Celebrating AHSCE and the New Africa-Europe Cluster of Research Excellence at M A D House, University of Lagos
The African Hub for Sustainable Creative Economies will come together on the 14th of November in Lagos to celebrate the launch of their new research report and the new collaborative partnership behind the establishment of the new ARUA and The Guild Cluster of Research Excellence Africa-Europe CoRE on Creative Economies. Photo Courtesy @BayoOmoboriowo
Supporting Women’s Creative Entrepreneurship in Lagos: A Network and Documentary Film
Dr Lauren England (Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries) and Dr Eka Ikpe have been awarded funding from King’s College London AHRC Impact Acceleration Account to work with partners based in Lagos (Nigeria) on the project “Supporting Women’s Creative Entrepreneurship in Lagos: A network and documentary film”. The project sees the KCL team working in partnership with…
Discussing Senegalese film Banel & Adama at the Cambridge Film Festival with The New Black Film Collective
Following the screening of Astel, the first short film directed by Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy (2021) at King’s College London last Spring during the Decolonising Film Festivals and African Cinemas networking event, we were pleased to be invited to the Cambridge Film Festival to introduce and discuss Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s first feature length film, Banel &…
New Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence CoRE: ‘Creative Economies: Cultures, Innovation and Sustainability’
The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities (The Guild) have launched three new Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence (CoRE). This is a direct response to the formal launch of the AU-EU Innovation Agenda, which acknowledges the importance of research and education – including in the social sciences and humanities…
Africa Fashion Futures Podcast goes live!
Dr Lauren England is delighted to announce the launch of the Africa Fashion Futures Podcast. This research podcast series shares insights and expertise on the fascinating world of African Fashion. The podcast provides an opportunity to hear from academics and industry experts and learn about the opportunities and innovations they see in African Fashion and…
Estrella Sendra acts as jury member at the International Documentary Film Festival StLouis’ DOCS in Senegal
Last May, Estrella Sendra (CMCI, KCL) participated in the International Documentary Film Festival StLouis’ DOCS as a jury member, being the whole jury presided by renown Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sene Absa. The festival is a meeting point for documentary filmmakers, cinephiles and professionals of the film circle in Senegal and Africa, offering a wide range…
Researchers of The New Frontiers in Research Fund project ‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’ Meet in Canada
(Photo of the roundtable of the NFRF research project during the Colloque (Photo: Maïmouna Jallow, 2023)) ‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’ is a research projected funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, Government of Canada, led by Professor Sheila Petty (University of Regina) as the nominated principal investigator, and Dr Estrella…
CMCI Lecturer Estrella Sendra publishes about the Senegalese Festival Back to the Roots in Wiriko, the Spanish online magazine specialised in African arts and cultures
Dr Estrella Sendra, Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries Education (Festivals and Events) has recently completed a fieldwork research period in Senegal, conducting participant observation in the Festival Saint-Louis Docs (2-6 May 2023), where she was also a jury member, Festival Stereo Africa (9-13 May 2023), the Festival Back to the Roots (12-20 May 2023), and the Festival Saint-Louis Jazz (25-29 May 2023).…
CMCI Lecturer Estrella Sendra publishes in the Senegalese newspaper Le Soleil on photographer and filmmaker Massow Ka-El Junio.
Dr Estrella Sendra, co-principal investigator of the research Project ‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’, funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, Government of Canada, has recently completed a fieldwork period in Saint-Louis, implementing a pilot methodology that seeks to contribute to the decolonization of research methods. This article focuses on Massow Ka-El Junio,…
CMCI event – Gender, Labour and Activism in the Creative Industries
Dr Tamsyn Dent In April CMCI’s Gender Work and Creative Industries (GWCI) research cluster hosted its second research hub event titled Gender, Labour and Activism in the Creative Industries. The one-day event organised by the GWCI conveners Dr Wing-Fai Leung, Dr Christina Scharff and Dr Natalie Wreyford brought together participants to discuss the relationship between…
New Film on “Mapping Social Value” at the London School of Mosaic
Dr Lauren England from the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries is excited to share a research video on “Mapping Social Value” which presents an innovative method for capturing the value of small arts organisations. The film was produced for the project “Socially Engaged Art and Policy” funded by the British Academy and led…
New article on skills and resources for craft graduates
Dr Lauren England, Lecturer in Creative Economies in CMCI, has published an article “Crafting professionals: Skills and resources for graduates entering the craft economy” in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. The article is part of a special issue on Craft Economies and Inequalities, edited by Dr Karen Patel and Rajinder Dudrah, and is available open access. The article…
Special Issue ‘Musicology on Screen’ just published on Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media
Estrella Sendra I am delighted to share with you that the special issue ‘Musicology on Screen’, which I have had the pleasure to co-edit with guest editors Prof Barley Norton (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Joseph Owen Jackson (SOAS and Institute of Civil Engineering) has just been published in Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication…
APPG for Creative Diversity new project announced
APPG for Creative Diversity announces next research project examining diversity and inclusion in the talent pipeline with partners including YouTube and King’s College London The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Creative Diversity today announces its next research project examining creative education and ‘What Works’ to support diversity in the talent pipeline. In September 2021, the…
Busy bodies: the afterlives of photographic motion studies in contemporary visual culture
Dr Sara Callahan It is sometimes said that more images are now produced every minute than were made during the entire nineteenth century. Although I can’t vouch for the veracity of this statement, it is clear that contemporary culture is characterised by the production, reproduction and circulation of images and that many images that originated…
New report published highlighting possible futures for creative work after Covid-19
Dr Lauren England & Dr Roberta Comunian We are delighted to announce that the report “Creative Work: Possible futures after Covid-19” now been published and is available to download for free. The report, co-authored with Dr Federica Viganó (Free University of Bolzano, Italy) and Dr Jessica Tanghetti (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), shines light further onto how the…
Sharing research on craft higher education and professional development at the Crafts Council UK Roundtable
Dr Lauren England On 9th March 2022, I shared key findings from my PhD research on craft higher education and professional development at a Crafts Council UK Higher Education Roundtable. The Roundtable event was attended by members of the Crafts Council’s Education, Policy and Research and Professional Development teams, representatives UK craft higher education and…
CMCI staff and Arts & Cultural Management MA student Bayo Omoboriowo collaborate on exhibition “Intertwined: Fashion, Textile and Heritage in Nigeria”
In 2019 Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England (Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, KCL) started working with Dr Eka Ikpe (African Leadership Centre, KCL) and Dr Ananya Kabir (Department of English, KCL). They were awarded a King’s Together Seed Fund grant for the “Africa Fashion Futures” project. The project looks at fashion…
What are cultural and creative ecosystems and how can they be studied? CMCI researchers provide a review of theories and methods, towards a new research agenda in international journal Cultural Trends
Manfredi de Bernard Recently, we have witnessed a wave of enthusiasm from scholars towards the creative and cultural ecology paradigm as a new promising model for policy development. Indeed, in his popular 2015 report, Holden argues for a shift toward “the cultural ecology” to address the criticalities of existing top-down approaches. He highlights the inextricable…
It is encouraging to see more mentions of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the creative economies, and social investment
Denderah Rickmers 2021 marks the decade of action for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Notably, it is also the UN’s International Year of the Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. In fact, the SDGs are the first international development framework that explicitly refers to culture, as many countries have begun to view culture as an asset in eliminating poverty, responding…
New article published on MCS Journal: Responses to health risk and suffering: ‘China’ in the Italian media discourses during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic
Maria Paola Pofi I am delighted to announce that the article I wrote with my supervisor Dr Wing-Fai Leung has been published in the Media, Culture & Society (MCS) Journal and is available to download for free here (link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01634437211053770). The opportunity to start this research project arose during my PhD fieldwork in Rome (in February 2020),…
New Report on Dundee’s Cultural Recovery
Dr Lauren England Dr Lauren England is delighted to announce that the final report from her research project “Dundee Cultural Recovery” has now been published and is available to download for free. The report provides insights into the impact of the pandemic on the organisations and individual cultural workers (specifically freelancers) who make up Dundee’s cultural economy and the role…
Who has the right to claim authorship when we talk about artisan production?
Jazmín Ruiz Díaz (Photos courtesy of the IPA) News related to traditional handicrafts does not usually hit the headlines in Paraguayan newspapers. However, this time was different. The reason: A dispute between an association of women potters against an entrepreneur from the capital city. The accusations were cultural appropriation from one side, and of breaking…
Creative Work: Possible Futures After Covid-19 Workshop
Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England in partnership with Dr Federica Viganò from the Faculty of Education of University of Bolzen have organised an international online workshop ‘Creative Work: Possible Futures After Covid-19’. The workshop will include 14 papers presented over two days (4th – 5th November 2021), with contributions from across Europe, the USA and South…
The Covid-19 crisis and ‘critical juncture’ in cultural policy: a comparative analysis of cultural policy responses in South Korea, Japan and China
Karin Ling-Fung Chau The Covid-19 pandemic has rendered the arts and culture sectors everywhere extremely vulnerable and put cultural policy under a serious common pressure. Seeing the pandemic as a significant event that has disrupted the existing institutions and discourses, many commentators are demanding a reshaping of cultural policy to cope with the crisis and…
Creative and Cultural Ecosystems: Visual Models and Visualisation Challenges
Written by Manfredi de Bernard and Roberta ComunianRecent research (de Bernard et al. forthcoming) acknowledges that while ecological notions in the study of creative and cultural industries (CCIs) and framework have received increased attention by academics, consultants, and policymakers, there is very little clarity on its definition and understanding. Predictably, the confusion is also echoed…
Future Festivals South Africa
Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Jonathan Gross We are leading on a one-year project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Future Festivals South Africa: Possibilities for the Age of Covid-19 is an international collaborative project developed in collaboration with Prof Jen Snowball, Delon Tarendaal and Fiona Drummond at Rhodes University (South Africa). It aims…
Supporting the cultural industries using venture capital: a policy experiment from South Korea
Dr Hye-Kyung Lee On 24 March 2021, I gave a talk “Supporting the cultural industries using venture capital: a policy experiment from South Korea” in the CMCI staff seminar. The talk was based on the findings of my fieldwork in Seoul in 2019, and my paper with the same title is currently being reviewed by a journal. The…
Exploring multiple nightlife
Jiawei Zhao The question “what is the night?” was common for asking the time in early Modern England; it is now worth questioning again to understand how people perceive the night and their nightlife when we witness more people spend their night differently. By definition, the night is the period from sunset to sunrise when it is dark outside and…
Fan Studies Research Seminar at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)
Erika Ningxin Wang I was invited as a guest speaker at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), the Chinese campus of the University of Liverpool, to give a talk entitled “Resistance or Negotiation? The Relationship between Chinese Fan Culture and the Mainstream Power Discourse”. On Friday, 2nd April 2021, Professor Marco Pellitteri chaired the seminar in School…
What does it mean to be sustainable?
Lindsay Parker When asked what my PhD topis is, my usual response is “fashion and sustainability”. These are terms that are recognisable and used frequently however, their precise definitions (particularly when used within an academic context) are complex and contested. Part of my research is concerned with how different people give meaning to these terms…
Care and co-creation – CMCI students explore the civic role of arts
The past year has been a challenging one, with COVID-19 uprooting our lives but also sparking thoughts and desires about how we might want to reset the way we want to live and how communities operate. As we slowly emerge into whatever might be the ‘new normal’, arts organisations are helping to shape the future:…
Care Manifesto
Manfredi de Bernard and Takao Terui The Care Manifesto stresses the need for and elaborates on an alternative to the neoliberal principles that regulate both our personal and shared existence. Informed by feminist, antiracist and eco-socialist theories, the authors argue for a radical change in the current understandings of human life, individualist and productivity. They…
Creative Economy Research Frontiers Seminar Series – Creative Work and Gender: Barriers and Activism
Dr Tamsyn Dent & Dr Kate McMillan Dr Tamsyn Dent and Dr Kate McMillan both presented research as part of the Creative Economy Research Frontiers Seminar Series, organised and hosted by CMCI and DISCE.EU in partnership with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), Nesta. The event, Creative Work and Gender: Barriers and Activism…
Creative and cultural work without filters: Covid-19 and exposed precarity in the creative economy
Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England In the first of our DISCE Webinars Dr Roberta Comunian, DISCE researcher, presented some of her work (with colleague Dr Lauren England at King’s College London) on the impact of Covid-19 on creative and cultural workers. The review article “Creative and cultural work without filters: Covid-19 and exposed precarity…
“Social Enterprises, Social Innovation and the Creative Economy” – Special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal
Dr Roberta Comunian and Denderah Rickmers The creative economy is dead – long live the creative-social economies CMCI staff are involved in the launch of a new special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal on the creative-social economies. Dr Roberta Comunian and PhD Denderah Rickermers have curated the special issue and written the editorial (with…
Creative Higher Education and the impact of Covid-19
Dr Roberta Comunian, Dr Tamsyn Dent and Dr Lauren England Dr Roberta Comunian, Dr Tamsyn Dent and Dr Lauren England have launched this week a new website and research project – in collaboration with the H2020 funded project DISCE (Developing Inclusive and Sustainable Creative Economies). The project entitled ‘Creative Higher Education and the impact of…
The Birth of the Creative Industries Revisited
Dr Jonathan Gross CMCI began life in 2002 as an MA in Cultural & Creative Industries. This led in 2007 to the launch of the Centre for Culture, Media & Creative Industries, becoming a ‘Department’ in 2010. We now welcome students from all over the world to our three MA programmes (and soon to our…
Practising Hope in the Netherlands
Dr Jonathan Gross Just three days after the UK left the European Union I travelled to Nijmegen in the eastern Netherlands. I was there to visit the HAN University of Applied Sciences, which holds an annual International Week. This is the opportunity for students to attend workshops offered by academics from across Europe and beyond. I…
Industry and Academia Meet in Edinburgh to Discuss AI-Driven Creativity
Nina Vindum Rasmussen The hype is real: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is truly having a moment. The broad term refers to devices designed to act intelligently by mimicking the cognitive functions of the human brain. Advances in AI are disrupting major industries, including the creative sector. News headlines chronicle how AI and machine learning are aiding…
Understanding And Supporting Creative Economies In Africa Conference
Sana Kim and Manfredi De Bernard On the 14thof November CMCI department hosted Understanding and Supporting Creative Economies In Africa, a one day international conference, which served as a closing event of the AHRC funded research network Understanding And Supporting Creative Economies In Africa: Education, Networks And Policyled by Dr Roberta Comunian (King’s College London)…
Reconceptualising the Public-Private Partnership in Cultural Policy: The Insights from the Historical Research of UK Film Policy
Takao Terui To fully understand the culture, media and creative industries, the public policy for them is a fundamentally essential issue. That’s why I have been exploring cultural policy as my doctoral research theme. I began to be particularly intrigued by the practices and history of UK cultural policy since I moved to Coventry and…
Creative emerging economies: Fieldwork in Lagos
Dr Roberta Comunian and Lauren England In April 2019 we undertook an intensive week of fieldwork in Lagos (Nigeria) as part of an AHRC funded research network “Understanding and Supporting Creative Economies in Africa: Education, Networks And Policy”. In line with the Highlight Notice and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to…
Immersive Promotional Media
Dr Stephanie Janes I’m coming to the end of the first year of my British Academy Postdoctoral Research project on Immersive Promotional Media (IPM). This is a 3-year project which will use interviews, focus group and analysis of immersive marketing campaigns to paint a clearer picture of what immersive promotional media is, how it is…
Live Cinema Summit 2018
Live Cinema UK is the UK’s only organisation focused on bringing artists, exhibitors, distributors and producers closer together to create experiential cinema events. Based in West Yorkshire, Live Cinema UK curates innovative programmes and new art works inspired by the moving image, advising and partnering with cultural promoters regionally (Leeds International Film Festival, Screen Yorkshire,…
Culture, Media & Creative Industries @ Kings 