Scottish Centre for Island Studies
Scottish Island Studies@ University of the West of Scotland
SCIS @UWS PhD student Rachael Flynn is currently developing her doctoral arts practice research around themes of migration and Irish women diasporic narratives. To explore Rachael’s work further visit her website detailing workshops and activity relating to this research. http://womenslibrary.org.uk/event/my-glasgow-granny-from-donegal/ Rachael has worked closely with Glasgow’s women’s library on this project and is grateful to them for their support.
On June 16th the Scottish Centre for Island Studies, University of the West of Scotland and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the National Centre for Gaelic Language and Culture, will host a three day event, Ainmeil Thar Cheudan – Renowned over Hundreds, honouring MacLean’s legacy. As part of this celebration the event offers a screening of Somhairle MacGill-Eain: A Bhàrdachd agus A Shealladh, the 1986 BBC Alba Gaelic version (sub-titled) of Hallaig: the poetry and landscape of Sorley MacLean directed by Timothy Neat. The screening will feature a short talk by the director Timothy Neat, introduced by Ray Burnett, Honorary Research Fellow, Scottish Centre for Island Studies, University of the West of Scotland.
The event is sponsored by Morrison Construction, Scottish Islands Writers Network, Creative Scotland and Scotland’s Islands.
Anyone interested in attending the event should visit the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig website www.smo.uhi.ac.uk or telephone 01471 888000.
|
Ainmeal Thar Cheudan
|
|
A Centenary Celebration of Sorley MacLean (1911-2011)Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 June 2011 In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Sorley MacLean (1911 – 1996) Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and the Scottish Centre for Island Studies, Faculty of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland invite you to join in a celebration of his life, work and legacy. It is anticipated that this event will offer a range of academic and creative responses to Sorley’s cultural and political legacy with particular attention to his deep roots and referencing of island culture, history and experience. Furthermore, this proposed event will explore, with both established and more recently introduced scholars and artists, the significance and importance of Sorley MacLean within the wider context of the national culture of Scotland, the cultural terrain of the Highlands and Islands, and the cultural engagement of the 20th century Scottish left. The academic focus will be a two day event structured around a selection of papers and discussion panels, as well as performance and creative practice activity detailing both Sorley’s own work and his inspiration to others. In keeping with the internationalist perspectives that permeate Sorley’s own work, the event will be framed as an opportunity to offer an appreciation of what experiences and understanding of island life and culture, and of an island sense of place and dwelling, specifically but not exclusively in reference to Scotland, informed Sorley in his creative work and commentary. Online Booking: Access event website at http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/A-Cholaiste/Naidheachdan/somhairle/index_en.html |
Ethnographic Approaches to Creative Media Practice Research
As part of the MA Creative Media Practice core module Research: Critical Development ( Module Co-ordinator Dr Kathryn A Burnett) both Kathryn Burnett and Kirsten MacLeod delivered to the year 2 students on this postgraduate course as part of a thematic week exploring ethnographic approaches to community media research and practice. Kathryn presented some examples from SCIS historical and archive projects informed by an ethnographic approach in the island communities of both the Outer Hebrides and Tristan da Cunha .
Kirsten’s presentation featuring her work on community media with particular reference to the Govan Banner’s film. Kirsten spoke to the students about her background in Visual Anthropology and offered some insights on taking an ‘ethnographic’ position in relation to community media practice in both urban and rural/island settings.
Research Seminar on Creative Media Practice
Friday 11th March 2011
CCA, UWS Space, Sauchiehall Street Glasgow
14:30 – 16:00.
SCIS doctoral research student Rachael Flynn will present her paper “Using the written letter as a fine-art source to inform and stimulate a creative practice-led enquiry.”
All welcome.
Narrative Approaches to Creative Media Practice Research
As part of the MA Creative Media Practice core module Research: Critical Development ( Module Co-ordinator Dr Kathryn A Burnett) both film lecturer Tony Grace and SCIS doctoral student Rachael Flynn delivered to the year 2 students on this postgraduate course as part of a thematic week exploring narrative approaches to community media research and practice.
The Scottish Centre for Island Studies, at University of the West of Scotland will hold a centenary celebration research event in partnership with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig UHI and the Sorley MacLean Trust. http://www.uws.ac.uk/schoolsdepts/mlm/sorley-maclean/index.asp
|
Ainmeal Thar Cheudan
|
A Centenary Celebration of Sorley MacLean (1911-2011)Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 June 2011 In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Sorley MacLean (1911 – 1996) Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and the Scottish Centre for Island Studies, Faculty of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland invite you to join in a celebration of his life, work and legacy. It is anticipated that this event will offer a range of academic and creative responses to Sorley’s cultural and political legacy with particular attention to his deep roots and referencing of island culture, history and experience. Furthermore, this proposed event will explore, with both established and more recently introduced scholars and artists, the significance and importance of Sorley MacLean within the wider context of the national culture of Scotland, the cultural terrain of the Highlands and Islands, and the cultural engagement of the 20th century Scottish left. The academic focus will be a two day event structured around a selection of papers and discussion panels, as well as performance and creative practice activity detailing both Sorley’s own work and his inspiration to others. In keeping with the internationalist perspectives that permeate Sorley’s own work, the event will be framed as an opportunity to offer an appreciation of what experiences and understanding of island life and culture, and of an island sense of place and dwelling, specifically but not exclusively in reference to Scotland, informed Sorley in his creative work and commentary. |
Please contact either Kathryn A. Burnett ( kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk) or Ray Burnett (ray.burnett@uws.ac.uk) for information on SCIS’s partnership in this key event. For link to download call for papers, event details and further booking information connect to: http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/A-Cholaiste/Naidheachdan/somhairle/index_en.html
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.
Finding Their Place: Islands in Social Theory
The Island of Ven, Sweden, 27–30 August, 2010
ABSTRACTS PARALLEL PAPER SESSION B1: Identity, culture, tradition and knowledge
‘The Furthest Hebrides’ : Critical reach from contested shores
Kathryn A Burnett & Ray Burnett
University of the West of Scotland, UK
Scotland’s islands are paradoxically peripheral yet conceptually central to an
understanding of the layered complexity of issues relating to land and identity in
contemporary 21 st century Scotland. Through a specific focus on Scotland’s
western isles, this paper traces the authoring of the layered constructions and
reconstructions of space and place that has produced a dense and variegated
palimpsest; the process of the ‘making’ of the Hebrides. It examines visual and
documentary representations to draw out some of the issues of ‘belonging’ and
ownership, appropriation and dissemination, in the context of the nationalidentitarian
functions of culture, that are embedded in the complimentary and
contradictory ‘ways of seeing’ the contested terrain of island cultural landscape(s).
Through a grounded multi-disciplinary approach to the issues raised and the
exemplars elaborated on, the paper opens up several overlapping and inter-related
issues of concentric and conflicting identities, delineation of the field of cultural
discourse, the inscription of meaning and value and the production of cultural
landscapes, and the deeper processes of complicity, self colonialism and
subalternity.
The paper concludes by advocating that a detailed study of how these processes
of ‘making’ are mediated at local (island), national (Scottish) and supra-national
(UK) level opens up new channels for further research in the intricate waters of
the cultural dynamics of authorship, ownership, ‘belonging’ and power in the
politics of land and identity.
Scottish Centre for Island Studies
Screening and Research Event
Venue: CCA, Sauchiehall Street Glasgow
Thursday 9th September 2010
The Scottish Centre for Island Studies in association with the Small Islands Film Trust is hosting a small research focussed event of film screenings and related discussions on the 9th September 2010 in the UWS space at the CCA, Glasgow. For full programme see details under ‘Our Events’.
Geopolitics: Political Spaces – Cultural Spaces
Screening(s): Trusadh Series Deserting Uist (2010) MacTV and Na Rocaidean (2008) MNE TV
Two different documentaries providing accounts of the history and communities affected by the establishment of the ‘Rocket range’ – RA Hebrides on ‘Uist’ in 1957. Extracts will be shown from both.
Iconography and Identity: Place and Non-place
Screening: Rockets Galore! (1957) Dir: Michael Relph
For information contact Kathryn A Burnett (kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk) or Ray Burnett (ray.burnett@uws.ac.uk).
Scottish Centre for Island Studies
Screening and Research Event
Venue: CCA, Sauchiehall Street Glasgow
Thursday 9th September 2010
The Scottish Centre for Island Studies in association with the Small Islands Film Trust is hosting a small research focussed event of film screenings and related discussions on the 9th September 2010 in the UWS space at the CCA, Glasgow. For full programme see details under ‘Our Events’.
Creative and Critical Practice: History, Media and Representation
Screening: Am Politician (1991) – 2 parts MNE TV
This two part documentary chronicles the real story behind the mystical romance surrounding the sinking of the SS Politician on February the 5th 1941 off the island of Eriskay in the Western Isles of Scotland. Part 1 tells the story of the sinking and salvage of the ship and part 2 focuses on the Jamaican currency on board.
Ray Burnett, SCIS Hon. Research Fellow, will deliver a plenary session paper at the ISISA 2010 conference at the Bornholm Art Museum. The paper entitled “Commemorating Pelle the Conqueror: Reflections on History, the Arts and Small Islands” is part of the wider programme of delivery of this years conference. For details of all papers and sessions click here: http://www.conferencemanager.dk/ISISA/program.html
The abstract for Ray’s paper can be read here:
Commemorating Pelle the Conqueror: Reflections on History, the Arts and Small Islands
Ray Burnett
Isle of Benbecula, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
Scottish Centre for Island Studies, University of the West of Scotland
ray@diis.ac.uk
The life and times of the writer Martin Andersen Nexø is most often presented and discussed either in the context of his literary career as a major Scandinavian novelist of the twentieth century or his political career as a prominent cultural figure in Europe’s anti-fascist struggles, a committed member of the Danish Communist Party and a resolute defender of the Soviet Union. In each of these overlapping contexts his significance for Danish, Scandinavian and European literature, culture and politics is enduringly associated with his classic novel, Pelle the Conqueror. Published over 1906-1910, it vividly drew on Martin Andersen Nexø’s deep memories of his childhood and formative years on Bornholm and the island town of Nexø which he later took as his adopted name. This paper commemorates the centenary of the publication of the final volume of Pelle the Conqueror by approaching Martin Andersen Nexø from a specifically island studies perspective to raise the question: in what way might his portrayal of island life be of relevance to issues of culture, history and the arts in small islands beyond Bornholm, the Baltic and Scandinavia?
It offers some tentative reflections on this question by identifying some of the themes in Nexo’s portrayal of Baltic island life and tracing their applicability to comparable themes and issues in the small island communities of Scotland through a specific focus on history and the arts, reality and representations, in the Hebrides. The paper seeks to confirm the importance of Martin Andersen Nexø as a writer and observer of small island life and to raise awareness of the wider comparative significance of other writers and artists from within Scotland’s small island communities. It concludes with the reflection that there are several aspects of comparative small island research in relation to history and the arts, both within a specific Scottish-Nordic-Baltic arc and beyond, that would benefit from further collaborative engagement.
Scottish Centre for Island Studies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.