BCMCR Research Seminar: Creative industries: Publishing and documentation

Andy Conway (BCU) – PUNK PUBLISHING – How Self-Publishing Indie Authors Took Over the Book World
A revolution in publishing has happened. More writers today earn a living by self-publishing than through traditional publishing.
‘Punk Publishing’, the new book by Andy Conway and David Wake, examines the new digital landscape and presents a DIY guide for any writer planning to go indie. With each lesson delivered in three simple ‘chords’, this explosive book presents the most simple and direct way to become a publisher, with a DIY punk ethic at its heart.

Paula Serafini (CAMEo, University of Leicester) – Document: making and marking time in artistic careers
How do artists reflect on their work and understand their own career trajectories and development? Document is a two-year project created by the East Midlands Contemporary Visual Arts Network, which works with six artists to provide a context for them to reflect on their working life, and engage in activity that documents their own personal and professional development. CAMEo Director Mark Banks has joined the advisory group of this project, and Paula Serafini is currently conducting research with the Document artists about their working practices, career paths, and experiences and understandings of time.

The session will be followed by the launch of Riffs Issue 1 Volume 2 (full details below), guest edited by Simon Barber. 
Initially a tricky second album, we are excited to share with the staff and students of the Birmingham School of Media a range of experimental written, audio, and visual pieces of popular music research. Each responding to lyrics from Dan Wilson’s ‘A Song Can Be About Anything’, this volume of Riffs includes two photo essays, performance recordings, graphic scores, autoethnographic reflections, and a range of experimental analytical approaches, each considering lyrics, songwriting, and voice.

A song can be about anything

About peace or war, or the sins of industry

Or the discontents of fame, or of obscurity

Or how we first met, on the warmest day

And how I hadn’t planned to love someone until you came

Or how we survived on happiness and sleeping on the floor

Or how you used to love me but you don’t even know me anymore

– Dan Wilson, ‘A Song Can Be About Anything’ from Love Without Fear

Andy Conway is a screenwriter and historical fantasy author. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing, BCU School of English. David Wake is a writer of SF and steampunk fiction and a graduate of the BCU MA in Creative Writing.

The Punk Publishers project emerged from Andy and David’s attempt to write the definitive guide to independent publishing.

Dr Paula Serafini is a Research Associate at CAMEo Research Institute, University of Leicester. Her research is in the field of cultural politics, and is particularly concerned with art activism and cultural resistance. In recent years she has conducted research on performance-based activism in the UK, and is currently working on cultural resistance to the extractive industries in Argentina. Paula is a co-editor of the forthcoming edited collection artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism (Rowman and Littlefield).

CAMEo is the Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies at the University of Leicester. CAMEo was launched in 2016 to provide new understandings of the cultural industries, the ‘creative economy’, arts, media and cultural policy, consumer culture dynamics, and the mediation and representation of cultural and economic life.

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