Academic Lead: Dr Ornette D Clennon
Manchester Metropolitan University in partnership with BBC Outreach to host event for national humanities festival
Using music and video, Keeping it Real? explores young people’s attitudes towards the representation of BAME communities in the media and popular culture and how this representation shapes wider attitudes towards crime.
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in partnership with BBC Outreach is hosting Keeping it Real? an event in Being Human 2015, the UK’s only national festival of the humanities. This involves working with young people from the community organisations CLR James Community Trust and Making Education a Priority (MEaP), members from the BBC Philharmonic and wider staff from the BBC. Young people will be mentored by BBC staff and members from CLR James Community Trust to compose a musical track (grime/hip hop/drum’n’bass fusion) with members of the BBC Philharmonic that will explore their perceptions of BAME youth cultural representation. The young people will also be mentored in filming and photography to make a documentary of the project to be shown alongside the performance at the final event. The project is already in full swing with creative sessions that were held on campus at MMU on October 27th and November 5th. The event was selected to be part of Being Human by the festival organisers, the School of Advanced Study, University of London, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the British Academy (BA) with support from the Wellcome Trust.
Keeping it Real? aims to engage the public in participatory and creative research on youth community activism as the project forms part of a local piece of community activism to save the cultural heritage of the Nello James Community Centre in Whalley Range, Manchester. The final event will be held during the festival week, which runs from 12–22 November, on November 20th, Dock 10, BBC Media City, M50 2BH.
Dr Ornette Clennon, Visiting Enterprise Fellow and Project Leader, MMU said: “This is a unique opportunity to publically showcase the wider impact of academic research into the importance of culture, heritage and identity for our local communities. By creatively working with our community partners and the BBC, I am thrilled that academic research, community engagement and creative participation have powerfully come together to highlight an important aspect of urban regeneration (renewal) for our local residents”
As part of an 11 day national programme of big ideas, big debates and engaging activities for all ages, the event aims to champion the excellence of humanities research being undertaken in the Northwest help to demonstrate the vitality and relevance of this today and showcase how the humanities help us understand ourselves, our relationships with others and the challenges we face in a changing world.
During the inaugural festival in 2014 over 60 universities and cultural organisations organised over 160 free events sharing the best and most challenging thinking in the humanities with audiences across the country. Extending beyond face-to-face interactions in the UK, the festival crossed borders on the web, reaching more than 2.2 million across Twitter and website visitors from around the globe.
The 2015 festival programme promises to be exciting, entertaining and thought-provoking, with something for everyone in our diverse communities.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
1. For all enquiries, please contact: Dr Ornette D Clennon. Email: o.clennon@mmu.ac.uk Tel: 0161 247 5775
2. Being Human: a festival of the humanities 12-22 November 2015 Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and the Wellcome Trust, Being Human is a national forum for public engagement with humanities research. The festival will highlight the ways in which the humanities can inspire and enrich our everyday lives, help us to understand ourselves, our relationships with others, and the challenges we face in a changing world, and foster world-class knowledge that is vibrant, vital, and accessible to all. For more information, please visit http://www.beinghumanfestival.org or follow the festival on Twitter at @BeingHumanFest.
3. This event is being organised by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster (https://mactri.org/ @critracemmu), which is part of MMU’s Social Change: Community Wellbeing Research Centre.
Metropolitan University was awarded university status in 1992 and is part of the largest higher education campus in the UK and one of the most extensive education centres in Europe. With a history dating back 150 years, we have a combination of the traditional and the contemporary that sets MMU apart and gives us our distinct character.
Metropolitan University is one of the largest campus-based universities in the UK with a total student population of more than 37,000. Our claim is to be the University for World Class professionals with an emphasis on vocational education and employability. Our roots in higher education date back to 1824, and we’re committed to a strong future through a £350million investment in our buildings and facilities. We have a combination of the traditional and the contemporary that sets the University apart and gives us our distinct character. Manchester Metropolitan University is part of the largest higher education campus in the UK and one of the most extensive education centres in Europe.
The University was initially developed as a centre of Technology, Art and Design from Manchester Mechanics’ Institution (1824) and Manchester School of Design (1838). Later Schools of Commerce (founded 1889), Education (f. 1878) and Domestic Science (f. 1880) were added along with colleges at Didsbury, Crewe, Alsager and the former Domestic and Trades College (f. 1911), latterly Hollings College. The painter L. S. Lowry attended the art school in the years after the First World War where he was taught by the noted impressionist Adolphe Valette.
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