Category Archives: Works

ACS and DOCS – Academics and TV Documentary-making

ACADEMICS AND TV DOCUMENTARY-MAKING

 A WORKSHOP for CARDIFF UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE

11TH    February

book-a-workshop-new

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

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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

Industry Practitioners in Higher Education

Chapter 8 in ‘Cultural Work and Higher Education’

Edited by Daniel Ashton and Catriona Noonan (Palgrave Macmillan 2013)

I read this chapter on ‘cultural industries practitioners working within higher education’ with interest since I fit that category and have seen little written about this experience. The sample is rather small, drawing on interviews with 12 practitioners in three industry sectors at  five HE institutions, five of whom are Games Designers. However, there are references to various academic works on the topic. The key thing is that the role of industry practitioners is receiving some consideration. There are many nuggets of insight here. Continue reading Industry Practitioners in Higher Education

Cardiff Media Summit

media summitRuth McElroy

Angela Graham

Glyn Mathias

Rhodri Talfan Davies

The Cardiff Media Summit 3rd December 2014

Panel on the Democratic Deficit in Welsh Media

Ken Skates’s Keynote Speech ‘Finding Wales’s Voice in the Broadcasting Debate’

Rhodri Talfan Davies ‘The Challenge of Reaching Wales’s Citizens’

‘Is the Production of BBC Drama in Cardiff Under Threat?’

At the conclusion of the summit an invitation was issued to anyone keen to contribute to the debate on broadcasting in Wales to attend a meeting at the offices of Ofcom, 2 Caspian Point, Cardiff at 9.30am on 15th January.

Academics and TV Documentary-making

Cardiff University Graduate College:

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

Brendan Gleeson stars in Calvary
Brendan Gleeson stars in Calvary

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

 


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

Institute of Welsh Affairs Posts

Commentator:        The Institute of Welsh Affairs: News Analysis Online Magazine

 Science on TV in Wales…. When did you last see?

 What Tony said – What Wales replied

Welsh Visibility in the Digital World

Devolution of Broadcasting to the National Assembly 

Welsh Government Response to Future of the Media Report   

Innovative Funding of Documentary Film Research

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and TV

The Story of Wales – the history of History on TV in Wales

Influencing Media Policy in Wales

Pioneering Autonomy in Social Care 

University Teaching

I have a varied engagement with universities at undergraduate and postgraduate levels as a professional tutor, visiting speaker and workshop leader. I am a steering committee member for several academic projects and contributor to academic publications.

Currently I’m writing an article for the next edition of ‘Llafur’ the Welsh People’s History journal, about the war memorial in Merthyr Tydfil which featured in my BBC Radio Wales documentary Of Mourning and Memory.

Continue reading University Teaching