{"id":394,"date":"2017-08-08T10:15:24","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T09:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/?p=394"},"modified":"2017-08-04T09:51:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T08:51:00","slug":"in-search-of-utopia-with-bbc-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/in-search-of-utopia-with-bbc-four\/","title":{"rendered":"In search of utopia with BBC Four"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What kind of utopias do children imagine? In July, <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/sacs\/staff\/profile\/richardclay.html#publications\"><strong>Newcastle University\u2019s Professor Richard Clay<\/strong><\/a><strong> is hosting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b090w6y3\"><em>Utopia: In Search of the Dream,<\/em><\/a> a new three part documentary on BBC Four \u2013 featuring <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sevenstories.org.uk\/\"><strong>Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children\u2019s Books<\/strong><\/a><strong>!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The documentary, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b090w6y3\/broadcasts\/upcoming\">which will begin on Tuesday 8th August at 9pm, <\/a>explores the concept of utopia by looking at this from a range of different perspectives. From Thomas Moore\u2019s sixteenth-century coining of the term, to Newcastle\u2019s own Thomas Spence, Soviet spa towns, wikipedians, feminist theatre, Steve Reich, Minecraft, Star Trek and beyond, the series is certainly wide-ranging.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Clay, Professor of Digital Humanities in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/hss\/\">Newcastle University\u2019s Faculty of Humanieis, Arts and Social Sciences,<\/a> explains how the opportunity to curate <em>Utopia<\/em> came about: <i>&#8220;<\/i><em>I&#8217;ve done a couple of BBC4 documentaries in the past (<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b042ttxl\"><em>The French Revolution: Tearing up History<\/em><\/a><em> and <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b067fxfr\"><em>A Brief History of Graffiti<\/em><\/a><em>) and a production company approached me and said they&#8217;d been commissioned to make some films about utopia for the BBC with me writing and presenting. At first I thought it&#8217;s just too big a topic, spanning historical periods and cultures. But I concluded that it&#8217;d be a fascinating subject to explore and an amazing experience to film \u2013 which it was, especially the time we spent with young people at Seven Stories. Their vision and principles made me wonder whether Jean-Jacque Rousseau was right back in the eighteenth century &#8211; we\u2019re born utopian and then corrupted by society\u2026&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bocu_ptp828?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He invited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/elll\/staff\/profile\/matthewgrenby.html#background\">Matthew Grenby, Professor of 18<sup>th<\/sup>-Century Studies<\/a> in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/elll\/\">Newcastle University\u2019s School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics<\/a> to participate in the documentary. Professor Grenby\u2019s research interests lie in children\u2019s literature and culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Grenby led a workshop at Seven Stories with a group of Year 5 children from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westjesmondprimary.org.uk\/\">West Jesmond Primary School<\/a> to explore how both historical and contemporary children\u2019s books influence children\u2019s visions of alternative worlds. Using the concept of utopia as a starting point, the children created drawings and talked about the other worlds they conceived of.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_397\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-397\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-397\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia2.jpg\" alt=\"Drawings by children from West Jesmond Primary School. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia2.jpg 960w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia2-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia2-768x510.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-397\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Drawings by children from West Jesmond Primary School. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children&#8217;s Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Professor Grenby said: <i>&#8220;<\/i><em>Seven Stories was the perfect venue for filming, being itself a sort of utopian vision of what a child-friendly museum of children\u2019s books can be.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The children from West Jesmond Primary School were fantastic. We asked them to draw pictures of their own personal utopias. The results were really wonderful. Waterworlds, worlds floating in the air, a city situated on a gigantic flower, with different zones for different grades of celebrities. When we asked the children what the rules would be in their utopian societies, there was a definite air of radicalism. One girl said that cars would be against the law. Another said there\u2019d be no kings or queens! One of the boys said that everyone would have to do at least half an hour\u2019s sport every day. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But not all of these fantasy worlds were happy places. In one girl\u2019s vision of the future, all the people were sad because they had to live in the sea, and all the fish were unhappy because they had to live on the land. It was a remarkable insight into how utopian thinking gives a really direct insight into people\u2019s most pressing concerns in the now.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_396\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-396\" style=\"width: 717px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-396\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia1.jpg\" alt=\"Filming takes place for Utopia: In Search of the Dream at Seven Stories. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books\" width=\"717\" height=\"462\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia1.jpg 717w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/files\/2017\/07\/Utopia1-300x193.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-396\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Filming takes place for Utopia: In Search of the Dream at Seven Stories. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children&#8217;s Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>John Beattie, Business Development Manager at Seven Stories, worked with Professor Grenby and the production company, Clear Story, to set up and support the filming. John said:<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;<\/i><em>Dystopias are a trend in contemporary children\u2019s literature \u2013 with titles like The Hunger Games and Divergent dominating bestseller lists &#8211; so it was really interesting to watch the young people discussing utopias with Professor Grenby. Books can help children to identify with and shape the world around them, and exploring utopian worlds provides positive models for children to explore how society might develop in the future.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019ll leave it to Professor Richard Clay to have the last word:<em> \u201cthe whole crew loved filming at Seven Stories. So big thanks to your team, that great school, and those fab youngsters. The sequences we shot look wonderful!\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>I\u2019m looking forward to watching the documentary, and if you miss it tonight, then make sure you catch it on <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/iplayer\"><strong>BBC iPlayer!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What kind of utopias do children imagine? In July, Newcastle University\u2019s Professor Richard Clay is hosting Utopia: In Search of the Dream, a new three part documentary on BBC Four \u2013 featuring Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children\u2019s Books! The documentary, which will begin on Tuesday 8th August at 9pm, explores the concept of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/in-search-of-utopia-with-bbc-four\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;In search of utopia with BBC Four&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6222,"featured_media":419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,39],"tags":[43,4,14,7,34,17],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-schools","tag-media","tag-partnership","tag-public-engagement","tag-research","tag-schools","tag-seven-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}