MA Creative Media Practice student Julia Tirkkonen will exhibit her photography as part of the wider creative and cultural events being held in Turku, Finland to celebrate the Turku Sea Jazz festival and the wider Archipelago Sea Jazz concept. The first Turku Sea Jazz event will be held at the atmospheric Ruissalo Boatyard during the last weekend of July (30-31st July, 2021).
Exhibiting for the first time, Julia’s 2021 Masters Project work will be shown along with other established artists at the boatyard as part of the wider Turku sea jazz festival. Julia’s creative practice details her exploration of Finnish landscape as sea, islands and coastal fringe developed for her final MA Creative Project. A further solo exhibition in Helsinki is planned for Autumn 2021. Julia’s work on the Baltic Sea, islands and coast is supervised by Dr Kathryn A. Burnett, Division of Arts and Media, UWS.
“Nature is a very important part of my everyday life, and now that I’ve moved to the southern coast of Finland I have become more familiar with the Baltic Sea, its beauty, and the issues it faces. I decided I want to bring more attention to that through my art, and the MA Creative Media Practice course has been a perfect place for me to develop my skills not only as a nature photographer but also in producing art exhibitions and taking my creative practice to a more professional level.”
Kathryn A. Burnett, University of the West of Scotland and Ray Burnett, Scottish Centre for Island Studies
“Whichever way I look I see a clouded horizon” wrote Mackenzie once of his uneasy relationship with the island of Herm, in the English Channel.D.H. Lawrence’s tale (pub.1928) of the “the man who lovedislands” is reputed to be greatly informed by the complex affections and affectations of– amongst many descriptors – writer, broadcaster, activist, and resolute islophile Compton Mackenzie.The “topos of the island explores and creates bridges between the real and the imaginary” state Stephanides and Bassett (2008) but crucially also between “genres and disciplines ”. This paper deploys a retrospective lens through the post-war iconography of Whisky Galore (1949 Dir., Mackendrick), offering a pivoting multi-disciplinary perspective of Mackenzie ’s time in the Hebrides, as well ashis “island time” spent elsewhere. With reference to Mackenzie’s own memoirs – not leastof his time among the “aristocrats of democracy” – and his considerable published works, as well as media accounts and broadcast archive, off-shore socio-political questions will be asked of onshore cultural policy, and of continuingdialogues of ‘remoteness’, ‘islandness’, independence and nationhood today.
MECCSA 2019 (Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association) Annual Conference, University of Stirling
Islandness: Identity and Independence Panel proposer: Dr Kathryn A Burnett, University of the West of Scotland; Contributors Mr Tony Grace, Mr Ray Burnett and Dr Kathryn A. Burnett; Chair: Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling.
This Scottish Centre for Island Studies panel contribution is offered in close reflection of the 40th anniversary of MacDiarmid’s death in 1978, and the 90th anniversary of the formation of the National Party of Scotland, which involved both MacDiarmid and Mackenzie. 2019 itself is the 50th anniversary of the release of the iconic island film ‘Whisky Galore’ based on Compton Mackenzie’s celebrated novel. This film continues to offer a set of island tropes that signify both Scottishness and Britishness as well as the ‘national antisyzgies’ of cultural authenticities, the islandness complicities of place and people and the mediated complexities of remoteness, connectedness and independences. A further thematic of ‘island and national liberty’ draws on archival records and new film practice celebrating the ‘father of biography’ James Boswell, and his celebrated accounts of ‘tours’ including the Hebrides (1773) with Johnson, as well as his earlier account of Corsica and most particularly its independence movement.
We are delighted to be working in partnership with The Boswell Trust and hope to revisit aspects of this themed panel later in the year as part of the Boswell Trust’s event and celebrations diary 2019.
The chapter explores themes of culture, community and communication of island arts and cultural representation enterprise with examples drawn from across Scotland’s islands and highland ‘north’ communities.
“This discussion explores artistic imagining of Scotland’s highlands and islands as a place both ‘north’ and ‘on the margin’. Cultural representation of Scotland’s highlands and islands and processes of communicating these representations are subject to ongoing interrogation and debate. What and how remote communities, cultures and places are represented through art is undoubtedly informed by debates on survival, sustainability and responses to marginal status. The account presented here examines some of these themes from a Scottish perspective, including how art informs cultural production and creative economies in and of Scotland’s remote communities.”
50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Resettlement of Tristan Da Cunha (1963-2013)
Image courtesy of British Pathe
Scottish Centre for Island Studies
Friday 1st November 2013
Wellington Suite, Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow
(Please note: This event is now FULL. No further places are available.)
This day event offers a programme of research talks, archive film screenings and individual commentaries each relating to the island community of Tristan da Cunha.
In 1961 the island’s volcano erupted and the entire community were forced to leave Tristan for safety with no prospect of certain return. The plight of the Tristan islanders was a global media event. Their story is one that intrigued and invited comment in terms of our ideas of island living, remoteness and sustainability in the changing times of the early 1960s. These ideas continue to inform how we think and represent island communities today here in Scotland, and beyond. The Tristanians were offered immediate refuge in Scotland, with Shetland playing a pivotal role, but they were actually ‘settled’ in England where they worked and lived for some two years. In 1963 the islanders eventually returned to Tristan to rebuild their lives on this most remote of islands. Today the community continues to thrive and our day invites comment on future cultural and creative responses to live on Tristan.
This UWS research and knowledge exchange event offers a series of talks and archive film and media screenings which each commemorate this remarkable story from the despair of 1961 evacuation to the elation of 1963 resettlement. It also provides an occasion to focus on the present, the successful rebuilding of a sustainable Tristan da Cunha and to invite reflections on 50 years of change on islands here in Scotland, in Tristan, and elsewhere. Our theme for the day is that of the images, the issues, and the reality of small island community life. Our examples are largely drawn from Tristan da Cunha but also from the island communities of Scotland, including the Hebrides and Shetland. A range of speakers including academics, educationalists, film-makers and island community enthusiasts will share experiences and information together with the audience. See running order and details of talks, and screenings here.
09:30 09:40 Welcome and Introductions Scottish Centre for Island Studies
09:40 10:00 Opening Comments: Mr Chris Bates, Tristan da Cunha Government UK Representative
10:15 11:00 Tristan da Cunha ‘The Volcano Years 1961-63’: Media Archive and Representation in a Scottish Context Dr Kathryn A Burnett, SCIS UWS Chair: Professor Neil Blain, University of Stirling
11:00 11:15 Refreshment Break (15 mins)
11:15 12:00 Tristan da Cunha: Marginalisation, Community and Islandness – the Shetland and Canna dimensions Mr Ray Burnett, SCIS UWS; Chair: Professor Mike Danson, Heriot Watt University
12:00 13:00 Screening: The Forgotten Island (1998) (Dir: Uwe Kersken) 48 mins BBC ”Under the Sun”, followed by a short Q & A
13:00 14:00 Break (60 mins)
14:00 14:30 Illustrated Talk: “Rockhopper Choppers” Mr Bob Carse, Advisor to Tristan da Cunha Heritage Committee Chair: Mr Chris Bates
14:30 15:15 Screening: The 1991 Jim Kerr videos: a Q & A session on Tristan community life
Mr Jim Kerr, Former Education Officer Tristan da Cunha Chair: Mr Ray Burnett
15:15 15:30 Refreshment Break (15 mins)
15:30 16:00 Illustrated Talk: Island Links – A Royal Society Expedition Link with Barra.
Mr Alasdair MacEachen, Islands Book Trust Chair: Dr Kathryn A Burnett
16:00 16:30 Screening: ‘Impressions of Tristan by David Mackenzie’
Mr David Mackenzie (Director), Chair: Mr Tony Grace
17:00 17:30 Final Discussion, Close and Thanks
Please note: This event is now FULL. No further places are available.
If you would like to attend this UWS Scottish Centre for Island Studies event then please contact kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk to reserve your place, or call Dr Kathryn A Burnett on 01292 886482 with your details. There is no charge for this event but please note places are limited. Refreshments and a light lunch will be provided for full day attendees. Alternative lunch for purchase is available on site and nearby. All welcome.
Please note: This event is now FULL. No further places are available.
See information below on the SCIS round table session that was held on island and remote rural enterprise at Rural Enterprise conference at UWS Dumfries in June 2013.
Kirsten MacLeod, Phd student at the University of the West of Scotland presents a paper on her community media work with Govan women and the documenting of their history of struggle and resistance. For further details on her paper entitled ‘You Play Your Part: Women’s History via Participatory Media – A Glasgow Example’ link here to the event website.
Kathryn A. Burnett and Tony Grace (2009) ‘Community, Cultural Resource and Media: Reflecting on Research Practice’ in Gordon, Janey (ed.) (2009) Notions of Community: A Collection of Community Media Debates and Dilemmas; Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2009. 310 pp., 5 ill.
ISBN 978-3-03911-374-3 pb.
This volume gets beyond simple descriptions of the values and processes involved in community media and is deliberately seeking argument and structured debate around the issues of this vibrant sector of the media. The contributors examine the dilemmas that have emerged within this sector and provide an incisive overview. The chapters use case studies and data research to illustrate the major debates facing community media, along with a sideways look at the dilemmas that community media practitioners and their audiences must engage with.
This collection provides an international perspective and covers the traditional formats as well as newer media technologies. It also gives some intriguing examples of community media, which get beyond simple good practices.
Contents: Janey Gordon: Introduction – Saba ElGhul-Bebawi: The Relationship between Mainstream and Alternative Media: A Blurring of the Edges? – Lawrie Hallett: The Space Between: Making Room for Community Radio – Janey Gordon: Community Radio, Funding and Ethics: The UK and Australian Models – Kathryn A. Burnett/Tony Grace: Community, Cultural Resource and Media: Reflecting on Research Practice – Katie Moylan: Towards Transnational Radio: Migrant Produced Programming in Dublin – Gavin Stewart: Selling Community: Corporate Media, Marketing and Blogging – Michael Meadows/Susan Forde/Jacqui Ewart/Kerrie Foxwell: A Catalyst for Change? Australian Community Broadcasting Audiences Fight Back – Kitty van Vuuren: The Value and Purpose of Community Broadcasting: The Australian Experience – Pollyanna Ruiz: Manufacturing Dissent: Visual Metaphors in Community Narratives – Janey Gordon: The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere: Mobile Phone Usage in Three Critical Situations – Jason Wilson/Barry Saunders/Axel Bruns: ‘Preditors’: Making Citizen Journalism Work – Dimitra L. Milioni: Neither ‘Community’ Nor ‘Media’? The Transformation of Community Media on the Internet.
A Conference on the Contemporary Contexts and Possibilities of the Documentary, University of Westminster, January 2011
AVPhd Panel presentation by SCIS PhD student Kirsten MacLeod, “I film therefore I am: Process, Practice and Participation in Community based Filmmaking”.
Kirsten MacLeod (University of the West of Scotland)
This paper will explore examples of community-based media in Scotland, focusing on participation in the production process and the construction of identity and knowledge. Using a visual practice based methodology, the research focuses on fieldwork examples of community based, collaborative video production, in urban and rural areas of Scotland.
The paper is concerned with exploring community media as a transformative social process, a catalyst for new relationships, experience and knowledge about the world. It presents community documentary projects as a lens through which to explore issues of participation, representation, identity and knowledge within communities.
Taking a fluid approach to community as meaningful and symbolically constructed (Cohen), and to community media as covering a spectrum of media which serves, reflects or involves communities, geographically bounded, or of interest (Atton, Jankowski), this paper presents participation as part of an ongoing process of production, which lives on beyond the end product of the actual media itself, in the situated social experiences of its participants.
By examining the process of production, the research deconstructs the filmmaking process, exploring how people engage in filmmaking as participants, but also as members of the audience community. How meaningful is community media to communities who produce it, as a process and in the longer term once the end product is “out there”?
Through examples from Glasgow and islands on the West coast of Scotland, as well as broader trends in Scottish community media, the paper describes how community media channels the situated-ness of knowledge and identity.
The paper advocates a practice led methodology, where the research engages directly with the process of filming and draws reflexively and practically on the researcher and participants’ experiences.
Islandness: Identity and Independence Panel proposer: Dr Kathryn A Burnett, University of the West of Scotland; Contributors Mr Tony Grace, Mr Ray Burnett and Dr Kathryn A. Burnett; Chair: Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling.
Scottish Centre for Island Studies 
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