Tag Archives: BBC

Sillitoe Trail goes to the BBC at Wood Lane

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Photo James Walker.

I achieved one of my ambitions the other day when I went for a meeting at the BBC Television Centre on Wood Lane, the one with the massive windows and a back garden full of gigantic satellite dishes. It was surreal entering this iconic building that had existed previously as a recurring image on the news and reminded me of how excited my son used to get when I took him to a Forest away match and he discovered a new ground for the first time. It is the only time I’ve ever regretted having a crap £5 phone as it meant I was unable to take a photo, upload it on to Flickr and preserve the experience in the digital void. I should get a better phone as mine is so rubbish it only has the capacity to save ten texts at a time. But having a rubbish phone means that when I’m on a train I get to read and think. However, this project is demanding so much of my time I may not be able to fend off the temptation much longer. I just don’t want to become one of those people with heads perpetually facing downwards, flicking their fingers across their touch screens like they’re dismissing everything. This project isn’t going to make me become one of those, is it?

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.

Sillitoe in Space

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Alan Sillitoe by Dom Henry. Artwork Paul Fillingham.

The Space is a new multimedia platform funded by the Arts Council in collaboration with the BBC. It has funded 53 organisations to the tune of £3.5 million. The Alan Sillitoe Committee was one of the few selected literature organisations alongside the London Review of Books and Faber and Faber. I can’t quite convey how intensely proud this makes us, particularly as we are one of three successful projects from the East Midlands,  with UK Young Artists and Vanilla Galleries. You don’t get to say that often. The main logic behind the bid was to go in at the low end, hoping that then you wouldn’t be competing with the big boys (John Peel project – £150,000) and so would be like a ‘stocking filler’ that was harder to turn down.

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