer, empowering thousands of creators to generate new, and often anti-anthropocentric visions of the world. On September 27th, visionary artist Dave McKean joins Tom Abba, Director of UWE’s Digital Cultures Research Centre, to discuss what this disruption means for art and the future of our creative culture.

Is Growth The Only Option?

Liz Roberts, Research Fellow working on the B+B R+D programme, has recently shared strategy and literature reviews exploring alternative ways of doing business and the economy in the Bristol and Bath creative sectors.

While other work in the B+B R+D programme is interested in developing creative practitioners, businesses and investors as agents of change, the central question for this research project is how wider economic and governance structures enable or inhibit attempts to think and do differently through the narratives and mechanisms that they create and support.

The Metaverse: A unique opportunity for innovation and growth – or a dangerous ‘parallel reality’?

Verity McIntosh, Senior Lecturer and expert in virtual reality at UWE gave contributions to the 2022 EU Parliament policy roundtable.

The EPRS policy roundtable focused on one of the most discussed technology concepts nowadays: the metaverse.

A panel of EU representatives, academia and industry discussed the main features, challenges, opportunities and risks of the metaverse, with the aim to identify fields that deserve scrutiny from EU lawmakers.

Collaborate Conference

Collaborate conference will take a deep dive into the art of collaboration and team dynamics to unpick tricky design problems, forge new networks and embrace uncertainty.

Talk by Verity McIntosh: It’s A Kind of Magic

There has been a lot of chat lately about the ‘metaverse’ and it’s immersive step-parents, Virtual and Augmented Reality.

The ability to build whole new worlds, to become the central character in a story, and to narrow the gap between our digital and physical selves can feel extraordinary. Magical even. It can also be a frustrating, confusing and expensive space to find yourself in when you try to tool up and team up to make something happen.

Verity will share her experience of what teams actually need to make great work in this new magical realm. She will talk about the collaboration needed to effectively cross the streams between technical and creative workflows, and offer some thoughts on designing for the metaverse.

Connery Book Published

We are pleased to share that Professor of Cultural Production, Andrew Spicer, has published his new book – Sean Connery: Acting, Stardom, and National Identity. The book explores how Connery’s performances combine to form an all-encompassing screen legend, and considers how the actor embodied national identity, both on screen and through his public role as an activist campaigning for Scottish independence.

The book is now available to be purchased now on Manchester University press and Amazon.

Book to attend the London launch in September in person or online. The Bristol launch will be held on Sunday 4th September, and details of how to book will be announced soon.

Free online seminar in response to gender-based discrimination

In this seminar Professor Parsley and Dr Johansson present their recent paper which explores gender-based discrimination in the electronic music industry.

Based on data collected for a larger project on women DJ producers, the paper takes as its starting point the gendered conditions, characteristics and lived experience of work in the cultural industries.

The paper introduces the concept ‘ameliorative work’ to analyse both individual and collective efforts by women to survive and thrive in the industry. In so doing it responds to recent initiatives to increase gender diversity in the music industry and highlights a sector of the creative industries that has so far received limited research attention.

A warm welcome to our two new PhD researchers

Congratulations to Jane Dawson and Cairi Jacks for being the first two to be awarded fully funded PhD studentships.

Jane Dawson is a PhD filmmaker whose research interrogates the role of indigenous creatives in the UK’s natural history film sector. View Jane’s work here.

Cairi’s practice as an artist takes a phenomenological approach, offering the opportunity to take part in an embodied and sensory relationship with the natural world. View Cairi’s work here.

We look forward to following their journey and sharing their work on our platform!

Safeguarding the Metaverse

As the metaverse continues to develop, various safety concerns and vulnerabilities need to be addressed at the industry, regulatory and governmental levels.

A new report from The Institution of Engineering and Technology has been published by one of our research fellows, Verity McIntosh and the CEO of Limina Immersive, Catherine Allen, on the harms that metaverse users may be exposed to.

The report serves as a guide for existing and future harms in virtual reality and the metaverse to support UK immersive technology policymaking.

i-Docs, Crisis and Multi-perspectival thinking

Join us for a fascinating day of presentations, posters and discussions on the theme of ‘i-Docs, Crisis and Multi-perspectival Thinking.’

As the field of i-docs (interactive and immersive documentary) has matured, it has become clear that there are i-Docs practices which have a particular purchase on illuminating crises.

Join Dr Judith Aston and Dr Ella Harris from Birkbeck, University of London for: i-Docs, Crisis and Multi-perspectival thinking. This is a free online symposium, filled with fascinating presentations, posters and discussions exploring how i-Docs have been used to highlight societal crises.

9.30-4.30pm. Please register in advance for this event.

Job Opportunity: Research Fellow – My World project

We are pleased to announce that we are re-advertising for the role of a Research Fellow on the MyWorld Project.

Launched in April 2021, MyWorld is a five-year programme part of the UK wide exploration into devolved research and development funding. Led by the Universities of Bristol with the Universities of Bath, Bath Spa, and UWE Bristol, MyWorld will position the South West as an international trailblazer in screen-based media.

We are looking for candidates with a track record of mapping and contextual research into evolving media practices, production processes and cultures, and the delivery of high-quality research outputs.

The role is based within UWE’s Digitial Cultures Research Centre at City Campus.

Container Magazine: Issue 05

The fifth edition of Container Magazine has just dropped.

Michelle Theil challenges how social media platforms claim to be accessible for all, and Jenna Kunze shares familiar experiences of using voice notes to communicate with loved ones.

Coming Soon: Queer Healing Ghana

Kobena Ampofo speaks to queer artists and activists about online spaces of solidarity in light of proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation.

What an NFTease

Nightmare Market is the new prototype from Stormjar Studio funded by Bristol and Bath Creative R+D. Read the blog by Stormjar’s James Wheale, sharing an honest view at the considerations and hurdles in making a project on the blockchain.

i-Docs and More-Than-Human Encounters

How do we augment our entangled relationships to the environment? What happens when i-Docs and the more-than-human meet?

i-Docs are collaborating with Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival to present a dynamic interactive session on the entanglements of multiple media platforms, augmentation, and other species.

Join us for this roundtable discussion as new media practitioners and theorists dive into how emerging new media forms enter into, think through, and remake entangled environments.

This roundtable discussion will also feature interactive engagement among participants to unpack these practices and ideas.

Featuring Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi and Mandy Rose from i-Docs. Moderated by Patricia Zimmerman from FLEFF.

Find out more information about this event here.

Tales of Care and Repair Publication Launch

Tales of Care and Repair is a crowd-sourced collection of photographs, interviews, events and stories about the objects we repair today. From Feb 2021 to Feb 2022, over 700 stories of everyday repairs were gathered through a comprehensive programme of activities that included a number of workshops, online conversations, symposium events and exhibitions.

The tales of Care and Repair publication launch celebrates the work carried out to date and pays thanks to those who made the project possible.

Find out more information about Tales of Care and Repair here.

This event is free, but numbers are limited.

Stream the Channel 4 Symposium

‘New Frontiers? Channel 4’s Move Out of London’ is now available to watch in full on YouTube.

This symposium explores the relationship between regional cultural production and the increasingly global dynamics shaping audio-visual culture, asking if relocation will be a force for progressive change, stimulating creativity, encouraging new voices and genuine diversity.

Featuring a presentation from Kevin Blacoe, Channel 4’s Head of Partnerships Nations and Regions, a panel discussion and a plenary.

Artist in residence opportunity

Bristol + Bath Creative R+D are pleased to invite artists of any discipline to apply to observe and capture the learnings of Here + There in a new public artwork. This artist will also engage with local arts students through talks and creative seminars. The selected artist will receive a fee of £25,000, be in residence for up to 6 months (2 days per week) and showcase their new work at the B+B R+D end of programme showcase. Submissions are open until 20 February (23.59 GMT).

Investigating the Impact of Channel 4’s Move to Bristol

This research project, funded by Bristol + Bath Creative R+D, investigates the effect of Channel 4’s move to Bristol in 2018-19 as it transformed from a London-based to a regionally-based public service broadcaster, with its new headquarters in Leeds and two ‘creative hubs’ in Bristol and Glasgow. Andrew’s research will examine how this relocation has changed the ways in which Channel 4 operates and the impact it has had on Bristol’s screen ecology.

Is fake news a digital problem?

The words ‘fake news’ have become an ominous symbol for an informational landscape where nothing is quite what it seems, any factual assertion can be thrown into doubt, and who you believe has almost entirely to do with your pre-existing political persuasions. Is it as simple as blaming the digital technologies we use to learn about politics?

After the Fact? looks at fake news and conspiracy theories, ‘bullshit journalism’ and the resurgence of the far-right.

Find out more: http://www.mjgw.net/

i-Docs community Conversations

Kate Nash and Patty Zimmerman

A wide-ranging online conversation about Kate’s recently published book – Interactive Documentary – Theory and Debate 

Published in July by Routledge, Interactive Documentary – Theory and Debate explores the dizzying array of new documentary forms that have emerged in the past ten years, drawing continuities between digital and documentary practice. 

i-Docs co-convenors Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi and Mandy Rose hope that you will be able to join us.  

Nov 17th 5pm GMT  – Online

Duncan Speakman – Only Expansion – wins BFI Immersive Art and XR Competition 

We are proud to announce that Duncan Speakman, who recently completed his PHD with DCRC, has been announced as one of the winners of the 65th BFI London Film Festival. 

Duncan’s AR piece titled “Only Expansion” won the Immersive Art and XR competition. 

“A powerful and impressionistic reflection on what it means to live on a planet in crisis, Only Expansion connects the here to the elsewhere, letting you experience our troubled environment through sound”. 

This seminar aims to expand the understanding of repair practices in Brazil and their implications in art, environment, economy and society, articulating such practices in light of the environmental emergency and the need to re-found the way humanity relates to objects and materials. The guests’ distinct experiences present an overview of repairs and reparations in the country from the perspective of diversity, in order to reimagine the idea of “repair” in a collective way, aiming at socioeconomic and environmental regeneration.

Speakers: Izabella Teixeira, Ricardo Abramovay, Pedro Belasco, Nêgo Bispo, Cinthia Mendonça, Fred Paulino (moderator)

COVID-19 Creative Economy Resilience & Recovery Survey

COVID-19 Creative Economy Resilience & Recovery is a nationwide project led by UWE Bristol and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), addressing questions of resilience, and subsequent recovery and rebuilding, for the UK’s creative sector, with a specific focus on creative micro-businesses.

In collaboration with a network of creative hub partners in nine city regions across the UK, the project team will design and assess the viability of a resilience framework and toolkit for creative micros, offering policymakers and other stakeholders tools which can aid in sectoral recovery and renewal from the COVID-19 crisis.

Research Seminar: Restorative Futures – Premises of Future Architectures

Wednesay 14th July 2021, 5pm BST

What happens to architecture after the climate emergency undoes its foundational assumptions of growth, extraction, and progress?

Under the banner Restorative Futures, we are delighted to welcome MOULD collective, for the third in a series of online research seminars at DCRC this summer, each aligned with one of our four research strands. It will address the demand posed by our current climate emergency to engage in a thorough reconsideration of our collective ways of being in the world, amidst assumptions of growth, extraction, and progress.

Respondent: Professor Teresa Dillon (DCRC)

This talk will introduce a series of premises that inform the ongoing research project Architecture after Architecture, led by Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider.

New Frontiers? Channel 4’s Move out of London: 1-Day Symposium

Wednesay 7th July 2021, 9.30am – 6pm BST

A one-day conference to discuss Channel 4’s move out of London and to debate broader issues about the role of regional screen production.

The channel’s relocation is embedded within broader strategies that aim to challenge London’s dominance and to ‘rebalance’ the UK’s screen ecology. Occasioned by these developments, the aim of this one-day conference is to discuss the motivations, mechanisms and political machinations of Channel 4’s move out of London and to debate these broader issues about the role of regional screen production.

Follow these links for Abstracts for the day and relevant biographies.

Creative Economies Seminar #2
Growth of What? New Narratives for the Creative Economy

Dr Jonathan Gross

Wednesday 30th June, 5pm BST

As the second of four Summer 2021 research seminars, the Digital Cultures Research Centre’s Creative Economies Lab is delighted to welcome Dr Jonathan Gross. 

Dr. Gross will argue for both the necessity to understand and critique how GDP derives significant power as an indicator of growth from its capacity to establish a simple narrative framework for collective progress, and the need to consider what might be alternative grounds for narrating the ‘success’ of economies – and of creative economies in particular.

Following the talk, Jonathan will be joined in conversation by Simon Moreton, with a Q&A session following the talk.

Face Unlock: A Pervasive Media Lunchtime talk with Teresa Dillon

Friday 5th March 2021, 1pm

Join Teresa Dillon, artist and Professor of City Futures at UWE, to explore the world of facial recognition & its intersectional histories.

Our technologies are never neutral.
Embedded within their design and articulation are nested decisions that propagate certain views and ways of being in the world, over others. This talk focuses on the histories of facial recognition software, drawing on research into early photography, anthropometric techniques and the normalisation of the ‘criminal profile’.

In 2020 The South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) launched their Data Fellowship as part of a year of thinking about Data. Now with the prototype strand in full swing the team are looking towards their Data Showcase on 26 March, an online day of fun and adventure exploring data, new forms of investment and inclusive futures. 

This talk is in partnership with SWCTN.

Making Through Failing
A Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime talk with Rob Eagle

Friday 5th February 2021 – 1pm

We are looking forward to hearing from DCRC Member and PHD researcher Rob Eagle as he discusses Making Through Failing.

Inspired by Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, this talk embraces techniques of failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking and not knowing. These are actions and feelings many artists, academics and queers know all too well by ‘not fitting in’ or achieving the usual societal metrics of success. Once we embrace our outcast status, everyday failure can open up opportunities for us to live non-normative lifestyles, form alternative kinship groups and create work that is true to who we are and how we see the world.

This talk was broadcast live on Watershed’s Youtube Channel – Link below.

Image Credit – Rob Eagle

Publication launch of Making It Real: A Policy Programme for UK Documentary Film

Tuesday 2nd February 2021

DCRC Members Steve Presence, Alice Quigley and Andrew Spicer have just announced the publication of Making It Real, following on from the UK Feature Docs’ previous report, Keeping it Real: Towards a Documentary Film Policy for the UK, published last summer.

Based on a survey of 200 leading UK nonfiction producers and directors, Keeping it Real outlined a chronic lack of funding, support and coordination at the heart of the UK’s feature documentary film sector. This new report represents the sector’s response to those original findings in the light of global events including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

It ultimately comprises a new industrial strategy for documentary based on inclusivity, sustainability and the creation of optimum conditions for success at home and internationally.

Introducing Container
A Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime
talk with Alice Quigley

Friday 9th February, 1pm

Join Alice Quigley from the Creative Economies Lab for a lunchtime talk at the Pervasive Media Studio.

This is a fantastic opportunity to find out more about Container: a new online magazine about creative tech. Container explores the world we live in by looking at & questioning how we use technology for social & cultural purposes.

Container is based in Bristol and born out of a long-term collaboration between Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio and UWE Bristol’s Creative Economies Lab, alongside leading creative and technology-based labs and research centres across the South West.

Creative Technology Lab talk – Rod Dickinson & Sarah Selby – Control Shift / The Departed

Wednesday 9th December, 4pm

Find out more about the ‘Control Shift’ digital art programme Rod Dickinson co-curated with Martha King and Becca Rose Glowacki in Bristol in October 2020. Sarah Selby will discuss ’The Departed (A Digital Seance)’ a digital artwork which she made with Tim Kindberg for Control Shift.

The Control Shift programme brought together both international and Bristol based contemporary artists whose artworks and workshops explored ways that we can reimagine and rethink our digital tools. The programme was part online and part IRL with physical installations situated across the city.

Control Shift Network is a collective of artists, technologists and producers.

https://www.control-shift.network/

Image Credit: The Departed image by Ibi Feher / Control Shift image by Becca Rose Glowacki & Control Shift Network

Keeping it Real: Towards a Documentary Film Policy for the UK

Policy Report

‘UK Feature Docs: A Study of the Feature Documentary Film Industry’ is an AHRC-funded study of the UK’s feature documentary film industry.

The project will map the industry, historicise its development and explore the manifold challenges involved in the finance, production, distribution and exhibition of feature documentary films in the UK.

In 2019, the team launched what became the largest survey ever conducted of UK feature doc producers and directors. Keeping it Real: Towards A Documentary Film Policy for the UK, is based on the survey findings and reveals a sector that was in urgent need of intervention even before the advent of COVID-19.

August sees the release of These Pages Fall Like Ash Second Edition

Published August 2020

DCRC Members Tom Abba and Duncan Speakman are releasing a second edition of These Pages Fall Like Ash – an immersive story told across time, place and the pages of two books. One book is a crafted, physical, familiar artefact, a guide to an imagined world, and a reminder that your own world is just as unique. The other is a digital text that weaves the two books together. Immerse yourself from August 20th 2020.

Composed by Tom Abba, Duncan Speakman With Emilie Grenier, Nick Harkaway and Neil Gaiman.

Hot off the press in July a new edited collection: Contemporary Radical Film Culture

Published July 2020

DCRC researcher Steve Presence, alongside co-editors Mike Wayne and Jack Newsinger, have announced the publication of their new edited collection – Contemporary Radical Film Culture: Networks, Organisations and Activists – the first book to emerge from the Radical Film Network.

With essays from some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this is the first book to investigate twenty-first century radical film practices across production, distribution and exhibition at a global level.

DCRC to collaborate in new
multi-million-pound creative
hub for the South West

5 year project will start Autumn 2020

DCRC researchers will join a new creative media powerhouse called MyWorld which is set to create more than 700 jobs and further the South West as an international trailblazer in screen-based media, thanks to £46 million funding.

Led by Professor David Bull at the University of Bristol, the initiative will develop major new research and development (R&D) facilities and partnerships connecting regional, national and international creative industry and technology partners.

DCRC’s Mandy Rose will lead the UWE Bristol team in MyWorld, working with Simon Moreton and Jon Dovey. The UWE Bristol academics will contribute expertise in immersive media production,  and draw on a significant body of research into creative industry ecosystems to understand the impact of the MyWorld project in the city region.

Photo – Creative Producers International Residential Lab at the Watershed, Bristol.

Photo credit: Shamphat Productions