Call for Papers: A Clockwork Orange

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange

28 June to 1 July 2012

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1962), the International Anthony Burgess Foundation is holding a multi-disciplinary conference to examine its profound and enduring impact on literature, film, music, theatre and society.

The conference will assess the history and reception of A Clockwork Orange in all its manifestations. Papers of 20-30 minutes in length are invited on any aspect of A Clockwork Orange and its legacy. Possible topics might include the linguistic and/or musical aspects of Burgess’s novel; invented languages; the film versions directed by Andy Warhol and Stanley Kubrick; the stage adaptations by John Godber, Anthony Burgess and Ron Daniels; translations into other languages and media; the history of book design; the political and Cold War contexts of the book and films; and the continuing influence of Burgess’s text on popular music, fashion, or other aspects of youth culture and counter-culture.

The conference will be supported by the UK premiere of Burgess’s Clockwork Orange music, a new Burgess/Kubrick exhibition at the John Rylands Library (in collaboration with the Stanley Kubrick Archive), and a film season at the Cornerhouse cinema.

If you would like to submit a paper, please send an abstract of 200-300 words to director@anthonyburgess.org

Approaching Publishers workshop (6/July)

Wednesday 06 July at 2pm (Faraday house, Rayleigh Room):

Approaching Publishers: A Guide for Academic Authors by Anthony Heynes

To find out more about the workshop please visit:

http://www.rgc.salford.ac.uk/page/approaching_publishers

Could you please email Sandra (s.wadeson@salford.ac.uk) if you would like to attend the workshop.

James, Joe, Orchestra, Choir

Salford University's Joe Duddell, fresh from his collaboration with Nero, is now orchestrating for Manchester indie legends James. Presale tickets now available from here 

Manchester International Festival 2011

It's almost upon us. In previous years your humble blogger has watched performers defecate on stage, the attempt to make a real bull have intercourse with the boot of a car "by" Matthew Barney and was chased by a chainsaw-wielding, leatherfaced madman (after two and a half hours in semi-darkness) and so wound up running into a tree trunk, thanks to Adam Curtis, Damon Albarn and Punchdrunk's "It Felt Like A Kiss"... highlights this year include:

The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

Damon Alburn's opera, Dr Dee
Punchdrunk's The Crash of the Elysium
Victoria Wood's The Day We Sang

a series of Bjork gigs, and many more events -- festival homepage here

2 new archives: Lord Reith and Gilles Deleuze

The BBC has just made available 250+ Reith lectures, from 1948 to the present. Highlights include Edward Said, Marina Warner, Richard Hoggart and Bertrand Russell. Click here for streaming or, confusingly, you'll need to click here if you want lectures as MP3s to download, and transcripts. 

 And MMU's "actual virtual" Deleuze online archive has just been established too, including videos of lectures and short films; click here.

Shaun Ryder and Friends exhibition (30/June)

A fascinating photographic record by Karin Albinsson of legendary Musical Mancunian Shaun Ryder running at Manchester Photographic gallery with a competition to meet the great man himself!

The Not Part Of Festival (30/June-16/July)

Full programme for this spectacular fringe festival, run in conjunction with the University of Salford, is now online -- click here.

Manchester Met conf: Putting Theory to Work

2ND INTERNATIONAL SUMMER INSTITUTE IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: PUTTING THEORY TO WORK, 18 - 22 July 2011

Summer Institute Director: Maggie MacLure

We are pleased to announce a special exhibition to accompany the forthcoming Summer Institute, for which there are still a few places available.  'Curiosity and Classification: Objects as Incitements to Theory' is organised by the International Centre for Arts and Cultures of Childhood (ICACC). The exhibition brings art and qualitative inquiry together in an engagement with objects, inviting delegates to think about such things as memory, materiality, identity, history, loss and wonder.

Please find attached an outline programme. If you wish to book a place at the Summer Institute, please contact us as soon as possible:

email inquiries: SIQR@mmu.ac.uk
Information and registration: https://staffwebmail.salford.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/siqr/about.php

Exhibition details: https://staffwebmail.salford.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/siqr/exhibition11.php

Standard delegate fee: £295

Plenary keynote speakers 2011:

DEBORAH BRITZMAN, York University, Canada
'On matters of soft theory and affected belief: a psychoanalytic approach to the defense of theory'.

LINDA TUHIWAI SMITH, University of Waikato, New Zealand
'Decolonizing research in new spaces with new possibilities'?

HARRY TORRANCE, Manchester Metropolitan University
'Mixed methods research: what is the role of qualitative methods'?

LISA MAZZEI, Gonzaga University, USA
'Plugging one text into another: thinking with theory in qualitative research'

HELEN COLLEY, Manchester Metropolitan University
'Time, space and ethics: thinking through Marx'

KATE McCOY, State University of New York (New Paltz)
'Heroin's monstrous beauties: mark(et)ing affect and abject

KERI FACER, Manchester Metropolitan University
'Democracy, education and reclaiming narratives of the future'

BILL GREEN, Charles Sturt University, Australia
'Research, practice, emergence; or, emergent methodologies in educational research'

MAGGIE MACLURE, Manchester Metropolitan University
'Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research'.

Putting Theorists to Work (Practical Sessions):
Butler, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Lyotard, Badiou.

Delegate-led sessions (optional): for delegates wishing to present their own research.

The Summer Institute will be of interest to qualitative researchers who are looking for stimulating engagements with theory, from doctoral students to more experienced researchers, across the social sciences, education, health and caring professions.

Modernist Mapping Channel: Launch event

Realising Locative Media

As part of a RISF bid, we received funding to work with the Manchester
Modernist Society and Maxamundo to produce an interactive mapping
channel and IPhone application. On the 23rd of June we will be holding a
launch event at the Cube Gallery. If anybody is interested please come
along.

As well as the Modernist Mapping Channel, the Modernist Society will
also be launching their new Modernist Magazine.

Hope to see you there.

Modernist Mapping Channel
Launch Event
Thursday 23rd June 6.30pm

CUBE Gallery
113-115 Portland Street
Manchester
M1 6FB

Translation guide

Salford's Dr Phoebe Moore-Carter has alerted me to this useful translation guide for non-UK PhDs!

Recent PhD completions at Salford

From Prof Peter Graham:
Congratulations to compositional research student Dorothy Gates on success in her PhD submission and viva. Dorothy is making her mark as a specialist composer of brass music in New York and has recently had her work performed by musicians from the US Marines Band (The Presidents Own) and members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra brass section.

From Prof George McKay:
Congratulations to Dr Shara Rambarran whose PhD was awarded 9 June 2011, for a thesis entitled "Innovations in Contemporary Popular Music and Digital Media, ands Reconstructions of the Music  Industry in the 21st Century."


From Dr Robin Dewhurst:
May I take this opportunity to congratulate Dr Eddie Severn and Dr Luc Vertommen following their successful completion of the Doctor of Musical Arts programme. I have very much enjoyed my role in supervising their research and would like to wish them every success in the future.


Our congratulations also go to BA(Hons) Popular Music and Recording graduate Ian Livingstone who has recently joined the elite ranks of the British music industry with his Ivor Novello Award in the ‘Best Original Video Game Score’ category for his work on Napoleon: Total War. Since graduating in the mid-nineties Ian has developed a successful career as a composer for film, television and advertising and worked alongside Richard Beddow and Richard Birdsall in the creation of the award-winning soundtrack. Dr Robin Dewhurst, one of Ian’s specialist tutors during his time at Salford, was delighted to hear of his success and said “this is a truly magnificent achievement as the Ivors are regarded as the most widely coveted awards for British and Irish songwriters and composers in the world – we are obviously very proud of Ian’s ongoing success as a media composer.”

Ian is in good company, as other awards went this year in recognition for the notable contributions made by artists and composers including Dizzee Rascal, Michael Nyman, Stephen Sondheim and Steve Winwood. Further details of Ian's work can be found on his website: http://ianlivingstone.net/

Audition call: Chaotic Combinations

Chaotic Combinations

 

Calling all SINGERS and MUSICIANS!

Want to be involved in Organised Chaos Productions’ new and unique performance challenge and great networking opportunity? Then carry on reading…

We are looking for enthusiastic SINGERS and acoustic MUSICIANS who are willing to be challenged by collaborating with one another, preparing a song for you both to perform in front of a judging audience!

You will be given a theme to work with and then you both will be locked away in a rehearsal space on a Saturday for a full day of creativity. The outcome of this will be performed on the Sunday. Can you handle the pressure?

You will compete against other singer/musician teams and the audience will decide who should be the winner and go through to the grand final in December.

It’s all about working with someone new and whom you are not familiar with.

If you are a successful candidate you will be notified and invited to the weekend event, which will take place 30th/31st July.

Get your CV in to organisedchaosevent@gmail.com, subject ‘Chaotic Combinations’ by Friday 15^th July 2011 5pm. We are hoping to contact the lucky individuals on Sunday 17^th July.

GOOD LUCK!

Flare New Theatre festival (4-9/July)

The first ever...

Flare International Festival of New Theatre

Contact Theatre, Zion Arts Centre, Capitol Theatre // MMU and University of Salford

for tickets and full details visit...
www.flarefestival.com

Festival Opening: 7.30pm Monday 4th July, Contact Theatre, Manchester

Salford animation

Click here for new animations from Salford undergrads...

Salford and Liverpool John Moores University to co-host LGBT event (1/July)

 

The University of Salford and Liverpool John Moores University will jointly host Let’s Get Better Together on Friday 1 July - an event focused on creating positive dialogue between senior management and staff networks in both Higher and Further Education.

Professor Michael Brown, Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, and Salford VC Martin Hall will host a panel discussion at the event which takes place in the Clifford Whitworth Conference Suite from 9.30am to 3.30pm.

The panel will include staff network members from both institutions, Paul Martin - Chief Executive of the Lesbian and Gay Foundation who was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s recent Birthday Honours List - and Nichola Wood from the University of Leeds. Nichola is co-author of the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) report, Experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans staff and students in higher education: research report 2009.


After the morning’s panel session, the afternoon will consist of workshop sessions covering:
• LGBT Career Development Mentoring Schemes/ LGBT Mentoring
• The Internationalisation Agenda in H.E & F.E. How does it affect staff and students?
• The LGBT Student Experience. How do we ensure that out LGBT students learn in a positive, healthy environment?

Salford University and Liverpool John Moores University are sector leaders in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index Top 100 Employers and Pink Paper Winners of best Universities for LGBT students.

If you wish to attend, please email Rachel Bullock in the Events Office on r.bullock@salford.ac.uk. Refreshments will be provided.

NoiseLab

The lab itself may have shut down but the noiseniks are keen to get your films uploaded and profiled on their site... via "How do I take part?" on the left

Valuing the arts in an age of austerity (21/June)

Angus Kennedy, Dr Patricia Allmer and John Summers will discuss how the arts sector can ensure quality in the midst of dramatic budget cuts
The Arts in general have always had a difficult time in attracting public and private funding for their activities, but with widespread cuts in public spending budgets, including the arts, financial considerations on which productions and organisations will and which won't go ahead will be more difficult than recently. The economic crisis and subsequent funding cuts are forcing many in the arts to reappraise how they argue the case for funding.

The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) is investigating techniques to assess the economic value of the arts, what it terms non-market goods, in terms of what people feel they would be willing to pay for things if they were not free.

And the February 2011 Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) pamphlet entitled 'Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts' states:

"The Commission on 2020 Public Services at the RSA has called for more public investment to be evaluated in terms of a ‘social productivity test’: whether it builds individual and community engagement, resilience and reciprocity."

Whilst the pamphlet sets out to define a daring and bold response to the challenge presented by the cuts in funding, is there something wanting in the solutions offered? This discussion aims to challenge the participation approach of chasing audiences in favour of more compelling reasons why the arts should receive public funding and ask some difficult questions such as: just how should we value the arts? Are the arts a luxury or a necessity? Do they have intrinsic value or are they best assessed in terms of outcome and impact? Does what the public think they want or like matter or should we fund the arts regardless? Do the arts even need or deserve public funding at all?

The Shakespeare Pub, 16 Fountain Street, Manchester, M2 2AA at 7:15pm for a 7:30pm start. A charge of £5 (£3 concession) to cover costs incurred will be payable in advance by using the PayPal Donate button on the left hand side of Manchester Salon website (feel free to donate on top of the £5 ticket), but can also be paid for on the night if booked in advance by Emailing events@manchestersalon.org.ukThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Radical Gardening discussion

'Against the Grain', KPFA Radio, California, USA

 

Salford's Prof George McKay: one hour discussion of his new book Radical Gardening

Wed 15 June (previously blogged about here) -- can be streamed live / downloaded from here.

 

"Against the Grain is a radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters -- political, economic, social and cultural -- important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. We're based at the studios of Pacifica station KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California. ATG focuses on meaty theoretical and action-oriented issues that the mainstream media tends to ignore, matters like political economy, the global justice movement, philosophical and cultural ideas, and race and gender relations. We strive to bring these perspectives to the airwaves in a way that's accessible, engaging, and, most of all, useful to people working for social change."

 

 

 

 

The Archive of Exile (9/July)

Call for participation   Symposium – The Archive of Exile   Saturday 9^th July 2011, 11.30-4.30pm, Domino Hall, Sheffield Cathedral, Sheffield   In association with the AHRC-funded Archive of Exile project, University of Sheffield, www.archiveofexile.org   We are seeking participants from across academic, artistic, curatorial, and archivist and other related communities for a one-day symposium centred on the radical possibilities of the archive and the creative act in exile.
  Themes of the symposium will include:

• place, the creative act, and placelessness
• archives and place
• creative approaches to ‘documenting’ and ‘recording’ acts, lives, spaces, and voices
• radical possibilities of archives
• the archive as sedentary, inactive, homely; the archive as lively, energetic, exilic
• the voice and exile; voices of exile; voices in exile
• the artistic act and the archive; archives of the ephemeral 

  The displaced, the placeless, the wanderer; the exile has been a key figure throughout history, right up to the present day, but the peculiar creativity of the exile is rarely considered. The exile is one who leaves their home with no expectation of return, but more widely, the exile is anyone who loses the traditional frame by which they make sense of their world, who is left out-of-place or out-of-time, who must make a life in absence of the co-ordinates with which they were born. The Archive of Exile project has sought to apply the radical mobility of exile to the more typically sedentary figure of the archive, opening up new possibilities for the lively and evocative archiving of the world, its acts and its voices. We seek to bring together a diverse range of participants to explore the themes listed above from artistic, academic, curatorial and archival points of view.   The event will consist of an opportunity to:

• view the Archive of Exile exhibition at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield
• discuss the work and its themes with participating artists and their academic collaborators
• network and engage in formal and informal discussion with other professionals involved in curatorship, archiving, art in various media, and collaborative research.

  The one-day symposium will be structured around brief talks by academics and artists, followed by open discussions between all participants. The event will start at 11.30pm with an introduction to the Archive of Exile exhibition and project followed by a buffet lunch and a chance to view the work at the nearby Bank Street Arts centre. It will then move on to an extended discussion, with an opportunity to network and engage with other participants. The symposium will take place at Sheffield Cathedral, in Sheffield’s city centre.
  To express an interest in attending:   Attendance is free; there is no charge to attend this event and lunch will be provided. Numbers are limited and we are keen to achieve a broad range of participants. If interested, please send your name, email address, any affiliation, and your background (eg artist, academic, curator, archivist, etc) to Matt Collins, at m.t.collins@shef.ac.uk by 30^th June 2011 at the latest.

Theatre by the Lake courses

Voice, Body, Action : Workshop
Manchester Metropolitan University School of Theatre and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick Summer Workshop

Workshop Leaders: Gabriel Gawin, Niamh Dowling and Joe Windley 
Venue: Theatre by The Lake in Keswick
Dates: August 8th- 12th
Times: Monday to Friday 10am - 5pm


Set in the Stunning surroundings of Theatre by The Lake in Keswick, this one week practical course focuses on the dynamic integration and interconnection of the core disciplines of the actor’s craft, movement, voice and action. The course will seek to liberate and empower the actor through an intensive workshop dedicated to the experience of active, dynamic coordination of the multiple possibilities at play when bringing role, the body and voice simultaneously to life. Participants will work on Shakespeare monologues and duologues. The course will be led by three of the UK’s most experienced actor trainers and theatre practitioners.

Action.
Gabriel is a Principal Performer and Associate Director with Teatr Piesn Kozla the internationally acclaimed Polish Theatre company. He has over 25 years experience of working as an Actor/ Director/ and teacher. He has worked with many of the worlds leading theatre practitioners he has an international reputation as an acting trainer and performer.

Body.
Niamh Dowling trained with Monika Pagneux and as a teacher of The Alexander Technique and works closely with Teatr Piesn Kozla in Poland. She leads workshops nationally and internationally and has a holistic approach to training with emphasis on interconnectedness of movement, voice and acting. Niamh is Head of School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University and has worked extensively as a Movement Director including UK, USA, Asia, South and Central America and Russia.

Voice.
Joe Windley is a well known in actor training Joe served as Head of Voice two leading UK drama schools and ran the MA Voice Studies course at CSSD before being invited to teach at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, Pittsburgh, USA. In addition Joe maintains an active profile in the performance industry working on theatre and broadcast productions. His work is focused on creatively liberating the energized voice bringing natural truth and technique together, exciting potential and personal expressive power.

£350 (Bursaries available)
If you need to arrange accommodation in Keswick please contact Sophie Curtis at Theatre by The Lake for information about places to stay on Sophie.curtis@theatrebythelake.com

Book online: http://www.theatre.mmu.ac.uk/shortcourses/
If you require further information please contact
Niamh Dowling on n.dowling@mmu.ac.uk

Slutwalk Manchester images

Earlier posting about this event ---- here are some images from today's Slutwalk... click on each to enlarge.

Film competition: call for entries

Martin Bell (27/June) / Kate Adie (10/October) talks

.

At the Imperial War Museum, Salford Quays
Tickets £8, £6 concessions

http://www.quaytickets.com/

0843 208 0500

Timed to coincide with our new exhibition, Correspondent: reporting under fire since 1914 (click here for link)

Former BBC foreign affairs correspondent Martin Bell will speak about ‘the death ofhalf a century of reporting from areas of conflict throughout the globe and the current world of war reporting.

Award winning journalist and former BBC chief news correspondent Kate Adie will be in conversation with BBC Special Correspondent Allan Little. They will discuss the challenges and issues around professional journalism including censorship and the changing landscape of war reporting.

Engels exhibition, Bury

This is a show by Austrian/ American artist Rainer Ganahl, taking place as part of Bury Text Festival at Bury Transport Museum, Castlecroft Road BL9 0EY, Wednesdays to Sundays 10am to 4pm until Sunday 19 June. 'Engels...Engels...Engels...'

The exhibition is based around Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England and includes photographs, paints and prints. 
Admission via ticket to the museum, £2.80/£1.90 concessions.

Verbally Challenged at Contact Theatre (17 June)

From Contact Theatre:

Fri 17^th June sees the culmination of our education Verbally Challenged event that we’ve collaborated on with Burnage Media Arts College.

After a week of workshops the college comes to Contact to see their students scripts being battled out in our main space with professional direction, technical support and actors – just like a proper play!

To come along to see what happens and vote for the winner please call our box office team on 0161 274 0600 or book on our website:

http://www.contactmcr.com/whats-on/969-verbally-challenged-meets-burnage-media-arts-colle/

And if you’re interested in the package for us coming to partner up with you next term for this exciting project please contact programming assistant Lizzie Tait ElizabethTait@contactmcr.com or call 0161 274 0631.

Anthony Burgess: Exhibition preview (9/June) and Talk (16/June)

Exhibition: new work in response to the Burgess collections
9 June (preview), 5 - 8pm
Free, no booking required

An exhibition of new film, photography and design work by staff and students at the Media Lab at the Manchester School of Art, drawing on material and inspiration from the Burgess collections at the International Anthony Burgress Foundation. Exhibition continues on 10 and 11 June, 10 - 5pm.

Clockwork Counterpoint: the music of Anthony Burgess
16 June, 6.30pm
Free, no booking required

'I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side...' - Anthony Burgess.

Conductor and composer Paul Phillips is the author of Clockwork Counterpoint (2010), the first major study of the music and literature of Anthony Burgess: join him for an engaging talk, with musical examples, about Burgess's other life as an astonishingly prolific and talented composer. Refreshments provided.

In association with Manchester University Press.

The BBC North Region in the 1930s (8/June)

The next talk at the Working Class Movement Library "Invisible Histories" series is on Wednesday 8 June at 2pm.  It's on 'The BBC North Region in the 1930s' and is by University of Salford's Dr Ben Harker.

As the BBC moves into MediaCity, this free talk illustrates a previous time when Salford was at the cutting edge.  All welcome.

Stonyhurst Literature Festival 2011 (25-26/June)

Talks, readings, workshops; poetry, prose and a dozen or so novelists at your disposal, in the hallowed environs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Gerard Manley Hopkins...
Free, but registration required.
click here for PDF with all info

Take That conference / Comedy and Conflict conference

Some images (click on each to enlarge) from our conferences over the last couple of days...


Right: remembering bedroom shrines to Duran Duran, and the question of what to do when you eventually meet your teenage heroes. Dr Halligan brought up the question of Amanda De Cadenet and just simply marrying them. Tonya Anderson (University of Sunderland): "Still Kissing Their Posters Goodnight: Life-long Pop Music Fandom"

Only Freud and Klein offer the satisfactory theoretical framework, centred on the notion of melancholia, when it comes to dealing with the reemergence of Take That. Can memories of childhood trauma be "made whole again" via a later encounter with the figures loved, lost and found again (at circa £75/ticket)?

Psychoanalyst Dr Tobias Nolte clarifies his position in respect to the group's oeuvre (right). "A Kleinian Notion of Applied Psychoanalysis: Break-Up and Reunion from a Psychoanalytic Perspective". 

Post-RIP Reformation? What to do when your band leader has made a premature exit. A discussion of the blurring of authentic and inauthentic in the live arena was explored, and Dr Goddard cited the unfortunate case of Earth and Sun O))) --- the former doing a spell as the support act for their own one time tribute band. Georgina Gregory (UCLAN): "You Can Make Me Whole Again": Pop Tributes Embodying the Reunion.

Manchester Metropolitan University's Dr David Huxley takes us back to comedy of (seemingly) One Million Years pre-PC, assisted by Dr David James (not pictured) and a friend he keeps in his bag. "No Other Excuse": Class, Race and Gender in British Music Hall Acts, 1899-1914.

Friday link: Churchill's Speeches

Fascinating talk from BBC Parliament that can be taken as an example of good lecturing, and a consideration of populist politics and aesthetic form: click here for video

"Nicholas Soames MP delivered a lecture about his grandfather Sir Winston Churchill in the State Apartments of the Palace of Westminster, on Tuesday 26 April, 2011.

The 50 minute lecture was part of the Speaker's series of lectures to mark the centenary of the 1911 Parliament Act."

Critical Labour Studies, Salford Conference - CFP

Critical Labour Studies 8th Symposium 2012
Venue: The University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK
Saturday 18th Sunday 19th February 2012
Call for papers and sessions

 IT is clear to researchers and activists, both in the trade union movement and universities, that global capitalism is increasingly shaping the worlds of work and employment. The imposition of this neo-liberal orthodoxy has many profound implications, not least that states seek to both de-legitimise workers’ opposition and marginalise their organisations. However, just as capitalism has embraced neo-liberal strategies, there has emerged a new politics of resistance that is varied and diverse, embracing: trade union and socialist organisations, green and ecological protest movements, anti-war activists, feminists, human rights campaigners and NGOs. It is against this background that the Critical Labour Studies (CLS) symposium has aimed to bring together researchers and activists to discuss key features of work and employment from a radical and labour-focused perspective. We recognise that while left academic researchers participate in the usual round of mainstream conferences, the scope for focused radical debate around these themes is actually quite limited. Through CLS we have developed an open working group and discussion forum that engages with many of the challenges facing researchers and trade unionists within the current environment of work and employment.

By ‘labour’, we anticipate, in the traditions of radical researchers over the ages, a broad understanding of social, economic and political agendas. To date, themes have included: race, identity and organising migrant workers, global unionism and organising internationally, the new politics of production, privatisation, outsourcing and offshoring, restructuring and alternative/inclusive research methodologies. The list of themes and questions that concern us continues to develop over time, and the intention will be to reflect this evolving agenda at this year’s symposium. An ancillary objective is to engage in genuinely critical debate, rescuing this term from its co-option by mainstream agendas.

Building on the successes of the past six years, the forthcoming symposium will be structured as a series of plenary sessions. Each will be organised around a particular theme with speakers and discussants, followed by a broad discussion. It has been an important principle of CLS that the conference is not based on the convention of academic conferences with specific papers being presented in separate streams. Rather our intention has been to deepen discussion and debate, and to bring together researchers and labour/union movement activists (where possible) in joint sessions. All sessions are genuinely open and inclusive and involve a broad range of participants, from established academics to early-career researchers, and from established trade union officials to shop-floor representatives and grass-roots activists. The distinctive organising principles of CLS are, therefore, to assist unions and workers in dealing with the challenges faced in the neo-liberal world of work and employment. Ultimately, discussion of strategies and tactics are related to the broader aim of creating a socialist society.

Send proposals for presentations/sessions/papers to 

Dr Phoebe V Moore-Carter

p.moore@salford.ac.uk

Deadline 16th September 2011.

Join the Critical Labour Studies Email List: If you would like to be added to the CLS email list, please contact Jane Holgate at j.holgate@londonmet.ac.uk

Check out our website: http://criticallabourstudies.org.uk/site/

This event is supported by Historical Materialism, Capital and Class, and the BUIRA Marxist Study Group.

Salford Uni MMP Showcase: Islington Mill (21/June)

Take That exhibition -- Kraak Gallery, Manchester (2-28/June)

Tied in with Salford University's Take That conference, convenors Dr Tim Wise (above) and Anja Lobert (below) launched a comprehensive - rather charming, rather funny, at times rather scary - exhibition at Manchester's Kraak Gallery: "Take That Fandom Before the Internet". Here are some images (click on each to enlarge) --- but please visit the exhibition yourself for the full experience, and full cache of mid-90s teenage girl missives of unrequited love... 

above: home-made "friendship books", as posted around the globe; definitions offered of their terminology on the right. We catch up with their authors on the left.

left: Salford's Marrianne Garbutt hard at work on her own That That pre-Internet social media. right: Salford's own "Professor of Pop", David Sanjek, pictured with a Suede friendship book... presumably not created by Mark E. Smith.

Anja Lobert in a flurry of aerial friendship books