Digital place-poetry and the literary festival
Lead Research Organisation:
Keele University
Department Name: Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
Abstract
This project - a collaboration between Keele University, Manchester Metropolitan University and Writing West Midlands - will produce a collection of film poems and investigate the potential for film poetry to broaden literary festival audiences. . Writing West Midlands (WWM) is an ideal partner for the project: Keele and Stoke-on-Trent are included in WWM's remit and there is an established relationship between the supervisors and the organisation.
Research questions
(a) How does digital place-poetry (specifically, film poems) differ from place-poetry on the page in terms of writing and reading processes?
(b) How can digital film poetry enhance audience engagement in Writings West Midlands' Birmingham Literature Festival and, by extension, other literary festivals?
(c) What are the potentials for digital film poetry to foster accessibility to Festival content for under-represented audiences, thereby contributing to Writing West Midlands' Creative Case for Diversity?
Context
In Spring 2019, Arts Council England launched a Digital Culture Network to increase digital capacity and 'the digital maturity' of arts and culture organisations.1 This is part of a broader, government-led initiative to improve digital capability in England's arts sector. Whilst there is much debate around the 'emerging field' (Thompson Klein, 2015) of digital humanities, there is little consensus as to what the latter comprise, with Burdick et al. suggesting that 'digital Humanities is less a unified field than an array of convergent practices' (2012: SG2). Whilst digital humanities' capacity to increase accessibility to knowledge is recognised (see, e.g. Terras 2015), much more is required to improve inclusivity in a field which, to date, has been dominated bytext-based scholarship written in English (Mahoney 2018). As Thompson Klein cautions, digital humanities development and investment is uneven across the globe (2015: 3-4), indicating the continued existence of the kinds of 'digital divide[s]' identified by Kleinman in a piece on college students' access to high-speed internet (2001: 51).
This project aims to (i) create new digital film poems featuring text, images and sound by a single author and (ii) investigate the potentials for film poetry to attract new and/or under-represented audiences to literary festivals, focusing on Writing West Midlands's Birmingham Literary Festival.
Research questions
(a) How does digital place-poetry (specifically, film poems) differ from place-poetry on the page in terms of writing and reading processes?
(b) How can digital film poetry enhance audience engagement in Writings West Midlands' Birmingham Literature Festival and, by extension, other literary festivals?
(c) What are the potentials for digital film poetry to foster accessibility to Festival content for under-represented audiences, thereby contributing to Writing West Midlands' Creative Case for Diversity?
Context
In Spring 2019, Arts Council England launched a Digital Culture Network to increase digital capacity and 'the digital maturity' of arts and culture organisations.1 This is part of a broader, government-led initiative to improve digital capability in England's arts sector. Whilst there is much debate around the 'emerging field' (Thompson Klein, 2015) of digital humanities, there is little consensus as to what the latter comprise, with Burdick et al. suggesting that 'digital Humanities is less a unified field than an array of convergent practices' (2012: SG2). Whilst digital humanities' capacity to increase accessibility to knowledge is recognised (see, e.g. Terras 2015), much more is required to improve inclusivity in a field which, to date, has been dominated bytext-based scholarship written in English (Mahoney 2018). As Thompson Klein cautions, digital humanities development and investment is uneven across the globe (2015: 3-4), indicating the continued existence of the kinds of 'digital divide[s]' identified by Kleinman in a piece on college students' access to high-speed internet (2001: 51).
This project aims to (i) create new digital film poems featuring text, images and sound by a single author and (ii) investigate the potentials for film poetry to attract new and/or under-represented audiences to literary festivals, focusing on Writing West Midlands's Birmingham Literary Festival.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Ceri Mair Morgan (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Rebecca Goldsmith (Student) |