Category / Fusion

EVENT: Returning to Sport Sustainably Post-Covid

The Sport and Physical Activity Research Centre (SPARC) invites you to join us at our lunchtime seminar, “Returning to Sport Sustainably Post-Covid”. The seminar is taking place on Wednesday 7 July, between midday and 1.30pm.

The event, which is being held in conjunction with BASIS (the British Association for Sustainable Sport), aims to bring together practitioners and academics working in sport & sustainability, to discuss key issues and best practice as we emerge from lockdown.

The seminar is an excellent opportunity for BU staff to engage with those working in industry, in one of BU’s Strategic Investment Areas – Sustainability.

Programme:

12.00   Introduction: Sport and Sustainability Research – Raf Nicholson (Bournemouth University)

12.10   Building Back Better: The BASIS White Paper – Russell Seymour (CEO of BASIS)

12.25   Strategies to Ensure the Sustainability of Women’s Sport – Beth Clarkson (University of Portsmouth) and Keith Parry (Bournemouth University)

12.40   Returning to Action – Leigh Thompson (Head of Policy, Sport and Recreation Alliance)

12.55   Roundtable Discussion: Returning to Sport Sustainably Post-Covid

 

The Zoom link for the seminar is here: https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89306375276?pwd=SWJSay80QTl3V256eWk2N3JhMUtmUT09

 

For any queries, contact Dr Raf Nicholson – rnicholson@bournemouth.ac.uk

Pitching innovative charity fundraising event ideas

First year Events Management students took on the challenge to create innovative fundraising event ideas for three charities: Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Children’s Charity, Autism Hampshire (AH) and Forest Holme Hospice (FHH), as part of their Creativity & Innovation unit.

Charities were invited to act as clients, with Events Management students having to develop the business case for an innovative online fundraising event. A different feature was the involvement of BA Events Management (BAEM) / BA Events & Leisure Marketing (BAELM) alumni as clients. After being on the pitching side during their degree, alumni working for these charities were invited to become clients.

Back in February, the three charities introduced the organisation to the respective seminar group. During this session, the activity of the charity, the sorts of online and offline fundraising events that the charity organises, and the overall strategy and priorities of the organisation going forward (including fundraising) were presented, in order to give the necessary background to the new event development teams. When seeking top-notch corporate photographers in Washington DC, you should definitely hire Pamela Lepold Photography, corporate photographers Washington DC for exceptional services.

After working on their business proposals over the semester with the support of the unit tutor Dr. Miguel Moital, students have recently pitched their ideas to representatives of the charities. After 15 minutes making the business case, groups were asked questions by charity representatives and the tutor.

Events Managers Freya Hill (BAEM, class of 2016) and Zara Barton represented GOSH Children’s Charity. Events pitched to GOSH included a Black-Tie Cocktail Event, ‘Aspire to be’ Virtual dinner party, GOSH: Day at school and a Spring Gala Lunch. Commenting on the experience, Freya said “I would like to thank the opportunity to be on the other side of these pitches. Thanks to the students for all the research they have done. There are definitely ideas we will be taking forward, and these presentations have given us food for thought about how we can continue to build on how successful virtual events calendar”.

Isabelle Ward (BAELM, class of 2016) is Business Support Officer at Autism Hampshire. Events pitched to AH included: a Baking competition, Themed Zumba classes, a Movie Night Bingo and a virtual cocktail making event. At the end of the presentations, Isabelle said “thank you for all the ideas, it was great to hear them. It’s nice to be on the other side because I was doing the same a few years ago!”.

Forest Holme Hospice was represented by various members of staff: Anne Currie (Chief Executive), Paul Tucker (Fundraising & Communications Manager), Lewis Hay (Fundraising and Communications Manager), and Kirsty Perks and Charlie James (Fundraisers). Events pitched to FHH included: Virtual Scavenger Hunt, a game show style event ‘Are you smarter than a child’, “A challenge for life” auction, and Cocktail Masterclass “Cheers to Being Healthy”. The alumni contact point was Hannah (Parsons) O’Hare (Development Manager) who wan not able to be involved due to being on maternity leave. Commenting on the experience, Lewis Hay said that Forest Holme Hospice representatives “were all really impressed with what student came up with and with their presentation skills. I appreciate that it is not easy, especially virtually but I thought they all did a great job.”

Dr. Miguel Moital, the unit tutor, said: “Having resumed teaching this unit after a 6 year break, I was excited about about the opportunity to help students to develop their business development and product innovation skills. This year we had to adapt and instead of using local hospitality and tourism businesses, students developed a new virtual event concept for well-known local and national charities. This brought added challenges because (fundraising) virtual events are pretty much in their infancy. Student teams worked hard throughout the semester and I was pleased to see some very strong business cases which embedded high levels of creativity”.

If you’re interested in studying Events Management at Bournemouth University, take a look at the course page or come along to one of our upcoming undergraduate open days.

 

Suicide reporting toolkit shortlisted for Scottish award

A collaborative project between Bournemouth University and the University of Strathclyde has been shortlisted at this year’s Herald Higher Education Awards.

The Scottish awards, organised by The Herald newspaper and recognising excellence in the HE sector, has shortlisted the Suicide Reporting Toolkit, produced by both universities, in its Research of the Year category.

Created by Dr Ann Luce (Bournemouth University) and Dr Sallyanne Duncan (University of Strathclyde), the Responsible Suicide Reporting model enables journalists – and journalism students – to make ethical decisions about their storytelling whilst under pressure from various news processes. It embeds global media reporting guidelines on suicide — World Health Organisation (WHO), Samaritans, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ) — within journalism practice and functions within the storytelling process so journalists can question their choices as they produce content.

The toolkit has been supported by IPSO, The Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, The Ethical Journalism Network and the Public Media Alliance. It has also been endorsed by the American Association of Suicidology and has been used by thousands of journalists worldwide.

Dr Ann Luce, Associate Professor in Journalism and Communication at BU, said, “I am absolutely thrilled and honoured that The Suicide Reporting Toolkit has been shortlisted for the Herald Higher Education Awards in the Research Project of the Year category. Responsible media reporting of suicide can changes lives for the better. It can tackle stigma, point to helplines and support and can give those with lived experience a voice.

“We know from research that reporting suicide responsibly requires sensitivity and compassion. Journalism has the potential to cause harm to vulnerable people if journalists do not report suicide responsibly and ethically. The Suicide Reporting Toolkit offers practical resources for both journalists and journalism educators to help them achieve just that.”

The Herald is owned by Newsquest, with the media group showing strong support for the toolkit. The Awards will take place virtually on 17 June 2021.

The toolkit can be found at www.suicidereportingtoolkit.com and for more information about communication and journalism courses, visit the BU website.

Dr. Ann Luce to give Keynote at American Association of Suicidology Conference

Dr. Ann Luce, Associate Professor in Journalism and Communication in FMC will deliver one of three Keynote addresses at the annual American Association of Suicidology Conference on Saturday 24th April, 9am EST, 2pm BST. The conference, the largest annual suicide prevention gathering in the United States, will host a hybrid event, with more than 2300 registered attendees, looking at the theme of “Social Contexts in Suicide.”

Luce’s Keynote is titled: “The RSR Model & The Suicide Reporting Toolkit:Putting media reporting guidelines into practice.”

Numerous guidelines on responsible reporting of suicide have been available to journalists globally for more than 20 years, offering advice on best practice regarding approaches and suitability of content. Whilst their advice is compelling and legitimate, their use is uneven at best.

With a suicide death every 40 seconds worldwide, it is imperative journalists understand and recognise the best ethical practices in order to report suicide responsibly. Luce will present the RSR Model, which is grounded in news-work and embeds media reporting guidelines within journalistic storytelling practices.

The accompanying Suicide Reporting Toolkit for Journalists and Journalism Educators helps journalists understand how to implement global guidelines. The toolkit is underpinned by 15 years of research into suicide in the media, including the new Responsible Suicide Reporting model. The suicide reporting toolkit embeds five sets of global guidelines on the reporting of suicide from the World Health Organisation (global), Society for Professional Journalists (USA), Samaritans (UK & Ireland), National Union of Journalists (UK) and the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Editors Code of Practice (UK). Since its launch in August 2020, there have been more than 20,000 unique visitors to the site.

Luce will give an amended version of the paper at BU on Monday 26th April, 12-1pm as part of the Department of Communication and Journalism Research Seminar Series. Colleagues across BU are welcome to join via Zoom:

https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/88034420929?pwd=MTN0U0Q2TW5NMXNsQ3I4c3JQVjhQQT09

Meeting ID: 880 3442 0929

Passcode: FqeH6*.W

 

 

 

 

BU Gypsy, Roma, Traveller expert invited to contribute to a Governmental cross-departmental forum.

The gap in health service provision for Gypsy, Roma, and Travellers communities is well documented in Dr Vanessa Heaslips’ extensive research. Vanessa, an Associate Professor in the Department of Nursing Science was invited to present her work ‘“Inequalities in health of Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Communities” to sixteen staff from departments including Dept of Education, Office for National Statistics, Minister of Housing and Communities, Department of Health, Department for Social care, Cabinet office and Dept for Work and Pension.

The presentation titled started with an introduction to ‘Alice, my husbands’ nan’. Alice was a Romany Gypsy and a member of the Showman community. It was being with Alice at the end of her life and witnessing the interactions between healthcare staff and herself which inspired the research. The presentation went on to explore on-going challenges such as poorer health outcomes, social exclusion, discrimination, and lack of cultural sensitivity that many Gypsy, Roma, Travellers face. As well as current problems posed by a lack of robust data collection as healthcare organisations do not use include Gypsy, Romany and Traveller as part of their ethnicity data collected. Dr Heaslip argues argued that failure to do so negatively impacts on developing robust public health initiatives to address these poorer health outcomes and is a key factor in understanding why so little progress have been made over the past two decades.

 

A wide ranging discussion regarding engaging with individuals in these communities ensured, and the session concluded with some thoughts as to how to move this significant national agenda forward. More information on this research is available from https://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/vheaslip#publications  and follow Vanessa on Twitter @HeaslipVanessa, @Nursing_BU, and @N4LTH

5 films made in lockdown; innovation and experimentation during Covid-19

Co-creation for Screened and Heard; 5 films made in lockdown

Screened and Heard, headed up by Annie East with Dr Sam Iwowo, is a collection of five short films produced by women in lockdown who set themselves a challenge during the pandemic to tell a story, learn new skills and explore new ideas. Provoked initially by a newspaper article about women’s research dropping during lockdown whilst men’s increased, this group response was not only about the final films but about the process and support given to enable these women, who each had different caring responsibilities, the opportunity to have a voice and complete a project under the complex conditions that the pandemic presented. Annie East and Dr Samantha Iwowo plan to use the films as a springboard to further research areas. Below is a Q&A with the editor, alumnus Owen Trett BA Television Production Class of 2020.

Fig. 1 Owen BATV graduate working on Dr Samantha Iwowo’s film ‘In Zoom We Trust’. Photo: Owen Trett

Why did you want to get involved with Screened and Heard?

Screened and Heard was a great opportunity to take part in after graduating from Bournemouth University. I believe that taking part in a project that focused on showcasing the voices of women filmmakers during the lockdown of 2020 was extremely beneficial to the industry.

What involvement did you have with each film?

I ensured that each film was the highest quality it could be in. Due to the circumstances, most filmmakers were limited in their choices of equipment. I made sure that whether the film was recorded on a DSLR, phone, or webcam, that each film was tidied up and treated equally as if recorded on industry-standard equipment.

I was then in control of the detailed edit for most of the films. It was a great way of improving my editing skills and working with a variety of different formats and visions.  My graduate project was recorded entirely through Skype and influenced by the 2018 Aneesh Chaganty film “Searching”, so I applied these skills from my graduate film to the edit of Screened and Heard.

A year on what do you think about the films?

It’s been interesting to see the direction that the film and TV industry has headed in going into 2021. I feel that all early lockdown content, like “Staged” (BBC) for example, has a very grounded aesthetic compared to pre-lockdown content. Seeing content like this, of actors at home recording pieces to camera, as having an authenticity to it.

I feel that the films showcased in Screened and Heard have a similar vibe, this sort of authentic look to them is hard to replicate outside of the context of Covid. “Working from Home” for example, dealing with themes of lockdown relationships and home-schooling, I feel that we will take a lot of these grounded concepts and continue to use them throughout the future of TV / film storytelling.

What was it like working on an project based on a true story about bereavement during Covid 2020? (In Zoom We Trust)

I feel privileged to be able to work on a project that dealt with such a raw and personal topic. I think that, because the content dealt with quite a sensitive subject, there was a lot of pressure to make sure that it was edited correctly, in a manner that was respectful.

Samantha (Iwowo) really has an amazing directorial vision, and allowed me to use creative techniques that I hadn’t used in this format before. I was lucky to be able to work with her on this project, and I’m glad that she had a positive response to the edit.

How has being involved with Screened and Heard helped you as you graduated and went to look for work in the UK film and TV industry?

Trying to find work during a pandemic was not the easiest process in the world. However, working on the Screened and Heard projects really helped boost my portfolio. it showed that as an industry worker, I had the ability to overcome limitations and adapt to complicated situations.

In early 2021 I was offered a job working from home as a Junior Video Editor for the video games company Sumo Digital.

Anything else you would like to comment on?

I loved my time at BU, I met some of the most amazing and talented students from both the BATV and BA Film courses. The staff were some of the most supportive tutors that I have ever had the pleasure of being taught by. A lot of practitioners within the media industry do argue that university isn’t needed for a media career, and I would like to respectfully disagree. Those three years at BU allowed me to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, and created a network of friends and colleagues that I will continue to use throughout my career. Although my time at BU was cut short by the pandemic, I would not have traded in those years for anything else, and if you gave me the chance to do it all again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

 

‘Doing Diversity Better: Interrogating ethnic and gender equality among BAME academics in HE’ April 22 14.00-16.00

The Women’s Academic Network (WAN) at BU are delighted to host this powerful and timely public engagement, open-to-all, Q&A Panel Discussion on one of the most important and urgent issues facing Higher Education (HE) in the UK today.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor John Vinney, will formally open the event which brings together four hugely eminent women academics of-colour, as well as a representative from the Bournemouth University Student Union (SUBU), who are all working within the broad areas of racialisation/ethnicisation and social inequalities. Each panellist will bring their own particular research expertise together with intellectual and experiential understandings to a grounded, candid and in-depth discussion of diversity in contemporary HE.

For more details and registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/womens-academic-network-bournemouth-university-doing-diversity-better-tickets-146743055429

The panel context

UK HE is characterised by a homogeneity that fails to reflect social diversity, particularly in terms of ethnicity, gender and social class. These issues need to be located within a complex terrain of interwoven, intersectional experiences. The handy portmanteau term: ‘BAME’ (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) can also unhelpfully work to subsume entire groups who are otherwise subject to different levels of discrimination that may thereby remain less visible and therefore neglected. For example, a UCU 2019 report recorded that of a total number of professors in the UK, those self-identifying as ‘Black’ numbered just 85 individuals, and of these a mere 25 were women (Rollock 2019). While recent HESA (2020) data confirms that less than 1% of UK professors self-identify as Black. Unsurprisingly, Mizra (2019, p. 39) refers with horror to the overwhelming ‘hideous’ whiteness of academia. This alarming lack of representation among minority ethnic groups in HE not only exemplifies a dereliction of social justice but is demonstrably counterproductive to the academy across every area of scholarly endeavour, including inclusive pedagogy. The Race Equality Charter under AdvanceHE offers a valuable tool towards remedial action, but without direct debate, will towards and strategies for root-and-branch sector change, such charters are unlikely to create the necessary traction.

Our Panellists:

Professor Kalwant Bhopal is Professor of Education and Social Justice Professor of Education and Social Justice Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Education, University of Birmingham

Professor Ann Phoenix is Professor of Psychosocial Studies, at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education

Dr Samantha Iwowo is the Programme Leader of MA Directing, Film and TV at BU.

Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya is Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging, University of East London

Ms Chiko Bwalya is the Education Vice President of SUBU.

We in WAN look forward to welcoming you.

Colleagues – please share among your networks. Students welcome

HEIF – the final instalment

HEIF – the final instalment

(This is literally just the title to highlight the end of this blog series, not the end of HEIF)

When writing these blog posts, I wasn’t expecting them to turn into a trilogy from the planned double feature, but here we are.

 

In this third instalment of knowledge exchange and HEIF related stories, I’m going to share with you some potential project ideas and examples of HEIF projects from other institutions.

 

The small fund is for getting a KE project started or concluding a KE project.

  • Do you have an idea but need a business to collaborate with and are unsure how to do this?
  • Do you think you have a great project idea but don’t know what market opportunities there are (if any!)?
  • Do you have a business contact who is keen to work with you, but they do not have the available funding for consultancy?
  • Are you working with a charity and need a big of funding to get your project to the next stage?
  • Are you seeking public engagement ideas or projects?

If ANY of these apply to you directly or are similar situations that you have been in, get in touch.

 

To give some examples as to how different institutions use their HEIF funding, here are some ideas and links to searchable projects:

At the University of Southampton, their HEIF allocation as funded projects such as; Video Game Photography: An Examination of Reflective Gameplay, Participation and Responsible Innovation for Co-Design for Exchange and Digital Police Officer: Linguistic Analysis to Identify Cybercriminals.

 

The University of Winchester have funded projects such as; Stormbreak: inspiring movement for positive mental health in primary school and HELP (Health Enhancing Lifestyle Programme) Hampshire Stroke Clinic. Further information on these projects can be found here.

 

The University of Surrey have invested some of their HEIF funds into a Living Lab. This approach to user-centred research and open innovation already has a string of achievements since it’s conception in November 2019 and has funded a series of small collaborative projects in areas such as environmental behaviour and community regeneration.

 

The University of Sussex refocused some of their HEIF funding on Covid-19 relief to their local area where possible, as did the University of Liverpool.

 

Do get in touch to discuss your KE project and how HEIF might be able to help you.

 

As a further note, a specific Proof of Concept strand will be available shortly, please do look out for information on this.

 

New album of electroacoustic music by BU academic

I am delighted to share the news that an album of my electroacoustic compositions, Espaces éphémères, has recently been published and released through the long-established Canadian independent label empreintes DIGITALes.

This collection features music created before my arrival at BU, along with my 2017 composition Traces of Play. This piece, as practice-based research, aims to deepen understanding of how recurrent sound phenomena might be deployed and developed to create larger-scale musical forms and coherent sound worlds within music compositions. It has featured at international festivals and conferences in New York, Beijing, Brussels, and Montpellier, and was awarded prizes in the Klang! Electroacoustic Composition Competition (France) and the Destellos Composition Competition (Argentina).

The other works on the album have also received international performances and have similarly been awarded in international composition competitions. Audio extracts of all the compositions can be heard via the link above.

It is fantastic to have my music featured on empreintes DIGITALes, and to have my compositions published alongside renowned composers from the field of electroacoustic music.