Digital Innovation: tradition and potential in the history of cinema

Posted on 27 July, 2016 by Fiona

Jessica Crosby is a PhD Student in Newcastle University School of Arts and Cultures. Her PhD is in Media and Cultural Studies, and considers the millennial generation’s engagement in a digital dialogue with popular culture. Here, she explains what Social Renewal means to her, with particular reference to the theme of Digital Innovation.

How has digital technology changed cinema?

To me, social renewal means taking the old alongside the new. We’ve experienced such rapid digital innovation in such a small space of time that our cultural and social landscape has been dramatically changed; whether for the good or the bad, it’s clear that we need some new definitions for our current cultural state, as well as careful consideration of just what has been altered. My own research is an exploratory study of the contemporary film audience, and the ways in which active audience practices can be manifested by interaction on social networking sites. This work must involve an appreciation of the traditions and critical history of the cinema, which as a long-standing cultural institution has had a significant role to play in our day-to-day lives. However, it cannot be denied that the nature of our viewing experiences has changed, facilitated by innovations in mobile and entertainment technology, and the act of being ‘audience’ has become an altogether more transitive, collaborative, and immersive affair. I consider these changes in light of traditional definitions of film audiences, in order to establish the progression of our film viewing habits.

The act of being ‘audience’ has become an altogether more transitive, collaborative, and immersive affair.

Emerging findings from ethnographical study have already demonstrated some interesting trends in online audience interaction, including practices of ‘ownership’ over extended aspects of the film narrative, which brings forward some interesting questions about audience agency and power. These trends speak to larger issues with audience agency in film, which has long functioned on a background of textual pleasure and passivity. What I feel is most significant about this topic however, and indeed what is significant about the focus of social renewal overall, is the attention given to digital ‘inclusivity’. This is an acknowledgement that digital innovation does not function as merely an advancement of older technology, cultural institutions or practices, but as a relationship between traditional elements and future potentials. During my time at Newcastle University I have come across a number of fellow researchers and students, as well as institutions and societies, that have shared the same sense of excitement when discussing the possibilities of digital inclusivity.

Digital innovation does not function as merely an advancement of older technology, cultural institutions or practices, but as a relationship between traditional elements and future potentials.

I have been lucky in that my PhD journey so far has introduced me to a lot of like-minds, both in my own field and without, who have been positive in discussing the ‘potential’ for digital and technological innovation in the cultural field. Though there are apparent consequences to technological growth, the communicative function of digital tech is – in my experience – most often encouraged, particularly when considered also as an academic or networking tool. For example, social media, mobile technology and networking have all figured widely in discussions on research impact, a subject that was at the heart of the recent Humanities and Social Sciences research showcase, for which I was on the organisation committee. It was clear when speaking about individual (and collaborative) impact, the potential for expanding impact both within and beyond the academic sphere was very closely tied to concepts of inclusion, exchange, communication and social policy, making platforms such as social media an invaluable asset.

Whilst the case for digital advancement is by no means cut and dry, and there are factors of transformation in this regard which need careful and close consideration, it seems clear to me that the functionalities of digital technology have opened the floor for close discussion on social interaction and design. This discussion must make room for what has already been established in this field, as well as possible innovations and developments. Taking stock seems a simple act, but it is necessary in times of such rapid change. The work done in the Institute for Social Renewal, as in other sectors of the university, shows clearly the relationship between digital interactivity and cultural enterprise, as well as the more innovative possibilities of a relationship between tradition and potential.

Jessica Crosby, PhD student in Newcastle School of Arts and Cultures

The past in the present: a Reflection on music in the English reformation

Posted on 22 July, 2016 by Jenny

This blog piece is the latest in our New Voices in Social Renewal series and is by Daisy Gibbs, PHD student at Newcastle University and provides a fascinating insight into the music from an evocative period of history.

Photo of singers in Newcastle Universtiy event, featuring early music.

Simon Veit-Wilson Photography

When someone asks me what I study I usually say something like ‘Music in the English Reformation’. It may not be wholly true but people do tend to know what it means! In fact, I’m studying the music collections of Elizabethan amateurs, compiled after England officially became a Protestant country in 1559 but at a time of continuing religious change, negotiation and unrest. These collections survive in dozens of manuscripts scattered in libraries across the country, many of them copied by identifiable individuals. I’m using several case-studies to find out how and where they acquired their music and what encouraged them to choose the pieces that they did.

Helping me in my search is the fact that most of these books don’t just contain music. Many also contain marginal notes, drawings, and even poetry, and their combination of music and paratext carries a huge amount of information. Some copyists seem to have been motivated by concerns which today are all too ominously familiar: a jingoistic pride in Britishness and British art; an ‘island mentality’, and a consequent need to compete with the older and more established music industry of Europe. There are even a couple of references, in the manuscripts of the Oxford don Robert Dow, to ‘our race’, defining the British people not by citizenship but by blood. Sometimes moments like these just make you want to close the books, stop reading, and hope it all goes away. But at other times, even if we know next to nothing about the people who copied the music, we can sympathise with them, because their concerns were the same as ours are now. Among their number we find friends gathering after dinner to entertain themselves with wine and singing, students and schoolchildren copying music to learn before their next lesson, connoisseurs annotating their books with which pieces they thought the best and – in a couple of cases – rather ill-informed criticism.

But that’s not all. Some of the most intriguing books to survive are those which contain music written for Catholic church services, before the accession of Elizabeth I – music which it was now treasonous to perform in public. At this time Roman Catholics were reviled and persecuted: it was illegal even to be a Catholic priest in England and as the reign progressed, the fines for non-attendance at Church of England services were ramped up and up. Some Catholic families lived in constant fear. And yet. Although some of the copyists we can identify were Catholics, others were right at the heart of the conformist establishment, including a schoolteacher, John Sadler, and a singer in the Chapel Royal, John Baldwin. Their books show a love and appreciation for the cultural legacy of Catholicism. Though they might have strongly disagreed with what it stood for, these people could still understand its beauty and value. Even today – especially today – at a time when many are becoming increasingly intolerant of difference, we can learn from such open-mindedness.

My research will not put an end to extremism and it’s not trying to. But, in our study of these Elizabethan musicians, my colleagues and I are uncovering what must surely offer hope in times of change: a deep appreciation of a very different and at times hostile culture, its artistry and sophistication; a quiet love of the past without finding any need to revive or relive it; and the recognition that, however trying the times, those human constants of good music and good company can always provide us with an anchor of sorts; as it were, the calm in the eye of the storm.

Daisy Gibbs, student, Newcastle University

Critiquing the extremes of managerial rewards

Posted on 10 March, 2016 by Fiona

In the Newcastle University public lecture on New Voices in Social Renewal, Dr Michael Price presented his work on big bonuses and managerial rewards, connecting them to inequality and social immobility. In this blog post, Dr Price and his colleague Dr Ewan Mackenzie, both from the Strategy, Organisations and Society research group in Newcastle University Business School, argue that it’s time to intervene to stop spiralling inequalities in our country.

The gap between UK average pay and the pay of top executives is rising[1]. Despite government rhetoric about the British population “all being in this together”[2] the pay growth for those at the top of British society has dwarfed that of the rest of the population. Globally the issue is so pronounced that the World Economic Forum noted, in its 2015 outlook briefing, that income disparity is the most important risk to economic and political security[3] for the world today.

Source: Institute for fiscal studies (2014)

Research from the London School of Economics suggests the UK has one of the lowest rates of social mobility in the world[4]. Despite this there is a commonly held belief that paying for performance based on ‘merit’ is perfectly acceptable, after all, if people work hard and produce rewards for others as a result of their talents, why shouldn’t they share proportionally in the fruits of that labour? Such a position is deeply rooted in the philosophical notions of justice and desert[5]. In modern ‘liberal’ societies a conventional assumption is that a person should be rewarded in proportion to the discretionary effort involved. Associated notions of ‘social mobility’ have also been central to social and economic discourses since the early 1980s. In the UK, it is not hard to find well-trodden examples of people that have come from relatively modest backgrounds and elevated themselves, through supposed hard work, ingenuity and intelligence. Alan Sugar and his apprentices are broadcast onto TV screens every week, reinforcing the narrative of the “bootstrap boys”[6]. What is commonly perceived as worthy of merit is derived from the impartiality of the idea that one’s capabilities plus effort equals merit[7]. The propagation of this mode of reasoning has come to govern popular thought in 21^st-century Britain.

Michael Young’s 1958 dystopia, The Rise of the Meritocracy, warned that pursuing a meritocratic agenda would perpetuate social inequality. Mike Savage recently confirmed this prediction in his Great British Class Survey, which suggested increasing social polarisation in British society. Savage characterises the ‘invisible’ bottom 15% of the British population as ‘the precariat’. Yet perhaps what is of equal alarm is the spiralling remuneration of ‘the elite’. Savage’s classifies the ‘elite’ as representing 6% of the population. He suggests they possess economic capital in property, savings and incomes which sets them apart from other classes[8]. Research has also indicated that managerial salaries are a significant driver of these trends, therefore highlighting the contribution of excessive reward towards spiralling inequality[9].

French academic Thomas Piketty suggests the “stratospheric pay of super managers” has come about because of a form of “meritocratic extremism”[10] prevalent in ‘liberal’ societies. This denotes the belief that ‘winners’ should be disproportionately rewarded to encourage a condition of envy, thus creating standards for others to strive towards. In a speech to the Centre for Policy studies, Boris Johnson claims inequality is essential for “the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses, that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity”[11]. Therefore it seems that notions of business ‘meritocracy’ are in vogue. Apparent equality of opportunity, has developed into a strong justification for increasing levels of remuneration and spiralling inequality.

Research being conducted here at Newcastle University has examined the genesis of these changes. One strand has investigated the influential 1995 Greenbury Committee[12]. This committee and their recommendations are important because they played a central role in constructing the current framework for remuneration policy in UK organisations. The stated position of the committee, with 20 years’ hindsight, is that the consequences of their reforms contributed to, rather than limited, the growth in top executive pay. The observation that many of the committee were likely to be affected by its findings, due to their positions as executives of large companies, is a rather obvious criticism. For instance, the refusal of John Monks, General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress, to participate, perhaps amplifies those criticisms.

The recommendations of the Greenbury committee facilitated the increasing use of performance-related pay schemes which often generate excessive and disproportionate rewards. Research investigating top executive pay and performance points towards a weak correlation with labour, yet these studies receive very little exposure outside of academic circles. Is it time for politicians to take heed of the warning signs, and substantively intervene on these issues, in order to take responsibility for the spiralling inequalities of our present?

Michael Price and Ewan Mackenzie

[1] Manifest/MM&K Executive Director Total Remuneration Survey 2013.

[2] David Cameron famously introduced this slogan in his 2009 speech to the Tory party conference http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=154

[3]See: http://reports.weforum.org/outlook-global-agenda-2015/top-10-trends-of-2015/1-deepening-income-inequality/

[4] See: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee%20dps/ceedp111.pdf

[5] See John Rawls 1970 work – A theory of justice.

[6] A bootstrap boy is representative of a generation of business leaders who ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ to lofty status in British business. See Kerr & Robinson (2010).

[7] Antony Sampson proposed this equation in his 1965 work, “Anatomy of Britain Today”

[8] Mike Savage is Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Along with Niall Cunningham, Fiona Devine, Sam Friedman, Danial Laurison, Lisa McKenzie, Andrew Miles, Helen Snee and Paul Wakeling, they’ve recently published a ground breaking study of social class entitled, “Social Class in the 21^st Century”.

[9] Lemieux, T., Macleod, W. B., and Parent, D. (2009). ‘Performance related pay and wage inequality’. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(1).

[10] See Piketty (2014) page 416.

[11] See: http://www.cps.org.uk/events/q/date/2013/11/27/the-2013-margaret-thatcher-lecture-boris-johnson/

[12] The Full report can be found here: http://www.ecgi.org/codes/documents/greenbury.pdf

What does participation mean?

Posted on 3 February, 2016 by Fiona

Alexia Mellor is a practice-led PhD researcher in fine art, investigating participatory art practices and the local-global discourse. In this blog post, she explores the theme of arts and culture in social renewal following her presentation as part of the ‘New Voices in Social Renewal’ public lecture in Newcastle University. She challenges the valuing of art for its economic or even social benefit, and argues that the way forward is a more active citizenship.

Credit and Copyright ©: Colin Davison
+44 (0)7850 609 340
colin@rosellastudios.com
www.rosellastudios.com

Participation seems to be the new buzzword, but what do we actually mean by it? What does it mean for social renewal? I am particularly interested in this as an artist and researcher whose practice involves working with people to question ideas and to make meaning.

Participatory art, socially-engaged art, dialogical art – they are all names for a broad spectrum of art practices that involve using the social as both the context and medium for the work. With ‘Big Society’ devolving responsibility, continuing austerity measures, and the arts being asked to make an economic as well as cultural case[1], social arts practices have come even more into the spotlight. There has been a visible push across the arts and cultural sector to focus on social inclusion, reaching out to communities that have been identified as disadvantaged or not engaging with cultural activities[2]. Having been commissioned to work on art projects associated with regeneration programmes and other such initiatives, I have become keenly aware of some of the issues with seeing art as a means to dealing with social problems.

This isn’t to say that art can’t help with social issues, but should it or must it? Of primary concern for me are questions around whose notions of ‘social betterment,’ or cultural engagement, are being acknowledged or furthered with the agendas behind these commissioned projects? What does this mean for the perceived role of the arts in society today? What agency does the participant have – does having access to an art or cultural project mean the same thing as participating in it?

My colleague and frequent collaborator, Dr. Anthony Schrag, and I have written frequently about this trend of using socially-engaged arts practices as an instrument towards particular agendas or targets. Whether these agendas are set by supporting organisations, commissioning bodies, or policy, the instrumentalism of socially-engaged art practice carries risks. Above all, instrumentalism risks losing the very thing that makes socially-engaged practices unique and relevant: their ability to involve participants across art and non-art contexts in critical, interdisciplinary dialogue.

Criticality is the core issue here. It is a myth that consensus necessarily leads to social cohesion. Society is complex and made of difference. What Anthony and I as practitioners and researchers both argue is that embracing a participatory approach that allows for, disagreement, difference and dissensus through critical interrogation is crucial. French theorist, Chantal Mouffe, refers to the need for welcoming healthy conflict and difference in her discussion of agonism. Agonism is not antagonism. Quite the opposite. Agonism sees the value in, and necessity of, respectful disagreement as a way of finding common ground, of finding creative solutions, and of revealing questions we did not know needed to be asked. She argues that agonism is key to true democracy, and ultimately to active citizenship.

Participation in active citizenship requires physical and conceptual spaces for critical reflection that embrace difference and allow for multiple perspectives to be heard. I suggest that socially-engaged arts practices might offer a model for this. Beyond ‘bums on seats,’ this type of art practice sees participants as co-creators in developing a critical space and what happens within it. As opposed to advocating any pre-defined objective, the practice is responsive to the direction participants choose to take the project. This, however, requires a shift in how we think of socially-engaged practice and its role. Artists are not social workers, but we do work with the social. As opposed to fixing social ills, perhaps we are best suited to work collaboratively with participants to shed light on issues and open the forum for how to collectively approach them. This also means challenging the idea that art will ‘do good.’ Sometimes the greatest growth comes after going through something quite difficult. It is our job as artists and researchers to provide the safe and productive spaces for disagreement. By making space for discomfort, by allowing criticality to be at the fore, we just might encourage more active citizenship.

[1] Mirza, Munira. (Ed) Culture Vultures: Is UK arts policy damaging the arts? London, Policy Exchange Limited, 2006

[2] See: http://www.creativepeopleplaces.org.uk/

Resilience and Wellbeing: Domesticity and Trauma in English Women’s Second World War Epistolary Correspondence

Posted on 25 January, 2016 by Fiona

In the Newcastle University public lecture on New Voices in Social Renewal, postgraduate student Stephanie Butler presented her work on letter-writing during the Second World War. In this blog post, she challenges the overly simplistic histories of English wartime stoicism, and explores the true resilience of English women as they adjusted to living through war. In deepening our understanding of war displacement, we can let our past inform our present, with an empathy fitting for the modern age.

Stephanie Butler, PGR, English Literature, Language and Linguistics

My doctoral thesis examines how English women used personal correspondence during WWII to create peer-support communities which promoted wartime psychological resilience. This project started as a result of letters I inherited from my grandmother, which were written by my grandmother’s great aunts to their sister (her grandmother). Each of the great aunts was in her late seventies by the end of the war, which means that they represent an age bracket often overlooked in research about WWII. They were certainly not war-working women [1], nor were they housewives [2] nor mothers of young children [3] – all of whom have been given a lot of scholarly [4] and popular [5] attention.

My grandmother’s great aunts’ letters are quite honestly heart-breaking at times. These letters are so full of references to shaken nerves, bombed houses, civilian war causalities, and even grief over massacred children, that the popular myths of English wartime stoicism [6] have long seemed overly simplistic to me. One of my grandmother’s great aunts lost her house in Kent after a bomb completely obliterated it and killed her neighbours. Another lost a friend and former teaching colleague who was killed (along with her three sisters) when a bomb fell on their house.

Their constant descriptions of houses, whether home repairs after bombing or concerns about potential air raid damage, led me to consider the ways war reshaped women’s relationships with their homes. Although the home is by no means a safe space for everyone, I wondered how the threat of violent death or displacement impacted women who had previously felt that their home was their own space of comfort and safety, or even accomplishment. Where could they feel safe if not even in their own homes? Private shelters such as Andersons [7] or Morrisons [8] or reinforced basements [9] were no guarantee of survival in the event of a direct hit (nor were public shelters [10]).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I noticed that women’s descriptions of the state of the houses around them (their own, or other peoples’) often reflected the overall emotional tones in their letters. At times women even connected—practically or symbolically—the physical stabilities of houses to their own mental states. This observation holds true across a wide collection of letters I have reviewed, not just those provided to me by my family. I, therefore, examine the ways that preoccupations with houses in their letters reveal the psychological impacts of war on civilian women.

Despite popular mythologized representations of English wartime stoicism [6], the realities of people’s reactions to the war were far more complicated [11]. What I have learned is that women’s negative reactions must not be dismissed as cowardly; they are an inevitable part of the process of adjustment to wartime conditions – an entirely human reaction. Letters were an important medium of support because women often found themselves separated from family and friends due to war-work, evacuation, or military service. (The telephone was expensive, and often interrupted due to raids or service cuts to international lines, so was not as popular [12]).

Letters then let women reach out to trusted confidantes when the war was too much for them to cope with alone. In the spirit of my usual concern with contemporary human rights issues, I contend that a more complicated understanding of English women’s responses to war displacement, evacuation, and endangerment can increase our empathy for those currently seeking asylum [13]. Inspired by American [14] and Canadian allies [15] who so generously supported English friends and relatives throughout the war, we can provide aid to contemporary women fleeing conflict [16].

References

[1] Braybon, Gail, and Penny Summerfield. Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in the Two World Wars. Abingdon: Routledge, 1987. Print.

[2] Last, Nella. Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of ‘Housewife, 49’. Eds, Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming. London: Falling Wall Press, 1981. Print.

[3] Clouting, Laura. ‘The Evacuated Children of the Second World War.’ Imperial War Museums. 2016. Web. December 21, 2015.

[4] Jolly, Margaretta. Dear Laughing Motorbyke: Letters from Women Welders of the Second World War. London: Scarlet Press, 1997. Print.

[5] Nicholson, Virginia. Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives During the Second World War. London: Penguin, 2012. Print.

[6] Calder, Angus. The Myth of the Blitz. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991. Print.

[7] Lewis, Tony. ‘What was an Anderson Shelter?’ Biggin-Hill History. http://www.bigginhill-history.co.uk/ May 14, 2015. Web. December 21, 2015.

[8] Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer ‘MORRISON SHELTER ON TRIAL: TESTING THE NEW INDOOR SHELTER, 1941.’ Imperial War Museums. 2016. Web. December 21, 2015.

[9] Your Home as an Air Raid Shelter. London: British Pathé, 1940. Film.

[10] Sunderland Libraries. ‘Fifty Years On: Remembering the Lodge Terrace Incident of 24th May 1943.’ BBC: WW2 People’s War. 18 January 2005. Web. January 24, 2016.

[11] Acton, Carol. Grief in Wartime: Private Pain, Public Discourse. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.

[12] ‘UK Telephone History.’ Bob’s Telephone File: A historical web site about United Kingdom Customer Telephone Apparatus & Systems. December 20, 2010. Web. December 21, 2015.

[13] ‘Free access to OUP resources on refugee law.’ Oxford Public International Law, Oxford University Press. 2016. Web. January 1, 2016.

[14] Statler, Jocelyn. Special Relations: Transatlantic Letters Three English Evacuees and their Families, 1940-45. London: Leo Cooper, 1990. Print.

[15] Hawes, Stanley. Children from Overseas. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1940. Film.

[16] West End Refugee Service Website. January 5, 2016. Web. January 5, 2016.

Stephanie Butler is a Year three PhD Candidate in the School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics at Newcastle University. Her publications on chronic illness peer-support and virtual autobiography have appeared in the journals Space and Culture; Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies; Disability Studies Quarterly; Information, Communication, and Society; and a/b:Auto/Biography Studies (forthcoming). She recently completed a Research Fellowship with the Saratoga Foundation for Women Worldwide, Incorporated (a United Nations Accredited NGO with Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN).