Practice Section Update - Dec 20 2007
Contents
1. MeCCSA 2008 Conference (9-11 January 2008)
2. Skillset
3. Moving Image Archiving Symposium (15 Mar 2008)
4. CFP Mending the Gaps Symposium (10 May 2008)
5. CFP JMP Symposium (20 June 2008)
6. Best Practice in Media Education Symposium (11-12 Sept 2008)
1. MeCCSA 2008 Conference – Practice Section Panels
Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA), University of Cardiff, Annual
Conference, 9-11 January, 2008.
This years MeCCSA Conference includes a great deal of interest to practitioners including
presentations of practice-based research, pedagogy and policy. For the full programme and
registration details please see:
http://www.meccsa.org.uk/conference/index.html
In addition to practice presentations embedded within themed panels (e.g. Trevor Hearing, Inga
Burrows, etc.) there are looped screenings of practice and a number of key practice panels:
a) Fiction Filmmaking
b) Media Practice and HE
c) Media Practice in the Digital Age
d) Media Practice and Pedagogy
a) Fiction Filmmaking
Date: Thursday, 10 Jan 2008
Time: 9.00-10.15am
Venue: Room 0.14, Bute Building , (School of Journalism), University of Cardiff, King Edward V11
Avenue, Cardiff.
Speakers and Topics
What is it like to make a film-drama as research within a University? A team of lecturers at the
University of Wales, Newport (Coral Houtman, Lynn Hunter and Brendan Charleson, Leonie
Sharrock, Humphrey Trevelyan), together with a selection of students, shot a semi-interactive
drama Echo and Narcissus. We hope that, by looking at various research questions posed by the
filming, that we will try to open up a discussion about possible approaches to research in the
making of collaborative, fictional work within the Academy.
b) Media Practice and HE
Date: Thursday, 10 Jan 2008.
Time: 3.15 - 4.30pm
Venue: Room 0.14
Speakers and Topics
Panel Title: Media Practice and Higher Education
Panel Chair: Prof. Sylvia Harvey, University of Lincoln
1. Stewart Till, Chair, UK Film Council: The View from the Film Council - Partnerships with and
Services for the Higher Education Sector (15 minutes)
2. Gini Sterling, Advisor to Skillset: Secondary Modern or New Beginnings? The New 14-19
Creative and Media Diploma (15 minutes)
3. Prof. Brent MacGregor, Vice Principal, Edinburgh College of Art: Developing the Scottish
Screen Academy, 2005- 2007 (15 minutes).
Following the presentations there will be 30 minutes available for questions and discussion.
c) The (Mal)Content Generation?: Media Practice in the Digital Environment
Date: Friday 11 Jan 2008
Time: 9.30-10.45am
Venue: Room 1.20
Speakers and Topics
The (Mal)Content Generation: Media Practice in the Digital Environment
The internet and convergent digital technologies have had huge implications across a range of
media practices, including citizen journalism and "vanity publishing" sites such as lulu.com;
internet film distribution (from Blair Witch to YouTube.com); mobile phone distribution (blip.tv);
peer-to-peer networking (MySpace.com, FaceBook.com) and photo-sharing (Flickr.com); music
distribution (iTunes.com); digital radio; video and podcasting; interactive digital TV and 360-
degree broadcasting, not to mention gaming and the possibilities of new media. These in turn are
changing the business models of media production and "threatening" traditional industry
structures in print journalism, publishing, broadcasting, music and cinema distribution. The
profusion of screens and contexts for consumption of various types of media is matched by the
supposed democratisation of media production, in tandem with the technological means for peer-
to-peer distribution and user-generated content.
1. Victoria Mapplebeck, RHUL: TEXT ME: A Cross platform documentary project in development
with Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor in New Media, Channel 4
2. Adnan Hadzi, Goldsmiths: Why Openness Matters: the Deptford.TV Project
3. Dr Tom Abba, University of the West of England: Meigeist: Emergent Story within Embedded
Narrative
d) Media Practice and Pedagogy
Date: Friday 11 Jan 2008
Time: 11.15-1.30pm
Venue: Room 1.20
Speakers and Topics
1. Warren Harrison
2. Marcus Leaning
3. Elizabeth Nixon et al.
4. Alistair Oldham
2. Skillset
MeCCSA are still keen to hear from any institutions that have been involved in the Media Academy
accreditation application process, so please contact me at [log in to unmask] with any
further information.
3. CFP Moving Image Archiving and the Academy Symposium http://www.meccsa.org.uk/practice/
events/moving-image-archiving.html
A MeCCSA Practice Section conference
Saturday 15 March 2008, University of Leeds
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Nicholas Pronay (University of Leeds)
Professor Charles Barr (Washington University in St Louis)
Call for Papers
For over three decades, British universities have played a pivotal role in helping to preserve and
curate our audiovisual heritage, as well as researching the cultural and historical significance of
archival moving images. From the establishment of the Slade Film History Register in 1969 and the
East Anglian Film Archive in 1976, the higher education sector has supported and nurtured the
archives themselves. Pioneering journals and monograph series which pioneered the interpretation
of film and television as cultural form and primary historical evidence, notably Historical Journal of
Film, Radio and Television and Routledge’s Cinema and Society series, have their roots in British
universities. Currently the regional film archive movement effectively depends on the support of
British HEIs for its survival (five of the regional film archives are situated within universities), and
most of the important recent research and curation projects involving national collections have
taken place through partnerships between archives and universities using HE-related funding
streams; the Mitchell and Kenyon project being a prime example.
Following on from MeCCSA’s Future of Screen Heritage symposium held in September, we should
now reassess the nature of the institutional and intellectual links which exist between our film
archives and our universities, and to explore how they might develop and strengthen. The
conference is intended to explore the requirements of the sector, including what requires funding
now and in the future, rather than strategies for achieving such funding.
We therefore invite proposals for papers or presentations of 15 minutes in this area. Possible
topics include, but are not limited to:
• The ways in which archival moving images are used in HE research and teaching
• Scholarship related to the theory and practice of moving image preservation and restoration
• The impact of new technologies on archival practice and policy
• The role of HE institutions in training moving image archivists
• Case studies exploring the aims, practices and development of moving image archives
situated within HEIs
• Academics and public policy related to archival practice, e.g. copyright and legal deposit
Proposals for complete panels (of up to 90 minutes) are welcome, though we reserve the right to
split panel proposals and accept individual papers from them.
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words to:
Dr Leo Enticknap
Institute of Communications Studies
Third Floor, Houldsworth Building
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
Tel. +44 (0) 113 343 5853
Fax. +44 (0) 113 343 5808
Email: [log in to unmask]
Please indicate in your submission if you have any special audio-visual requirements.
Deadline for Submissions: Monday 7 January 2007
Supported by MeCCSA Practice Section and British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC)
4. CFP Mending the Gaps: Re-Thinking Media Theory and Practice
An Interdisciplinary Symposium for Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers
10th May 2008
Held at Centre for Media and Film Studies
SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
Keynote speaker:
Dr John Postill, Senior Lecturer in Media, Sheffield Hallam University
Film Screening:
Tony Dowmunt, Lecturer in Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Call for Papers:
Generating great enthusiasm and popularity amongst its delegates and audience, the 2007
‘Minding the Gap’ symposium held at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has raised
awareness of the need for a greater conceptual unity of media theory and practice. The
symposium brought together media theorists-and-practitioners in a challenging exploration of
the many gaps that are constantly experienced between media theory and practice. By doing so, it
prompted a plethora of questions, on the different ways in which these gaps can be ‘mended’.
‘Mending the Gaps: Re-thinking Media theory and Practice 2008’ proposes to create a space and
time to further develop these discussions with the specific goal of finding ways to blend media
theory and practice, and to formulate new, more nuanced, approaches to the debate. In the
academic and media ‘world’, practice and theory can be thought and experienced in many
overlapping ways. Thus, developing academic thinking is a practice, practical skills a form of
knowledge, media practice research a way to perform academic requirements, practitioners’
theoretical turn an intellectual quest, and both production and consumption can be perceived as a
form of practice: all through reflection contribute to the praxis of knowledge.
‘Mending the Gaps: Re-thinking Media theory and Practice 2008’ proposes to assemble the
insights, analysis and ideas of postgraduate students, early career researchers and media
practitioners, whose work brings media theory and practice together. The event will focus on
perspectives dealing exclusively with factual, non- fictional media. Participants are asked to take
into consideration how theoretical ideas can be of use for media practitioners and/or vice versa;
how media practices aid theoretical understandings. We welcome papers from a range of different
disciplines in the Social Sciences such as, but not only; Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Journalism,
Anthropology, Sociology and Political Economy. We particularly encourage reflections on
Ethnography, and presentations based on video and audio material.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words or a short film synopsis should be submitted by the 25th
January, 2008 together with a filled out registration sheet to [log in to unmask] Video
and Audio files should be made accessible through Internet providers (i.e. MySpace, MediaFire,
Weblogs). A clear link to the material should be included in email. Papers and synopsis should
address, but are not limited to the following themes:
THE USES OF PRACTICE FOR THEORY
- Media practice used as alternative methodology to feed into theory; film, photography, audio
media, web-based media into research
- Practical media as means of representing research as an alternative to the written text
- Professional experience of being a media practitioner used to inform theoretical work
- Ethnography in media research
THE USES OF THEORY FOR PRACTICE
- Theories of media production
- The uses of theory for practice: Journalists and other media practitioners reflect on the use of
theory in their practice
- Engaging in new and original ways in which teaching can be re-thought by bringing theory
and practice together.
- Professional experience of using theory for practical work in the media.
CASE STORIES AND EXPERIENCES
- Case stories recounting the personal ethical, political and practical challenges facing double-
practitioners.
- Double practitioners who work in between the gap of theory and practice; Presentations will
be sought from individuals with substantial practical experience whose cases offer broad and
unusual insights.
- Reflections on academic practices
The Organising Committee
Veronica Barassi (Goldsmiths College), Melissa Pignatelli (SOAS, London), Line Thomsen (University
of Aarhus), Email: [log in to unmask]
5. Your Reflection: Research and the Reflective Media Practitioner – Fourth Journal of Media
Practice Symposium (Leeds, 20 June 2008)
Call for papers will be forthcoming in January – deadline for proposals of up to 500 words will be
Monday 3 March 2008. Watch this space.
6. Capturing Excellence - Best Practice in Media Education Symposium (Bournemouth, 11-12 Sept
2008)
An opportunity for media practice tutors in HE to debate and discuss new developments in the
teaching of practice. A joint event hosted at the Centre of Media Excellence, Bournemouth,
involving the MeCCSA Practice Section, ADM-HEA, Skillset, and CEMP. Further details forthcoming
– please pencil the dates in to your diary!
Happy Christmas!
Charlotte Crofts
UWE
[log in to unmask]
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