Welcome to Issue 1 of the School of Arts Touchpoint newsletter. Throughout the following pages you’ll find information about changes in the school, news from your subject area and details of how we’ve responded to your feedback and comments from last term. Feel free to contact a member of the Touchpoint team with your ideas and suggestions. Register your laptop with the Connect-Team to get wireless access in the Gaskell Building https://connect.brunel.ac.uk 1.1. SEPT>2010 Colin Riley (Music) Touchpoint Leader colin.riley@ brunel.ac.uk GB026 John Freeman (Drama) john.freeman @brunel.ac.uk GB032 Julian Savage (Screen Media) julian.savage@ brunel.ac.uk GB113 Claire Lynch (English) Editor of Newsletter claire.lynch@ brunel.ac.uk GB104 Murray Dick (Journalism) murray.dick@ brunel.ac.uk GB119 Paul Moody (Technicians) paul.moody@ brunel.ac.uk AA013 Sue Ramus (Admin) sue.ramus@ brunel.ac.uk GB011 Andy Smith (Artaud Manager) andy.smith@ brunel.ac.uk Gaskell Update You can now access personal, School and University information, such as Timetable, EVision and Ulink via two new computer kiosks in the Gaskell foyer. The new plasma screen will highlight important information and showcase School events.
Transcript
Welcome to Issue 1 of the School of Arts Touchpoint newsletter. Throughout the following pages you’ll find information about changes in the school, news from your subject area and details of how we’ve responded to your feedback and comments from last term.
Feel free to contact a member of the Touchpoint team with your ideas and suggestions.
Register your laptop with the Connect-Team to get wireless access in the Gaskell
Whether you’re a musician or poet, or you’ve produced an installation, a film or documentary, or a performance of any description – theatre, live art, dance - come and show your work and ideas (however experimental or in-progress) in one of the ARTS@ARTAUD events. This is your chance to try out your ideas in front of an enthusiastic and supportive audience who want to see you perform, with nights throughout the year building a social arts scene for the university.
Be part of the PRODUCTION TEAM
We run with a core production team of volunteer students who run the show like a real-life, professional event. There are a number of roles including marketing and publicity, lighting, stage management, sound production and operation, hospitality, M.C.ing, box office, D.J and front-of-house. These roles all give you the opportunity to acquire additional skills, make new friends and it will also look good on your C.V. We have a production meeting before each event and the get-in on the night starts at 4pm.
The aim of this workshop is not to teach people how to ‘sing’, but to re-engage the indivisible connection between voice, body, breath, music and rhythm. Often, particularly in Western theatre, we conceive of the body as a series of divisions: we think of the voice as distinct and separate from the body; text as separate from movement; song from text; music from speaking.
In this workshop participants will be encouraged, through practice, to see beyond these divisions and experience their own connections. Participants will be introduced to certain techniques of polyphonic singing - working on a series of traditional polyphonic songs from Corsica, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania – in addition to exercises in rhythm and how this connects to work with text.
A central focus of this workshop is on enabling the participant to listen and to tune to others; to experience his or her voice not as separate from, but as an integral part of a larger entity. Embodied Voice will focus on the ability to transpose song and word into movement of the body, and movement into text and song; experiencing the body as music, and the voice and fully embodied.
Coming soon: New Masterclasses
Embodied Voice and the Actor
RESIDENT PRACTITIONER & TUTOR FOR 2010-2011 – ANDREI BIZIOREK
Andrei is a director, teacher and actor trainer. He has spent the past 10 years working between Australia, the UK and Poland, where he worked with companies including Gardzienice, Song of the Goat Theatre and, most recently, as a member of Theatre ZAR, based at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw. He has held lectureships in physical theatre and drama at the University of Leeds and Edge Hill University, and is a visiting lecturer at Central School of Speech and Drama, Royal Holloway, East 15 and Brunel University. In Australia Andrei was artistic director of Vis a Vis Theatre and Theatre Dwa Konie, as well as lecturing at the University of New South Wales and the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He holds an MA in Theatre Practice from the University of Exeter. He is currently Artistic Director of Lux Aeterna Company, based in London.
JournalismAward-winning journalist and academic Benedetta Brevini will be leading the delivery of public affairs modules to undergraduate and postgraduate students from October 1.
Benedetta, whose work has been featured in The Guardian as well as countless international print and broadcast outlets, joins us from University of Westminster where she specialised in media policy.
As well as bringing her expertise in NCTJ public affairs, she has a wealth of experience in international affairs -not least working on Hilary Clinton's 2006 bid to join the US Senate.
Journalism is launching an innovative new research grouping – The Centre for Advanced
Journalism Practice – its vision is to make a positive, distinctive and critical contribution to
current debates about the future of journalism, by bringing together practitioners
and researchers in sustainable projects. It builds on the team’s significant industry links
and aims to promote, interrogate and engage with practice-as-research projects in
collaboration with leading and emerging
organisations.
A host of Hollywood films and leading documentaries about journalism will be screened at a brand new club being launched in Induction Week. The Journalism Film Club will show a movie or programme each week along with a talk and discussion about the themes and ethics conveyed. Head of Journalism Sarah Niblock will start the club with a screening of “The Paper” on Thursday September 23 at 4.30pm in LC262. She said: “’The Paper’ gives a pretty accurate depiction of the sheer thrill of working in news and reminds me of how I felt when I first saw my work roll off the presses.” All welcome.
The Journalism Film Club
Journalism is gearing up for a very important visit from the industry’s top accrediting body, the National Council for the Training of Journalists, on October 19. A team of panellists from Sky, Grazia and the local press will decide whether to fully accredit BA (Hons) Journalism.
If successful, it would be the first and only NCTJ accredited BA in the London area. Head of Journalism Sarah Niblock said: “This would lend tremendous prestige to our degree, and graduate employability will be enhanced for our students as editors trust the rigour of the NCTJ qualification.”
Sister programme MA Journalism has been accredited for the past four years and is due for re-accreditation in the same day. A record number of its students have passed all the NCTJ exams this year. Several have gained journalism jobs before the course ended.
Journalism
Final year BA Journalism
students will gain cutting edge skills in entrepreneurialism
thanks to a module re-design aimed at boosting graduate
employability. Online Journalism has been renamed Online
Entrepreneurialism to incorporate intensive guidance on how to launch new internet media and promote your work
via the web.
News travelled fast for MA Journalism student Toby Higgins over the summer. Toby, who is now working for a newspaper in Yorkshire after passing all his NCTJ exams, wrote a story about a young girl needing 175 stitches after a dog attack. It was followed up by several national and international news outlets, including the Daily Mail. Toby isn’t the only Brunel student getting national coverage – Josh Darlington has been working on The Sun’s travel desk over the summer but has just landed a staff post on the Borehamwood Times. Meanwhile, MA International Journalism student Nazneen Akhbari has spent three months on a coveted internship at CNN.
Music at Brunel is looking towards an exciting new year of creative music-making led by its internationally active staff.
Last year we began to take full advantage of the newly refurbished Antonin Artaud venue to present music and multimedia performance events, and this year we can expect some even more ambitious undertakings, beginning in the autumn with a rare chance to experience live Gavin Bryars' haunting The Sinking of the Titanic, a collaboration between the Music and Drama departments.
The music rooms in the Gaskell Building have meanwhile been revamped with new wall-mounted speakers and offer improved facilities for rehearsal and the exploration of new ideas.
Music
Frank Griffith appeared on Blast Radio’s The Jazz Show Hosted by Kate Winter and Alex Hutton, onFriday 17 September, hear more on www.blast-radio.co.uk.
Frank’s latest show for www.ukjazzradio.com is a tribute to the late Sir John Dankworth. It plays several times per week so just consult the online schedule.
This year sees the start of a new postgraduate degree programme, the MA in 21st-century Music, with its emphasis strongly placed on music happening now.
Find out more at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/courses/pg/cdata/t/Twenty-firstCenturyMusicMMus-MA
We are delighted to welcome two new staff members, the Irish composer, vocalist, and interdisciplinary performance artist Jennifer Walshe, who comes to Brunel from New York, and the distinguished English composer John Woolrich, programmer for the Aldeburgh and Dartington Festivals, who will be developing Music at Brunel's presence in the wider musical community.
English & CWThere were many developments over the course of the last academic year geared towards improving and enriching the student experience. Firstly, the English subject team recruited four new members of staff: Jessica Cox, Wendy Knepper, Claire Lynch, and Max Kinnings. Anshuman Mondal, subject leader said “These new, young lecturers bring with them enthusiasm, dynamism and great teaching skills that will be appreciated by all English and Creative Writing students at Brunel in the years to come”.
The English team also undertook an extensive overhaul of the degree programmes for single honours English, English with Creative Writing, and Creative Writing. New modules are being offered at level 3 so there is greater scope to choose those fields in which you are particularly interested - and further modules will come on stream in the future. Levels 1 and 2 have been streamlined so that students will encounter fewer difficulties in enrolling on their modules.
English has pioneered the Peer Assisted Learning Scheme (PALS), which will roll out throughout the University soon. In the meantime, English students will enjoy the benefits of PALS ahead of their counterparts in other subject areas. Current level 2 & 3 students who have a good academic record are invited to become PALS mentors, helping incoming level 1 students to find their feet by offering tips, advice and a friendly shoulder to lean on. The first batch of PALS mentors will be helping out the incoming first years this year. Watch out for notices inviting you to apply to become a PALS mentor next term.
The teaching structure for English has been completely restructured so that students will no longer find themselves in very large seminar groups. Each English module at levels 1 and 2 will consist of a lecture and several seminar groups, ensuring that class sizes are kept as small as possible (usually about 20 per class). At level 3, classes have been capped at 30 and will be taught by full-time staff wherever possible, so that final year students benefit from small, intensive, research-led teaching by specialists in the field.
Your feedback
In response to student feedback the range of music covered in MU1026 has been broadened, adding lectures on the Broadway musical and on the art-
rock tradition.
New equipment was made available for students on MU1028 following student feedback and MU2032 has been moved to the better-equipped
facilities of the Chadwick Building as suggested by student reps.
In module MU2030 delivery intervals have been increased and additional tutorials have been introduced for MU3013.
Music
In response to your feedback, further studio sessions, presentation training and greater emphasis on practical work in the studio are being built into the modules at both BA and MA level.
Better and less cluttered hand-in dates and arrangements in a number of modules will mean that coursework hand-ins are being spread across the term and not all lumped together at the end.
simpler and quicker system for borrowing. Material being borrowed can be placed on the self issue
kiosks in a pile in order to issue them all in one go.
The new system will allow DVDs and CDs to be
borrowed on the self issue machines as well. This will mean that these items can
be borrowed during extended opening hours.
Brunel University Library subscribes to over 20,000 journals. This year new
additions to School of Arts subscriptions include Theatre, Dance and
Performance Training, Journal of Screenwriting,
South Asian Review, Symbiosis: A Journal of
Anglo-American Literary Relations, Celebrity Studies, Moving Worlds, The Word, Neural, Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, Issues in Documentary Studies and Journalism Practice.
A new Special Collections room has been created on the third floor of the Library. Highlights include the Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiographies, National Jazz Archive, Shakespearean Collections and the South Asian Diaspora Literature and Arts Archive (SALIDAA). Within the new facility there is a Special Collections Assistant on hand to assist users with accessing materials. Readers may book appointments to consult materials within the archive.
The Cult Film Archive has moved from the School of Arts to the Library allowing for a viewing room for students to watch material. Over the forthcoming months the Cult Film Archive will be catalogued and added to the Brunel Library Catalogue for students to search either in the Library or online.
All of the stock in the music collection has been relabelled to aid users when browsing the stock and all of the catalogue records have been updated with additional detail such as Music Score or Study Score. To aid students browsing our CD collection we have also added labelled section dividers. The Library has access to a comprehensive collection of music databases including new subscriptions to Music Online and the Classical Scores Librarywhich contains 400,000 pages of the most important classical scores and manuscripts, allowing for the study and analysis of more than 15,000 scores.
The ASK, Academic Skills Team, within the Library has increased from 2 to 5 members of staff to increase support available to students for the new academic year 2010-2011.
Drop in to find out more about how to make the most of lectures, how to manage your time, communicate your ideas
Key dates for applying to postgraduate teacher training courses:
Early September: application processing begins – early application is recommended
1 December: initial closing date for primary applications. If GTTR receives your application for primary teaching courses by this date, your first choice training provider guarantees to give you full consideration. 1 December is also a target date for submitting applications for highly competitive middle years and secondary subjects.
Mid-March: unplaced applicants can apply through 'extra' to other providers that still have places, using the track service. Vacancy information is available on GTTR's course search.
1 July: 'clearing' begins – unplaced applicants who are not already using 'extra' can apply directly to training providers that still have places. Late September: last date for 'clearing' applications.
You can register for one-to-one telephone or e-mail guidance, as well as careers advice and support to boost your subject knowledge and personalised information relating to your circumstances and the subject you’d like to teach at:
Course Reps, School Reps, and Disabled & Dyslexic Student Reps are elected by you to represent your views and push for change that will improve your life at Brunel.
They can help with you with academic issues at module, course, and school level, and give you information on how to resolve any other problems you may have. You can find more information on what Reps do and how to become a rep at:
http://www.brunelstudents.com/studentreps
Could you contribute to this newsletter?
If you’d like to contribute to the next issue of Touchpointcontact the editor: [email protected]
