In 2014 I started to ‘write up’ my research on Polish migration to The North East. What I was left with, at the end of three years of long study, was a 99,000 word document that was fairly inaccessible to an audience outside the university, being both long and ‘academic’.
I then joined a ‘performing research’ group in Newcastle, where I aimed to turn sections of my thesis into a play about Polish migration in the North East.
Here’s a TED X talk all about the initiative ‘Performing Research’:
You can read more about some of the research projects turned into theatre work here: Performing Research Blog
If you would like to read sections of my play, please do ask and I will make hardcopies available.
Perhaps think about ‘performing’ your research project too; we’re open to poetry recitals, a theatrical interpretation, even dance.
The identity in Newcastle Flickr Photostream
Here you’ll find a recording of 700 photos about identity in The North East of England that I took, uploaded, tagged, commented on, and categorised between 2010-2012.
The photostream shows how the categorisation of photos became an integral aspect of my project; selecting and ordering the photos so they made some kind of social scientific sense, placing them within a wider context. Creating a digital archive which aimed to capture some of the moments and signifiers of ‘identity’ in the North East during this time, now provides an interesting social history of that time. How many of these moments / sites are still there? If they’ve gone, what’s replaced them? (why do you think that is?)
Culture Shock was a digital storytelling project that started in 2005, and recorded over 550 different stories from people across The North East of England.
Read more about the origins and legacy of the project here: About The Culture Shock Project
The project was a joint partnership between many different museum and heritage organisation in the North East, but it is extensively housed and maintained by The Tyne and Wear Museum Trust. What you’ll find if you look at this project is a fantastic, extensive digital archive of memories, voices, experiences, cultural moments, celebrations etc. from the region.
I took part in this project in 2010, and created this video about the arrival of my son, and as a way of thinking about my own arrival and place in Newcastle:
Cultural Shock: Geordie’s Arrival Day Video
You can create a similar digital story using this software:
Lightworks Free film editing Software
or even with PowerPoint on Word using the voice over facility.
‘Prezzi’ Presentation on Urban Art in The North East
Between 2010 -2012 I conducted an ethnographic study of ‘Identity in The North East’, photographing anything I deemed interesting as a comment on ‘identity’. Urban Art in the North East became an incidental but main feature of the project, as my interests grew, I started to see how urban art itself fell into different categories, and with that, held different cultural values and said different things. I’m interested in the link between urban art and place, so what art might say about an area and why.
Have a look at this Prezzi Presentation, as see what you think:
‘Prezzi’ Presentation on Urban Art
Do you agree with my classifications of urban art? What have I left out? Can you add to the collection?
Further Reading:
If you’re interested in conducting a project like this, here’s some further reading:
Metro-Roland, M, Tourists, Signs and the City: The Semiotics of culture in an urban landscape, Ashgate Publishing, London: 2012
Tourists, signs and the city : the semiotics of culture in an urban landscape
Here I have created a short video using the free software ‘Biteable’ to get you thinking about conducting your own ethnographic photography project of Newcastle.
Take a look at the video here:
In the video I mainly focus on ethnic and cultural identities such as ‘Geordie’, ‘Northern’, ‘Chinese Geordie’, but in your research you may want to think about identities in times of cross generation (such as ‘youth’), locality (such as ‘Northumberland Street’), religious identities (such as Buddhism) and /or subcultures (such as ‘goths’).
The way we perceive ‘place’, in this case the city of Newcastle Upon Tyne, is influenced by the images and accompanying sounds used to define, stylise and objectify.
I have put together this short video using YouTube Editor, which aims to show how presenting the city through iconic images (in the case of Newcastle- the river, bridges, characteristic ‘Tyneside’ housing stock), and using a soundtrack more reminiscent of the way other big cityscapes are presented (so in this case I’ve chosen a jazz soundtrack, synonymous with the Manhattan skyline), removes Newcastle from the traditional ‘working class, football, heavy industry’ association or stereotype that we’re often talking about in class.
‘Imagining place’ or ‘constructing the city’, as is discussed in the literature surrounding this topic, is a way of inverting or supporting cultural expectations. In this video I have included some travelling shots, such as the view from an escalator going down in to the metro, to get a ‘big city feel’.
If you’re interested in this try these reading about place, branding, image construction, events, and the city:
Ed Aitken, S and Zonn, L (1994) Place, Power, Situation and Spectacle: A Geography of Film, Rowmann and Littelfield
Alberto Vanolo, The image of the creative city: Some reflections on urban branding in Turin, Cities, Volume 25, Issue 6, 2008, Pages 370-382, ISSN 0264-2751, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2008.08.001
Abstract: Continue reading
Here is a short piece of music I wrote for a series of photos that a friend of mine took of the Trinity Square car park as it was being torn down.
The car park was a landmark in Gateshead — famous for featuring in the 1971 film ‘Get Carter’. My friend lived in Gateshead, and would walk past the dissolving landmark every day. Watching it disappear was a shock — the kind Alvin Tofler talks about in his book ‘Future Shock’ in the way the landscape of the city can change. In the music, I wanted to try and reflect some of that distant change, some of that sadness and loss of something that you took for granted as always being there. But maybe, in the middle section, there’s also a little bit of hope about what might replace it (which was unwarrented — the new houses are horrible!)
This bring together photography and music, obviously, but it shows how creative research works as a network. Responding to the outputs that someone else has created in a different form can be a way of really expanding your groups research. There’s a famous quote — attributed variously to Laurie Anderson and Elvis Costello (among others) — “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. Well, if that’s true, then we’d love to see your groups dancing about architecture by combining different media together!