What’s New

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/

DCRC AT UWE launch two fully-funded PhD studentships for April 2022.

Closing date: January 9^th, 2022

We are interested in supporting doctoral research which addresses the following interdisciplinary areas and their intersections:

Evolving Media

Creative Economies 

Restorative Futures

Screen Industries/Screen Cultures

PGR students will benefit from access to a network of national and international academic and industry stakeholders and connections with a wide range of community, cultural and third sector organisations.

You can find out more information about these studentships here.

Job Alert: Research Fellow – MyWorld Project – Experimental Productions

Closing date: Sunday 12th December 2021

We are excited to announce that we are recruiting for a research fellow on the MyWorld Project.

MyWorld is a brand-new five-year programme led by the University of Bristol, the Universities of Bath, Bath Spa and UWE Bristol.

This programme will bring together 30 partners from Bristol and Bath’s creative technologies sector and world-leading academic institutions, to create a unique cross-sector consortium.

This is a part-time fixed-term post for four years, where you will support the development of creative content that showcases the R & D work of the MyWorld programme and highlight challenges that inform R & D priorities.

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”. 

What if all stories we tell are about climate change?

Tuesday 9th November 2021 18:30-19:30 @ Book Haus

Mark Bould will be launching his new book, “The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture” at Book Haus in conversation with Bristol Ideas. 

His latest book reveals traces of climate catastrophe found throughout contemporary literature and film: from the autobiographical fictions of Paul Auster and Ove Knausgaard to the Sharknado movies. 

“Climate change is not going to happen – it is already happening, and deep down our culture knows it. And not just in the science fictions and climate fictions that tackle head-on the crisis through which we are living.” 

Job Alert: Associate Professor –
Immersive Media at UWE Bristol

Closing date: 24th October 2021

UWE Bristol is recruiting a Wallscourt Associate Professor – Immersive Media to join the network of researchers within the Digital Cultures Research Centre . This is a full time, permanent post. Overseas candidates are welcome to apply.

The Wallscourt Associate Professor will lead in developing cross-disciplinary research into immersive media, exploring the intersection between creative practice and emerging media technology.

For an informal discussion please contact Professor Mandy Rose via email at mandy.rose@uwe.ac.uk 

Tales of Care and Repair
Autumn Event Series 2021

Tales of Care and Repair gathers stories of the repair of everyday objects from India, UK and Brazil.

It is a British Council Creative Commissions COP26 project, led by DCRC member Teresa Dillon.

Considering repair as a potentially radical act that can transform our relationship with our material worlds. From Aug-November 2021 our programme aims to build a repository of ‘stories’ of everyday repaired objects. To generate the tales or stories we aim to collect 1000 images of everyday repaired objects, which people can be upload to this site and tagged with details about the repair.

October is packed full of exciting events and you can find out more about the programme here.

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.

The Revolution in Transmedia Storytelling through Place: Pervasive, Ambient and Situated

Wednesay 21st July 2021, 1pm BST

Under the banner of Evolving Media , we are delighted to welcome Dr. Donna Hancox for a talk which proposes that the theory and practice of transmedia storytelling must be re-considered from a social impact and community development perspective, and that time has come for a rigorous critique of the limited ways in which it has been commonly represented.

Respondent: Dr. Tom Abba

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.

Bristol+Bath Creative R+D: Imagination as Tool of Freedom

Thursday 1st July 2021, 2pm BST

Sometimes changing the world begins with imagining a different future. But how can we harness our imagination to achieve this?

This panel brought to you by Bristol+Bath Creative R+D explores a range of methodologies such as design fiction, storytelling and scenario techniques, to demonstrate the possibilities of human imagination.

Panelists:
Ilana Lipsett, Institute for the Future
Jen Stein, World Building Institute
Dr. Foluke Adebisi, University of Bristol
Cassie Robinson, The National Lottery Community Fund
Clare Reddington, CEO, Watershed

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.

South West Creative Technology Network: Data Showcase

Friday 26th March 2021, 9am

On March 26th The South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) invite you to join them online for their Data Showcase.

It’s a day to share, reflect on and challenge ideas in DATA, INCLUSIVE FUTURES and CREATIVE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.

Explore the inspiring work of the Data Prototype teams, and learn more about their developing work, as well as diving into the deep thinking done by our Data Fellows.

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.

Catastrophe to opportunity: Covid & the creative industries in SW England

Wednesday 24 February 2021, 12.30

The creative and cultural sector as a whole faces an uncertain future as a result of Covid 19 and subsequent policies, with long-term unemployment and business closures a reality for many.

In this talk, chaired by DCRC member Dr. Tarek Virani, we will learn about the key findings of research undertaken by UWE Bristol’s Creative Economies Lab.

During 2020, the team carried out a detailed survey aimed at understanding how Covid-19 had impacted the creative and cultural sector in South West England. Led by Dr. Tarek Virani, Associate Professor of Creative Industries at UWE Bristol, the survey aimed to learn how the sector was being affected by the pandemic, how it was adapting and planning for the future.

Tarek will be joined by Melanie Rodrigues, Founder/Creative Director, Gritty Talent , Jack Gibbon, Director, Bricks Bristol and Alex Duarte-Davies, Executive Director of Theatre Royal Bath’s Theatre School inc. The Egg Assembly

Amplified Publishing opportunities for Industry from
Bristol + Bath Creative R+D

Deadline for applications: Monday 15 March 2021, 10am

Bristol + Bath Creative R + D are excited to announce a new funding call for six Fellows and four to six Industry Partners to join the programme to explore Amplified Publishing and interrogate questions around the future models of content creation, discovery and distribution.

Successful applicants will be given between £5k and £12k – depending upon which opportunity they apply for – along with various other opportunities including time, space and resources to focus intensively on exploring an area of interest in the field of Amplified Publishing.

We’re looking for SMEs and freelancers working across publishing, games, video, XR, etc, in the broadly defined field – people working on creating and disseminating content. (We’ve already recruited our academic fellows).

Deadline for Applications: 10am, Monday 15 March 2021

Image credit: Jazz Thompson

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

Research Seminar: “Family Migration, Separation and Communication – Visualising the Hostile Immigration Environment” with Dr Emma Agusita

Wednesday 25th November, 10am

DCRC member Dr Emma Agusita is presenting her work “Family Migration, Separation and Communication – Visualising the Hostile Immigration Environment” through UWE Bristol’s Global Migration Network this week.

Emma is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Media Communications in ACE (Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education, UWE).

This seminar presents insights from a research study, Visualising Love, funded by UWE Bristol, that explored impacts on partners and families of cross border separation caused by restrictive UK immigration controls. www.vizlove.org

If you have any questions about the seminar, please contact the Global Migration Network coordinator Dr Artjoms Ivlevs (a.ivlevs@uwe.ac.uk)  

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.

Bristol Arts Channel: Reaching local audiences through lockdown

Wednesday 9th December 2020, 12.30pm

Bristol+Bath Creative R+D are running a series of research based discussion events. The first one up is on the Bristol Arts Channel, where Clare Reddington, Watershed CEO, Katherine Jewkes, Curator Bristol Arts Chanel and La Toyah McAllister-Jones, Executive Director of St Pauls Carnival will be discussing how they  brought a diverse programme of in-person cultural content online in record time.

Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters webinar

Friday 20th November 2020, 4pm

Please join us for “Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters” part of the BVI Seminar Series put on by Bristol Vision Institute. This talk will be introduced by BVI Director, Professor Dave Bull.

Professor Kirsten Cater, Principal Investigator University of Bristol, and Co-Investigators, Professor Danae Stanton Fraser (University of Bath) and DCRC Director Professor Mandy Rose (UWE Bristol) will share findings from the three year EPSRC Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters project, examining the application of virtual reality for nonfiction.

Is Fake News a Digital Problem?
Join Marcus Gilroy-Ware in conversation with a special guest panel for the launch of his new book After the Fact?

Thursday 12th November 2020, 6pm

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?

DCRC member Marcus Gilroy-Ware will be joined by special guests Dr. Sivamohan Valluvan, Professor Jo Littler and Professor Natalie Fenton in a discussion about his new book After the Fact?, which looks at fake news and conspiracy theories, ‘bullshit journalism’ and the resurgence of the far-right.

Find out more: http://www.mjgw.net/

These Pages Fall Like Ash – Immersive Storytelling between two worlds online event

Tuesday 10th November 2020, 7pm

Launched in August 2020, the new edition of These Pages Fall Like Ash now has over 300 copies live across the globe, spanning 30 countries and 4 continents.

Join the creative team – Tom Abba, Duncan Speakman and Emilie Grenier, alongside special guest Nick Harkaway – for a conversation about the project and what’s next for this new form of storytelling.

Author Kate Pullinger will be moderating this event – http://www.katepullinger.com/

Find out more – and buy the book! https://pagesfall.com/

The Ethics of VR documentary
MIT Open Documentary Lab in conversation (online) with Mandy Rose

Tuesday 27th October 2020, 5pm (GMT)

Community Conversations 3: i-docs and multi-perspectival thinking webinar

Wednesday 21st October 2020, 5pm

We are delighted to be supporting the third i-Docs Community Conversations webinar – i-docs and multi-perspectival thinking.

In this webinar i-Docs Co-director, Judith Aston, and Stefano Odorico, Director of the International Research Centre for Interactive Storytelling (IRIS), will present their ongoing work on i-docs and multi-perspectival thinking.

Central to this work is their research into polyphony, as a means through which to promote intercultural dialogue and exchange in a context of increasing polarization.

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