This two-day sandpit creates a dynamic approach to the development of concepts for innovative projects and funding bids. By the end of both days, the participants will form interdisciplinary project teams and generate proposals (including pinpointing external partners) for funded projects on media and social justice issues. See more details in the programme outline.
The event will involve participants from across BU, who are interested in, or already doing research on, social justice issues. It will establish an interdisciplinary dialogue, enhance the scope for public engagement or knowledge transfer, increase the potential for impact, improve the chances for successful bids, and establish cross-institutional networks as seedbeds for future projects.
The sandpit will culminate in project pitches to a panel of senior staff (see below) for constructive feedback and for allocating a bid-writing mentor. After the event, the teams will be offered mentorship to support writing the full funding application.
Sandpit Programme Outline
Who should participate:
We welcome any BU-based junior to mid-career researcher, artist, practitioner or anyone with a general interest in media and social justice. You should be keen to work in a multidisciplinary team, and willing to commit to attending the full sandpit, on both days. No prior experience of research funding is required.
How to participate:
To secure your spot in the Sandpit, please complete and submit the following application – note that all participants must commit to attending both full days:
The untimely death from cancer of former UK Labour cabinet minister, Dame Tessa Jowell, has triggered a wave of tributes from across the political spectrum. Her vision for securing the 2012 Olympics for London, her formative role in New Labour’s flagship Sure Start scheme, and most recently, her campaign for cancer research, have all been given many column inches.
By contrast, Jowell’s less certain legacy as principal advocate for media literacy is barely given a mention. It seems to have been quietly forgotten that it was Jowell, as secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport, that pushed through parliament the Communications Act 2003 which enshrined media literacy in law, and gave to Ofcom – the (then new) media “super-regulator” – the responsibility to “promote” the idea.
Media literacy existed as a New Labour policy well before Jowell’s turn at the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). Her predecessor, Chris Smith, believed that the concept was a useful one for “arming the citizen-consumer” of media, to make responsible choices in a period of increasing deregulation.
To the dismay of some of her own policy advisors, Jowell seized the concept, made it her own, and became a fervent advocate at every opportunity. In an address given at BAFTA the year following the Communications Act, she referred to media literacy as “a coming subject” and one that “in five years’ time will be just another given”.
Misplaced optimism
With the benefit of hindsight, Jowell’s optimism seems to have been misplaced. Media literacy, arguably, has never been lower on the political agenda. The plethora of initiatives that sprang up in the wake of the Communications Act have largely withered on the vine – and the process of recent reforms to the popular Media Studies A-level have seen the subject savagely “strangled”.
Yet Jowell’s argument for media education has never been more relevant. “It is important,” she insisted, “that we know when we are watching ‘accurate and impartial’ news coverage and when we are not”. These are prescient comments when you consider that they were made more than a decade before “post-truth” became the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year (in 2016) and when terms such as “fake news” or “Leveson Inquiry” had yet to pass anyone’s lips.
Jowell believed that education in media opened opportunities that could enrich the experience of individuals and society – but she was equally exercised about the role that education had to play in protecting against some of the dangers of modern media. She thought that media were dominated by powerful and potentially harmful commercial and political interests. She believed that children, in particular, should be provided with “critical life skills” to guide their media consumption.
“It is transparently important,” she told a media literacy seminar in 2004, “that they should be helped to get the most from all those screen hours, and be protected from what we know are some of the worst excesses”. She went on to ensure that, from 2006, the BBC Charter also contained requirements to promote media literacy.
Where did it go so wrong?
The key to understanding the marginalisation of media literacy as government policy is the role of the Department for Education – once known as the Department for Education and Skills(DfES). Media education was not seen as a serious curriculum priority at the DfES, and – despite New Labour’s early insistence on “joined-up government” – enthusiasm for media literacy never spread beyond the confines of DCMS.
There was widespread ignorance about media education among civil servants within DfES, many of whom had had highly traditional educational experiences themselves. A preoccupation with “driving up” standards, measurability and international comparison provided little incentive for the promotion of a field of study concerned with recognising and understanding forms of popular (or “low”) culture. This was despite the apparent economic value being attributed to the “creative industries” at the same time.
The byzantine operation of the DfES also made change of any kind difficult – particularly where it touched on what was actually taught in schools. In this case, there was the added disincentive of a policy being driven by a separate –and junior – department. Ultimately, media literacy was never to be widely embraced as an educational project in the way that Jowell had hoped.
Media literacy remains on the statute book and Ofcom continues to have a responsibility to promote it. But the way it is defined – and the level of resources provided to support it – ensure that it has largely been reduced to a form of market research, an undead policy. Jowell once proclaimed:
I believe that in the modern world, media literacy will become as important a skill as maths or science. Decoding our media will become as important to our lives as citizens as understanding literature is to our cultural lives.
It may be too much to hope that media literacy could yet be reclaimed as one of Tessa Jowell’s essential legacies.
Our BU briefing papers are designed to make our research outputs accessible and easily digestible so that our research findings can quickly be applied – whether to society, culture, public policy, services, the environment or to improve quality of life. They have been created to highlight research findings and their potential impact within their field.
This research reflects on practice-led research involving a community video project in southern India – Andhra Pradesh. Four of the women involved in this project were asked if they would use their cameras to film their everyday lives.
The aim of this paper was to build on current practice by combining participatory filmmaking with traditional observational documentary techniques and video diary interviews to locate a ‘third voice’ in order to create an engaging narrative and new perspectives on life in rural India.
Our 
Conversation article: London Marathon – how visually impaired people run
Horizon Europe News – December 2023