The initial process for clearing rights is relatively straight forward. You register on the MGM website and put in a request for content. Getting them to respond is the difficulty. Tony Roe of Inside Out has been helping to chase this and if he has had difficulties as a documentary maker with the BBC, it makes you wonder what chance anyone without an established media institution behind them has. As a back-up, we’re crediting the stills as the property of BFI/Woodfall films and through more email notifications will either take the images down if MGM are unhappy or pay them what they want once they sort out an invoice. I had anticipated this kind of problem which is why I brought in New College Nottingham as a partner to illustrate various scenes – but even here you have to be careful. If they were to create an illustration that looked like Albert Finney then we would be in breach of copyright due to the ‘likeness.’

Despite all of these difficulties, I had the pleasure of going down to the BFI last week and working my way through the archives. I even had to put on a pair of those funny white gloves. It was a real privilege to be able to do this, particularly seeing shots of the cast taken off camera. I never realised how many freckles Albert Finney had on his nose and cheeks and Shirley Anne Field is absolutely gorgeous. We were after images for the five key locations on our App trail (Old Market Square, White Horse, Raleigh, Trent Embankment and Goose Fair) and found some real beauties. There was a great one of Norman Rossington riding the Market Square lion but unfortunately they didn’t have the one of Albert Finney and Shirley Anne Field in the same place. I love this image and have it stuck on my office wall at work.

The BFI content can be accessed online and I’d strongly recommend anyone doing a similar project to check out their website. Thanks to a collaboration between regional film archives and the British Film Institute, film archive collections from across the UK can now be searched online which saves a lot of time. By combining archives, it’s pretty easy to search out content based around particular themes. This means if we have a problem getting the rights to show a clip of Arthur Seaton working in the factory we can always use a documentary about Raleigh from some other footage. The BFI have the rights to a lot of documentaries and so this is also easier to clear. So if you see a ‘for sale’ sign up at my house over the next six months it means I’ve got it all horribly wrong and a lawsuit for my troubles.

Going to Derrick’s home was a little bit like stepping into one of his short stories in that I knew everything about his relationship with his wife Joan though a couple of comments. Joan was in the front room watching Casablanca, ‘for the seventeenth time’ Derrick informed me. I wasn’t sure if he meant that day, week or the duration of his sixty years of marriage. Later on Joan pulled me to one side and said, ‘you know he spends all of his time up there tapping away on that computer’ and shook her head, like I must be in agreement with her that this was ridiculous behaviour and I’d be better suited sitting down with her watching Casablanca.

As part of our public engagement for the Space project, Derrick kindly allowed me to piggy back on to his book launch Sing to Me and we chatted about his market square memories. The event was held at Lee Rosy’s on 11 April which is a lovely little venue – although if you’re planning a similar event there, make sure you keep the door shut upstairs as the noise quickly filters downwards. It was a lovely event with a highly respected audience including John Lucas, Ross Bradshaw, Wayne Burrows, Nicola Monaghan, Michael Eaton, David Belbin, Tony Roe, Al Atkinson, Cathy Grindrod and Aly Stoneman. Derrick then went on to share a story about working as a teenager in a factory full of women where a big breasted bully would deliberately pen him in to a corner and make him blush, much to the amusement of her cackling comrades.

After explaining the Space project to Derrick he said he wished he’d known me when he was younger. I can’t wait for new audiences to experience his writing and I hope that at eighty, he gets the wider recognition that he deserves. I can think of no better validation for the arts council than offering this writer a platform into the digital age.

Preview of Derrick Buttress’ book launch

Twitter: Arthur Seaton for more info on events

And of course The Space…coming 1 May.

The BBC are supporting the Space project by offering up lots of training sessions and workshops in things such as using a self-op camera, general desktop editing skills, rights and intellectual property. I was here for a session on archiving. I was late as someone threw themselves in front of a train at White City, and so missed the opening talk by Tony Ageh, Controller in Archive Development. But I was in time to discover that it is an incredibly complex process. The how-to-find-it demo seemed simple enough, requiring a keyword search which then lists relevant clips, meaning you don’t have to watch a whole programme to find what you’re looking for. As with any form of cataloguing though, it’s only as good as the person determining what subjects/words require logging.

Only very recent broadcasts come with visual previews. This means after finding possible material based on keyword searches, I’ve then got to make a request, wait for it to be burned to CD, then go and view it at the BBC, only to possibly discover it might not be of any use. The BBC archives cannot be accessed remotely but fortunately they can be viewed at the local station in Nottingham. When I put in for this bid I drastically under-estimated how time-consuming this process would be, and that’s before you’ve even broached the murky waters of copyright. Fortunately, I can’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.

I was made aware of the project by James Urquhart. His support was really important as I’d previously resisted applying for such funding because the forms were so scary. His kind words and encouragement meant I was able, at the very least, to tick ‘filling out a ten page arts council form’ from my ‘things you’ve got to do before you die if you’re serious about literature’ list.

The idea of creating a literature-based Mobile Phone trail was started two years ago after a casual conversation with Paul Fillingham at the Nottingham Writers’ Studio. I quickly wrote the App from the perspective of the two swaddies in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, chasing Arthur Seaton around Nottingham and using various locations from the book as a means of delving further into the novel and the city. The App could also be navigated by a modern-day Arthur Seaton, which gave an updated version of the novel. But unfortunately, the funding fell through for Paul and we weren’t able to go ahead. Until now that is.

If the project is successful and it achieves its ambitious goals of drastically redefining the relationship between the arts and media, we will have been pioneers (ok, guinea pigs) for a completely revolutionary form of digital interaction. And I don’t say revolutionary lightly. The Space is described as ‘a canvas, to take advantage of the different artistic possibilities offered by emerging technologies’. It is pumped up with vitriol, demanding rid of ‘the tyranny of fixed durations of an hour or half-hour’, it calls for ‘the reliance on and requirement for well-known presenters to be toppled.’ But perhaps most astutely it makes a plea for knowledge to be ‘extended to embrace experience.’ That will be our primary goal from late April to October 31.

February 29 2012 was certainly a leap day I’ll never forget. I may not have received a marriage proposal but my life was completely transformed. This was the day I sat in the Southbank Centre with Paul Fillingham and other commissioned organisations as the arts council and the BBC unveiled a demonstration of the platform that we would be helping to fill with content. I’ve barely slept since. I’ll be blogging about the project as I go along and hopefully sharing some tips and experiences that could encourage you to do similar. There may also be opportunities for writers, so keep checking this space. And this one on May 1 The space

Guardian article

BBC article

To survive the recession you need to live by your wits, particularly if you’re working in the arts. This means wheeler dealing at every opportunity, which, for those who don’t work in the arts, means ‘sourcing stuff for free’. Of course you can only get things for free if you know what’s going on in your community and you will only find out what’s going on in your community if you’ve subscribed to every newsletter going or have made the effort to get out and talk to people. One or the other is not sufficient. Do both.

I left the garret recently and went to see Richard Johnson at New College Nottingham who runs a foundation course in art and design. He’s always looking for exciting ways in which to engage the students while giving them practical experience of working with industry professionals. A couple of years ago he ran a project called Candlesticks and Comics whereby he had students illustrate the poetry of Yeats in collaboration with Candlestick Press Publisher Jenny Swann and the Nottingham Writers’ Studio. I’ve never forgotten that event and I knew one day it would come in handy.

I’ve just put a bid in with the Arts Council/BBC for a project called the Space in which I’m hoping to create a multimedia literary trail of Sillitoe’s Nottingham. Part of the project involves creating a Mobile Phone App detailing key locations from the book. Each location comes with a quote from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning as well as a particular theme raised by the quote/location. Getting hold of the stills from the film is potentially very expensive as is film clips (MGM charge by the second although there is the possibility of getting some content through ‘fair use’) so one way around this was getting the students to illustrate the App.

This is mutually beneficial for all involved. If the bid is accepted (I find out on the 21 Feb) the students work gets global coverage which could help forge professional contacts that you just wouldn’t get out of standard coursework. If the bid is unsuccessful then they still get to work with a professional organisation with a clear brief and deadlines. All I’ve had to do is give an hour’s talk to students – which I did last Friday, help write up a project brief, and be on hand for any questions/guidance as and when needed.

The project could form part of NCN’s regular coursework, enabling future students similar exposure while providing fresh content on a regular basis for the App. This means that literature continues to reach a younger audience as well as offering up endless interpretations of Sillitoe’s work. We could even launch an exhibition of all of the drawings a few years down the line which would help draw attention to the campaign. The possibilities are endless. Now, how to get hold of a free media lawyer…

Forthcoming events in the Sillitoe Season

Alan Sillitoe Poetry Prize 2 March 2012

Lunch with John Harvey 21 April 2012

Interview with NCN students on the WriteLion 6 podcast