Recent Submissions

  • Book review: Coming and going

    Giudice, Nicolo; University of Bedfordshire (2023-12-15)
    Book Review Coming and Going By Jim Goldberg, MACK, London. 75£, ISBN: 978-1-912339-77-8 Jim Goldberg's new book, Coming and Going (Mack, 2023) takes the viewer on a breath-taking autobiographical journey, which traces a path through time and layers of photographic images, collages, texts, documents, drawings, and ephemera. The book itself is a substantntially large and thick object, one that brings to mind a scrapbook, a family album, a home movie, a diary and a book dummy. Its dimension and scale make it an extensive and immersive art object.
  • Safe haven : the United Kingdom's investigations into Nazi collaborators and the failure of justice

    Silverman, Jon; Sherwood, Robert (Oxford University Press, 2023-11-02)
    After the UK passed the War Crimes Act in 1991, the names of several hundred Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe came under scrutiny. But only two were prosecuted and one convicted. Who were the other suspects? Why did the Crown Prosecution Service rule that perpetrators responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of deaths, should not face charges? And what part did the Soviet Union play in tracking collaborators who had fled to Britain, leading untroubled lives in their ‘safe haven’ for half a century? In a series of case histories, underpinned by both an empirical and theoretical analysis, the authors illuminate a period of recent history which has largely gone under the radar.
  • Music from the end of the land: reflections on the Pembrokeshire Music Network

    Miles, Philip (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023-03-22)
    Focussing on a creative network in rural Pembrokeshire (rather than a wider ‘scene’ juxtaposing creativity and ‘fandom’), this chapter examines music as emerging from – and representative of – the people, developed within bounded locales, and involving traditional practices and cultural reproductions, investments and self-reflections (Williams, 1961; Miles, 2019). The research examines an extant, fluid, and occasionally incongruous musical collective dissociated over time and genres, but not necessarily geographical spaces of locale and venues, highlighting a contrast between rural and urban creativity, the strategies of self-empowerment, collective ambition and personal satiation, and the distinctions between what are termed ‘embedded’, ‘parallel’ and ‘ephemeral’ strategies of music-making that highlight both the longevity of the scene and the omnipresent geographical, social and economic forces that continually threaten its existence.
  • Website graphics now :the best of global site design

    Douglas, Noel; Strengholt, Geert J.; Velthoven, Willem (Thames and Hudson, 1999-07-19)
    From educational sites to corporate communications, social services to electronic publishing, this is an inside look at the present and future of digital communication. A sequel to "Website Graphics", it complements the latter by providing more in-depth information on the creation of websites. Thirty of today's most successful and innovative sites are showcased, accompanied by articles on the future of Web design. The chosen sites include examples of "older" techniques as well as "state of the art" experiments. The principle of "Viewsource", the ability to look at the programming of a website to see how it has been put together, and one of the main learning tools of the Web designer, is explored in both textual and visual form. Technical attention focuses on interaction and navigation, WWW layout tables, frames, stylesheets, typography, imagery and animations, shockwave and flash, dynamic HTML and cascading stylesheets. Three introductory articles discuss topics such as the future of Web design programmes and techniques used in visualizing the process of site design and development, the time-based dimension of multi-media Web design and the demise of the Viewsource principle.
  • Paul Graham's American night and the politics of exposure

    Giudice, Nicolo; University of Bedfordshire (Cambridge University Press, 2020-02-12)
    In his photobook American Night (2003), the photographer Paul Graham evokes the passage of a walker who draws the outline of a composite and dialectic map of the American city. This article will examine how the book's structure and its division into zones is symptomatic of the explosion of the city and of its spatial, social and racial inequalities. These zones are also spaces of invisibility and visibility, of over-/perfect/under-exposure, illuminating the social/ racial contrasts that underpin the urban environment and the mechanisms of their perpetuation. In this sense, American Night ultimately exposes the biopolitical struggle that underscores the American city.
  • Creative routine and dichotomies of space

    Miles, Philip (UCL Press, 2020-10-07)
    The chapter incorporates existing research undertaken on the subject of creative people and the routines of invention of novelty, focussing on the value and role of creative spaces that are experienced physically, intellectually and as metaphysical, subconscious processes (Miles, 2019). I argue that creative 'space' is best understood not in relation to a 'place' per se, but seen as a liminal moment in time, creating a dichotomy of physical location of invention and the developmental mental/emotional triggers of praxis. I theorise the inventive phase as being somehow 'between' these conscious locations and haptic processes, existing as a 'mezzanine' of creative anarchy, unrepeatable and therefore super-unique, consequently existing as something of an 'aura' (Benjamin, 1927) or a 'supervention of novelty' (Eliot, 1920) that sees such metaphysical liminality exist as a space of reinvention in the annals of art, literature, and music. I argue that we need to understand this flexible, highly individualised and unpredictably-summonsed space to penetrate the real meaning of the linke between 'space' and the tangible outputs of the creative arts.
  • Midlife creativity and identity: life into art

    Miles, Philip; University of Bedfordshire (Emerald, 2018-11-30)
    Where does ‘art’ come from, and what is the ‘meaning’ of creativity? What inspires an artist in the middle phase of life and what value is placed on the pursuit of originality? Where do innovative ideas come from and how do they transmogrify into songs, fine art and stories? These are some of the searching questions that are posed in this ethnographic study, undertaken over three years and involving male and female musicians, artists and literary authors in the UK, some amateur and some professional but all dedicated to the invention of artistic legacy. This book sets out to understand in some depth the influences, spaces and routines of creative people experiencing midlife via evocative exploration of biography, self-identity, inspiration, sociality, beliefs, emotion, career trajectory and life choices and considered via in-situ observations of rehearsal, performance, exhibition, environment and working philosophy that contribute to the meaningful creation of novelty. Building an original theory of the ‘mezzanine’ that draws on the cultural and sociological theories of Raymond Williams, Zygmunt Bauman and Pierre Bourdieu, and further utilising an eclectic resource of late-modern sociology, cultural studies, literary studies and musicology, this study seeks to penetrate and understand the process of creation, the space of inspiration and the individualised value placed on artistic endeavour in uncertain times and at an uncertain time in life. The research illustrates that while life experiences do influence both the chosen and developed techniques of creating art and the art itself, artistic virtuosity is also arguably a conscious resistance to the banal securities of midlife in an age of inherent, perceived insecurity. If anything, the processes and spaces of inventiveness are a sought-after in-between zone of ‘letting go’ and embracing an almost anarchic uncertainty where the promise of possibility and the pursuit of the delight of innovation provide an antidote to the banal ‘everyday’ and the routine expectancies of middle age. Keywords: midlife, creativity, identity, art, music, writing, mezzanine, sociology.
  • Afterword

    Ashley, Tamara; Weedon, Alexis (UCL Press, 2020-09-01)
    As this book went into production the Covid-19 pandemic broke across the world. Travel was restricted and our geographical sense of place focused on local: our neighbourhood, our street, our house, our room. We had to renegotiate distinction as places for work and domestic living, schooling and relaxation overlapped. We are in the final stages of publication in July 2020 with little time to reflect on the past few months but as editors, we wanted to acknowledge the profound and astonishing changes that have been brought by the pandemic. The lockdown affected each one of us in different ways and as co-editors, we offer a short dialogue on our experiences of lockdown that are redefining our sense of place.
  • Interview with E17 Art Trail directors: Laura Kerry and Morag McGuire

    Weedon, Alexis (UCL Press, 2020-09-01)
    Laura Kerry and Morag McGuire are co-directors of Artillery, an arts development organisation. Laura is one of the original co-founders of the E17 Art Trail while Morag leads on participation and development for the trail. They were interviewed by Alexis Weedon in August 2018. The E17 Art Trail is a festival produced by the people of Walthamstow and coordinated by Artillery. In 2017 over 7,500 painters, sculptors, poets, choirs, photographers, designers, ceramicists, and dancers of all ages joined to welcome residents and visitors to exhibitions, performances and workshops in the studios and streets, parks and pubs, cafes and shopping centres, faith spaces and community places within their neighbourhood. It is now a biennial festival.
  • Introduction: sensing a place, a moment to reflect

    Ashley, Tamara; Weedon, Alexis (UCL Press, 2020-09-01)
    The introduction presents the current status of research in place-making, providing a context for the volume. Reviewing how arts organisations and artists work with sensitivity in regions, cities, towns and spaces to engage citizens in a deeper understanding of themselves and the places that they live, we ask how artists and practitioners have responded to their location (or relocation) and to the local need for regeneration through place-making. Singnifcantly we foreground what has been learned from the methods which have been tried? This provids the context for the models and theoretical insights presented in the book. We introduce each section to enable those in local to national policy-making or involved in the planning, commissioning or researching the function of arts in urban regeneration, or artists themselves to access relevant studies. The three sections deal with: selected artist-led case studies where intervention has proven successful; practice-led models and methods which can be applied more widely and in different socio-economic contexts; and multidisciplinary research-led approaches to place-making and contested identities. Finally we ask how can we incorporate the wealth of knowledge which the arts and humanities bring to urban planning for our communities.
  • Developing a sense of place: the role of the arts and regenerating communities

    Ashley, Tamara; Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire (UCL Press, 2020-10-07)
    How do arts and cultural planners and policy makers work through the arts to create communities? What do artists need to build a sense of place in their community? This book provides a range of voices of those who have achieved results in geographically and socio-culturally diverse examples selected for their lasting effect in their local community. Developing a Sense of Place provides new models for opening the relationship between the University and its regional partners, explicitly connecting creative, critical and theoretical approaches to civic development. It has three sections: Case-studies of place-making, Models and methods for developing place-making through the arts, and Multidisciplinary approaches to place and contested identities. These draw together case studies and models with underpinning research on the impact of practice on contested identities in Bedford, East Anglia, Edinburgh, Manchester, London, Luton, Plymouth, Wakefield and internationally in Brazil, Europe, Turkey and Zimbabwe amongst others. The book offers a range of viewpoints from the arts strategist, the academic, the practice-researcher and the artist and so will appeal to arts and cultural policy managers, master planners and arts workers through its innovative models from performing arts to architectural design based on location, scale, budget and audience. Developing a Sense of Place will have a wider readership on courses in Human Geography, Cultural Planning, Arts Administration, Business and the Creative industries and is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
  • Augmenting creative design thinking using networks of concepts

    Georgiev, Georgi; Yamada, Kaori; Taura, Toshiharu; Kostakos, Vassilis; Pouke, Matti; Tzvetanova Yung, Sylvia; Ojala, Timo; University of Oulu; Kobe University; University of Bedfordshire (IEEE Computer Society, 2017-04-06)
    Here we propose an interactive system to augment creative design thinking using networks of concepts in a virtual reality environment. We discuss how to augment the human capacity to be creative through dynamic suggestions providing new and original ideas, based on specific semantic network characteristics. We outline directions to explore the structures of the concept network and their connection to creative concept generation. It is expected that augmented creative thinking will allow the user to have more original ideas and thus be more innovative.
  • Media capital or media deficit? : representations of women in leadership roles in old and new media

    Walsh, Clare; University of Bedfordshire (Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2015-11-05)
    This paper will focus primarily on how women in leadership roles are represented in the media using a feminist critical discourse approach (FCDA). There is a tendency amongst some feminist media analysts to homogenise all media as sexist, but contradictory tendencies are evident, especially with the rise of new media platforms. On the one hand, the news value of “unexpectedness” affords women in prominent leadership roles relatively high media capital. On the other hand, even ostensibly positive coverage can help to reinforce the limited and limiting perceptions of women that circulate in the mediatised public sphere. For instance, the hybridised gendered interactional and rhetorical styles favoured by many women in public sphere roles have led to them being evaluated as inauthentic by mainstream media institutions. This paper will investigate these contradictory tendencies through a focus on case study evidence of dominant media constructions of British, Irish, and US female political leaders. The paper will conclude by considering briefly the use of Twitter, blogs, and other new media platforms by high profile women in politics in order to bypass the persistent interpretative control exercised by some mainstream media institutions. Introduction
  • 'Pleasure balks, bliss appears' or 'The apparatus shines like a blade' : towards a theory of a progressive reading praxis in creative writing pedagogy

    Jarvis, Timothy (Australasian Association of Writing Progams, 2011-11-01)
    This article argues that a reformation of Creative Writing’s reading praxis is required if it is to develop its unique potential as a field of intellectual enquiry. Roland Barthes, in his essay ‘On Reading’, identifies three types of reading pleasure. The third of these modes is that of ‘Writing’, in which ‘reading is a conductor of the Desire to write’. Of this mode, Barthes writes: Is this pleasure of production an elitist pleasure, reserved only to potential writers? In our society, a society of consumption and not production, a society of reading … and not a society of writing ... everything is done to block the answer ... my profound and -constant conviction is that it will never be possible to liberate reading if, in the same impulse, we do not liberate writing. (Barthes 1989: 41) It is the contention of the author of this article that the teaching of the ‘reading as a writer’ method in Creative Writing classrooms gives rise to a situation the inverse of that Barthes describes; it makes Creative Writing into a ‘society of writing’ in which reading is trammelled. The article explores and critiques the ‘reading as a writer’ technique, examines various progressive models of Creative Writing reading praxis, and proposes a radical ‘writerly reading’ praxis suggested by concepts from the work of Michel de Certeau. Keywords: Pedagogy, 'reading as a writer', experimental fiction
  • The limits of childhood: young adult and crossover fiction

    Walsh, Clare; Pinsent, Pat; University of Bedfordshire; University of Roehampton (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016-04-08)
  • Shifting notions of convergence [Editorial]

    Knight, Julia; Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire; University of Sunderland (SAGE, 2009-01-01)
  • Beyond medium specificity: adaptations, cross-media practices and branded entertainments [editorial]

    Murray, Simone; Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire; Monash University (SAGE, 2009-05-01)
  • Foreword

    Silverman, Jon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017-09-20)