I’m looking forward to delivering this one-day hands-on Pitching Skills workshop. In Cardiff on Thursday, 28th November. £25 for union members. £50 non-members. It’s always a privilege to encounter the passion and inventiveness of the participants and to see how their pitches develop. Continue reading My Pitching for Creatives Workshop for CULT Cymru
The Hidden Story: universities & knowledge exchange in the creative industries published its report on 4th December. There are many implications for Wales. As the report states:
‘The Creative Industries are a significant sector for the success of the UK economy contributing £87.4bn GVA in 2015 (DCMS). It is therefore important that we use the research funds allocated to university support for this sector (over £46 million in 2015) as effectively as possible. To do this, we must understand the distinctive nature of knowledge exchange relationships between universities and enterprises within this sector. ‘
The Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations at USW was the main Case Study from Wales. Continue reading The Hidden Story: Understanding Knowledge Exchange Partnerships within the Creative Economy
For decades I have, without knowing it, been walking past the place where Broadcasting in Wales began. It launched on 13th February 1923 in the building that’s now a NISA store, opposite Cardiff Castle. I spotted the commemorative plaque only recently.
The Media Studies students of Michigan State University once again impressed me with their appetite for encountering the cultures of the British Isles. The university organises an impressive visit every summer for about 20 students on a variety of media-related degree courses. I’ve given them a class on documentary for the last 7 years with the kind collaboration of Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Continue reading Media Students from Michigan State University in Cardiff
Another fascinating group of people on my workshop for academics about involvement in tv documentary on 1st March.
This three-hour session for Cardiff University Graduate College covers what an academic needs to know about how tv documentary gets developed, commissioned and made and how academics can contribute successfully and enjoyably. Universities commonly offer training in how to engage with news via sound-bites but seldom on what it means to be involved in long-form output or series.
The feedback was uniformly excellent.
On the University of South Wales BA Hons Media Culture and Journalism I led a workshop on Commissioning for Television as part of the Contemporary Popular Television module. 20th November 2015
Continue reading Commissioning for Television – University of South Wales
On New Year’s Day this year the Western Mail published an article by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Wales, Saleem Kidwai. He claimed that a precious achievement in Welsh cultural life is in jeopardy and that a generation have felt ‘rejected by their fellow Welshmen’.
Welsh-Muslim youth who thought themselves like any other Welsh person got a rude awakening post-9/11 — a sort of cultural shock that they were not like any other Welsh person. Overnight, they were the other, the enemy…
As Mr Kidwai set out the traumatic ramifications of this tragic dissociation I felt the force of his appeal that, “As a society… We have to reject any attempts to marginalize Muslims as second-class citizens” but I was perplexed as to how to go about that.
Until I perceived a potential response from the world of journalism itself – from journalism in Wales.
In the hour-long class I gave to Michigan State University students we had to use a large teaching room in order to have space to dance. On the back wall are four posters which I designed last year for the teaching I did on the Documentary Pathway which is an option on the M.A. in International Journalism at Cardiff University. I stopped teaching on this course last year but the posters are still there so I took advantage of them briefly. The posters were an experiment in displaying some basic principles of practice. I’d like to focus on one of them here. It’s from an interview given by the late great American documentarian, Albert Maysles (Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens et al).
He addresses something which documentary-makers do not, in my experience, speak about often or readily. Maybe this is merely symptomatic of the fact that I’m of a generation that learned on the job and that revered good practice but talked little about theory. (Perhaps I’ll get a chance to explore that in the upcoming Wales Documentary Day, of which more in another post.)
Maysles talks about the gaze. Continue reading Documentary practice – a secret room of golden light
Continuing the hour-long class I gave to Communications students from Michigan State University, we took a look at the notion of witness in Documentary. This was done in admittedly very simple terms.
The role of a documentary-maker involves serving the circulation of life within the community and delivering the Real and the True. One of the ways of doing that is by means of facilitating witness. Continue reading What exactly IS empathy, butt?
Some municipes at work on a Green Bay Media documentary shoot!
In the previous post I outlined the first half of an hour’s class I gave to students of Communications from Michigan State University as part of their British Mass Media Programme visit to the UK. Having considered how the ‘I’ of the film-maker interacts with the ‘You’ of other people, who are the subjects of the film, to create the ‘Us’ of the viewing community, we moved on to reflect on what Communication is, and what it is for, and furthermore what the role of a professional communicator might be – all in 20 minutes! Continue reading Munificent Documentary