Category Archives: Media

Crabb Deal on Broadcasting in Wales is not secure yet

March 9, 2015Blog, Commentator, Industry, Televisionangela

See IWA Click on Wales blog page 9th March

Crabb Deal on Broadcasting in Wales is not secure yet

When Stephen Crabb, the Secretary of State for Wales, stood up on 27 February to proclaim a (fragile) cross-party consensus on further powers for Wales, he did so only hours after Ofcom, the media regulator, had closed its consultation on the future of public service broadcasting. Ofcom’s review and the Crabb ‘consensus’ represent potentially important milestones for broadcasting in Wales.

What the premature St. David’s Day agreement (a Sunday announcement was never on the cards) had to say about broadcasting, unsurprisingly, made no headlines, but it laid down an important marker for the coming debate on the BBC’s Charter and for the need to deepen Welsh involvement in media policy. There is a huge amount at stake both for viewers and for our television production industry.

Apparently, all four parties are now agreed on proposals that the IWA has supported and promoted for some years past in various publications, and in the evidence that it submitted to the Silk Commission by the UK’s Changing Union project in which it has been an active partner. It did so again last week in its response to Ofcom’s consultation document.

Mr. Crabb’s Command Paper says there was consensus around the following Silk Commission proposals: Continue reading Crabb Deal on Broadcasting in Wales is not secure yet →

ACS and DOCS – Academics and TV Documentary-making

March 1, 2015Blog, Media, PortfolioTelevision, Teacher, Teaching, Televisionangela

ACADEMICS AND TV DOCUMENTARY-MAKING

A WORKSHOP for CARDIFF UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE

11^TH February

This is the fourth year I’ve presented this 3-hour workshop. I designed it as a contribution towards bridging the gap between the media and academia. I believe it still to be an unusual offer amongst university training because media training offered to academics is usually in the area of short-form and news-related input, not in long-form documentary. Between these two forms there are significant differences in working practice for journalists and, from the academics’ perspective, the skills needed to have a happy time as a contributor to a documentary are different to those that will produce a snappy sound-bite.

Academia and the media are two worlds which can intersect very fruitfully. However, when they don’t understand each other’s priorities and practices there are sometimes tears before bedtime.

The workshop is designed to examine key aspects of both worlds: what do they value? what do they want? what are they for? Where do these overlap and where must one recognise that they differ? Continue reading ACS and DOCS – Academics and TV Documentary-making →

DNA CYMRU series gets underway

March 1, 2015Blog, Producer, Televisionangela

8pm St David’s Day our new series on the history of Wales begins with an introductory programme. The series examines the potential of ancestral DNA to contribute towards the understanding of the past.

I have been very struck, while working on it, by a dual theme that emerges: Continuity and Change. Humanity values both of these. Continuity promotes stability, the mastering of skills, the memorialising of the past so that it can feed the future. Change calls out new skills to integrate with established ones and it means encountering people and attitudes that challenge conclusions drawn from hard-won experience.

The material in the series has made me consider the relationship between the body and what we use the body to do; between ‘the givens’ of our lives – our physical inheritance – and the choices we make about our lives – our culture and our approach to life. Continue reading DNA CYMRU series gets underway →

Academics and TV Documentary-making

January 4, 2015Teacher, Teaching, Televisionangela

Cardiff University Graduate College:

Workshop Design and Delivery: Academics and TV Documentary-making 11th February 2015

Workshop details

Feedback: from last year’s workshop:

Ø Useful for anyone investing in the media side of research, also interesting just to see how research can be translated into TV
Ø A really valuable workshop if you like to be engaged with media
Ø A great opportunity to understand how academics can engage with TV documentary production
Ø It teaches/introduces the basics of academic – TV partnership
Ø Worth doing if you are interested in how your research can be used in TV
Ø An excellent way to prepare yourself for making a documentary incorporating academic knowledge/sources

All Things Considered: Annual Film Review

December 7, 2014Blog, Portfolio, PortfolioRadio, Radio, Reviewer, Reviewsangela

BBC Radio Wales Sunday 7th December

Unanimous praise for Calvary but disagreement over whether religion has ‘moved to the periphery of Irish life’

Fun being among the reviewers but I found myself at odds with them on this point.

Far from religion being on the side-lines, this film presents it as being so close to Irish hearts that its betrayal by clerical abuse of children results in a seething anger against clerics and the Catholic Church. Religion has failed but faith, in this film, is precious.

My favourite film, Bresson’s ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ is the model here. In both films a good priest is surrounded by embittered, suffering parishioners who taunt and confront him with the monstrosity and absurdity of suffering. There is plenty of jeopardy of the usual who-dunnit type but even more hangs on the risk that the priest will compromise his principles from sheer fellow-feeling.

A key role is that of the newly bereaved French wife whose clear-eyed acceptance of enormous loss proves a touchstone. Integrity, the coherence between what a person believes and what he or she does, is a major theme.

A great cast. Brendan Gleeson and his son, Domhnall are powerful in one of the many one-to-one encounters.

Why do we get angry at suffering as though it is something unexpected? That’s a question I feel this film put in front of me.

iPlayer Radio: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04snkt6

The Writers’ Guild

December 6, 2014Commentator, Industry, Uncategorized, Writingangela

Executive Committee Member, Wales

Organiser, The Media and Devolution – what do we need to know?

18th September 2013 Chapter Arts Centre

The Pros and Cons of Devolving Control of the Media to Wales – Speaker: Aled Eirug.

A Guild Members Only event.

Facilitator of the submission from the Guild in Wales to the Commission on Devolution in Wales (Silk) September 2013

Union Learning Adviser for The Writers’ Guild 2009 – 2014

Identifying and responding to members’ training and development needs. ULA information

Rhyme and Reason: Reflections on a Changing UK

December 6, 2014Author, Poetry, Uncategorized, Works, Writingangela

Rhyme and Reason: Reflections on a Changing UK

I was commissioned to write 2 poems on the theme of the Scottish referendum for performance at the Wales Millennium Centre along with the following poets:

Gillian Clarke, Christine de Luca, Jasmine Donahaye, Angela Graham

Millennium Centre, Cardiff 11th Sept 2014

Artwork: Iwan Bala

DNA Cymru

December 2, 2014Media, PortfolioTelevision, Producer, Television, Worksangela

By using the most advanced testing in the world to sample the DNA of the modern population of Wales, we can trace the story of an ancient people far beyond the limits of written records.