Diaspora Screen Media Network: Charting Glocal Imaginaries

The DSMN will explore how selected diaspora screen media texts including documentaries and short films engage with new media and the digital world of the internet to create new global forms of visual awareness considered as 'glocal imaginaries'. Building on recent work that traces the global mobilization of culture, the project will fill a gap in current research by using British Asian and Black British screen texts as case studies in identifying how 'glocal' formats of the new media align with or juxtapose national, regional or transnational perspectives of today's increasingly fluid visual culture (i.e. here routed through Birmingham and Northampton).
The network events will explore diaspora screen media texts' engagement with contemporary 'media ecologies' (Fuller 2005) in order to shape new understandings of the locatedness and mobility of diasporic audiences. It will provide an arena for dialogue between the educational sector, creative professionals and the general public including student groups and migrant communities with which participants have affiliations.
In defining 'glocal' imaginaries (e.g. in media examples and their distribution), the project will examine how the work of representative filmmakers, cultural practitioners and writers is viewed by the public who use social media, and together create an open reciprocal relationship that redefines and represents diaspora themes (e.g. cultural identity, relocation, cultural translation, home and belonging, religious beliefs and practices). Methodologically the network will articulate new cross-cutting debates on diasporic media cultures, address recent modes of access to diaspora screen media texts, and communication through social media. In identifying the changing landscape of film and online media production, reception, and promotion it asks:

1. How are diasporic screen media changing in terms of social impact through modification of themes and issues via interventions by new media?
2. Does new media's remapping of diasporic screen texts' traditional concerns encourage a more nuanced 'glocal imaginary' and how might this be defined?

The workshops and symposium will address through a specific research question (see CfS) elements of the interrelationship between diaspora cinema and new media ecologies implied by these two key research questions:

1. University of Northampton (UoN): 'Black British and British Asian Cinema and New Media' will focus on the current state of diaspora screen media texts and digital technologies used in production and reception. The changing circulation and consumption patterns of visual culture due to the impact of social media and digital technologies, will feature in discussions involving researchers and industry practitioners, film festival curators at the Errol Flynn Filmhouse (Northampton), FlatPack Film Festival and Midland Arts Centre (Birmingham), university students and the public.
2. Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham: 'Social Networks and New Media' will examine the new media formats of diasporic screen media texts. Their changing role due to new media uses will be addressed by industry practitioners, film festival programmers, university students and early career researchers. Partners, e.g. Threshold Studios (Northampton), HOME (Manchester) and MACE (Lincoln), will be invited.
3. Birmingham City University (BCU): 'Globalising the Local in Diaspora Cinema and Media', a two-day symposium with invited speakers, film-makers, university students, members of public. Drawing on workshop findings, presentations will track new pathways to a glocal imaginary identified in the case studies associated with new media. Keynote speakers will be John Akomfrah, director of Handsworth Songs, and Vijay Mishra, author of Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (2013) and Theorising the Diasporic Imaginary (2007). All network partners and stakeholders will be invited.
4. Events will be accompanied by screenings at venues.

Impact generated by the use of digital technologies in producing and disseminating diasporic media culture will ensure the network's local, transnational and cross-generational reach. The project will collect, curate and publish digital content on case studies of Black British and British Asian film through its public website. This platform will facilitate the network's local and transnational impact by providing visitors with free access to multimedia, digital resources: e.g. podcasts of lectures; discussions and interviews filmed at the workshops; an annotated filmography of Black British and British Asian cinema; screening notes on screen media for undergraduates, researchers and interested members of the public. Building on the concept of 'digital diasporas' (Axel, 2004; Brinkerhoff, 2009; Everett, 2009), the platform will include an exhibition of Black British and British Asian film ephemera contributed by members of the public and local collections. It will combine official and unofficial archiving methods, and formal and informal practices of anthologising, to form an online resource of Black British and British Asian cinema and global media culture.

The project's website will feature an online viewing portal with a link to a YouTube channel, displaying short films on the network's activities. There is a working model of this on UONTV. http://uontv.uk/

The network's outreach and impact on the public, end-users and stakeholders will be generated through film showings and discussions at Birmingham's Midlands Arts Centre, and Northampton's Errol Flynn Filmhouse.

These events will coincide with the project's workshops and symposium consisting of academics, undergraduate and postgraduate student audiences, film practitioners, critics and archivists, organisations like Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council, and Northamptonshire Borough Council's Diverse Communities Forum. They will be accompanied by public lectures aimed at attracting local audiences, delivered by the research team at the screenings.

These groups will be engaged though cultural organisations such as film clubs, theatres, art galleries and exhibition spaces, local libraries, community centres and through online networks. Research findings will be disseminated through liaison with UoN and BCU press offices with press releases for national and international media outlets. Members of local migrant communities will be accessed by relevant staff and international students studying at the universities. Students of different nationalities and ethnicities will be invited via staff teaching on salient modules such as the recently launched Black Studies undergraduate degree programme at BCU, and the universities' international offices and student societies. Debates on the possibilities, benefits and disadvantages of the new media, e.g. the mobile phone and I-Pad tablet, in accessing visual culture will aim to engage the wider public as well as members of the universities.

Film screenings and associated events aims to:

Bring the diaspora screen media texts investigated to the mainstream and the target audiences identified above via our creative partners; e.g. Northampton's Threshold Studios, The Errol Flynn Filmhouse, Media Archive of Central England (MACE), Flatpack Film Festival (Birmingham), local media and film clubs. Some of the screenings will be dedicated to diaspora cinema from new or emerging directors.

Offer public opportunities for film education about new media ecologies and the politics of representation, through pre-screening lectures and talks. These will be filmed and/or audio-recorded and made freely available on the network's website and/or through the project's YouTube channel.

Engage UoN and BCU students and lecturers in TV, film and media to participate in workshops in relation to distribution outlets and channels such as BBC3, Amazon, Zee TV, Netflix and other online distributors of video content.