Archive for the 'People' Category

Most major exhibitions offer visitors an audio- or multimedia- guide that can enhance your experience of their artworks or artefacts. As you take the tour of the gallery or exhibition, audioguide in hand, it’s like having your own private expert alongside who can point out the fascinating details of the exhibits.

Who are the creative artists behind these audio experiences? In this episode, I hope to find out as I talk to Steve Slack, the writer behind the audioguide for the Italian Renaissance Drawings exhibition, now on at the British Musuem (until 25 July 2010). Steve also shares tips on the business of being a freelance writer & the emerging field of multimedia writing.

You can subscribe to the Fusion View Mobile Podcast by clicking on the “Subscribe with iTunes” button - it’s free and new episodes will be downloaded automatically to your iTunes application.

What do you think about exhibition multimedia guides? A help or a distraction? Or do you have a comment about anything else in this podcast? You can send me - or Steve - an email or voicemail via my Contact Page

Photo: from Steve’s website, with permission

Can art make a practical difference to the world we live in? One man thinks so. His name is Neil Ellis and he is hoping that his performance piece for Anthony Gormley’s 4th Plinth project is going to make a real practical difference to Londoners.

I talk to Neil about his performance piece Pedal Power and how he hopes it will contribute to making London’s roads safer for cyclists.

You can subscribe to the Fusion View Mobile Podcast by clicking on the “Subscribe with iTunes” button - it’s free and new episodes will be downloaded automatically to your iTunes application.

Links:

You can join Neil’s Pedal Power Facebook Group to add your voice to his campaign.

GalleryFilm event at Dulwich Picture Gallery: The role of protest in art - Neil Ellis on Anthony Gormley’s 4th plinth creating a drama performance to drive home the issue of cycling safety. Come and see the sizzling short films by Riffy Ahmed, the visually stunning Illuminations Productions ‘Anthony Gormley and the 4th Plinth’ and discuss the issues with them.
Monday 10 May, 7.15pm at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Tickets: 020 8299 8750 or online

CORRECTION: The video of Neil’s performance is not yet available online so I’m not able to show it here. As soon as it is available, I’ll add a link or embed it here. Apologies for the incorrect information in the podcast.

Do you have a comment about cycling safety? Or about anything else in this podcast? You can send me - or Neil - an email or voicemail via my Contact Page

Photos: thanks to Dulwich OnView, with permission

As you may know, I’ve been involved in a social media project for the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery on a voluntary basis - a community blog called Dulwich OnView. We started it just over two years ago and it’s been going from strength to strength, gaining quite a lot of attention within the heritage/ musuem sector here in the UK and internationally.

The exciting news is that the blog has been nominated for the Conference Archimuse International Best of the Web Award 2010. The annual conference is one of the biggest international conferences in the heritage/ museum sector and is taking place this year in Denver, USA. One of our bloggers team, Ingrid Beazley, is off there this week to give a presentation about Dulwich OnView alongside a number of academics who have written research papers on the strategy and structure of the blog.

The success of Dulwich OnView (DOV) is due to all the individual volunteers who have contributed their diverse skills as well as their time to the project so I want to set out for the record acknowledgements to the core team who have, to date, made the blog an eclectic and lively online community:

Founder Members and Editorial Team

INGRID BEAZLEY - In her capacity as chair of the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery she facilitated Yang-May’s concept, ’selling’ it to the Gallery staff and Friends committee. Now as one of Dulwich OnView’s acting editors, she commissions articles from the Gallery staff and from the local community and promotes the website ceaslessly, locally as well as internationally.

ANGIE MACDONALD - took over from Catherine Fraher as acting editor in the early months of Dulwich OnView and shaped the role of the Acting Editor. She wrote the Editor’s Handbook, trained other team members to be editors and to use Wordpress blogging software. She also writes occasionally for DOV. More recently she has been involved in project managing the redesign of DOV, co-ordinating the team ideas and working closely with Ingrid and the web designer to create a new-look DOV.

YANG-MAY OOI - created the concept of Dulwich OnView as a community blog and developed the key “guerrilla marketing” strategy for the blog to raise Dulwich Picture Gallery’s profile among the online demographic. She also planned the DOV team structure and set up the web-based collaborative systems which make this project self-managing and non-hierarchical. This includes creating the collaborative editorial documents which ensure that the blog runs smoothly and writing the several handbooks which set out all the processes for current and new members of the team. She continues to provide strategic advice as well as contributing multimedia content to the blog.

ANNA SAYBURN - wrote many of the earliest DOV articles, helping to develop the informal, community style of Dulwich OnView through a mixture of interviews with local people, reviews of local events and pieces about local history and art associated with Dulwich. She served as an acting editor for part of the first two years, helping bring in new contributors and fostering the sense of community. She still writes regularly for DOV.

STEVE SLACK - writes off the wall articles for DOV with the aim of debunking the myth that Dulwich is populated solely by rich, posh people. He’s written about pub quizzes, street names, local history and general peculiar cultural goings-on. Working with DOV has helped him develop as an online writer and given him skills he uses in other freelance work.

TAHRA MORTON - is an intern at DOV, writing articles as well as carrying out her role as one of the acting editors while on a work secondment in Brussels, Belgium, underlining that DOV is truly an online community that while local is also without borders.

SALLY ANN JOHNSON - advised the team on risk management and helped develop DOV’s article submissions policy. She also writes for the blog.

CATHERINE FRAHER - was DOV’s first acting editor. She co-ordinated the team of volunteers, editorial meetings and uploaded much of the early content onto the blog.

SHAPA BEGUM - an intern at DOV, she currently writes articles and is responsible for the Paul Nash online art competition. She is provided with regular support by the editorial team to learn and develop skills in networking, editorial management and technical skills.

ANNA MARIA DI BRINA - is one of DOV’s acting editors and also writes articles on art and events.

ANGELA CORRIAS - contributed to the editorial style of DOV as one of the acting editors and collaborated in its content with interviews to local artists and coverage of local events.

Other Contributors

Amanda Greatorex, Greville Havenhand, Laverne Hunt, Ed Saunders, Rebecca Portsmouth, Erica Green, Steve Overbury, Nigel Thorpe, Lorenzo Ali, Daniel Pateman, Patrick Knight, Bella Tullo, “Jane Morris”

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Related info:

Dulwich OnView
Patrons of Dulwich Picture Gallery
Blogging for the Heritage Sector
Dulwich OnView leads the way for heritage sector blogging
Our pro-bono project, Dulwich OnView, makes impact in heritage sector
Dulwich OnView Wikipedia entry

Some friends and I met up for dinner the other evening at Tukdin, a Malaysian restaurant in the Paddington area.

It was recommended to me by Zaharah Wan, aka Kak Teh, so it was a great bonus that she and her husband Wan Hulaimi, aka Awang Goneng, the bestselling Malaysian author of Growing Up in Trengganu could join us to introduce us to what turned out to be their “home from home”.

We were also joined by my good pal, Ingrid Beazley, blogger and co-editor of Dulwich OnView, the online magazine of the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery and my partner, web designer Angie Macdonald.

We did a podcast review of the restaurant and also got the opportunity to meet Tukdin, the man himself. Check it out via the player below.

You can subscribe to the Fusion View Mobile Podcast by clicking on the “Subscribe with iTunes” button - it’s free and new episodes will be downloaded automatically to your iTunes application.

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If you’re tempted by our review to try Tukdin for yourself, the address is 41 Craven Road W2 3BX Tel: 020 7723 6955. Please mention Fusion View if you do.

Anna Sayburn is a journalist and online editor at the British Medical Journal. She also blogs at Dulwich OnView (which is how I got to know her) and her two blogs, Work in Progress and Bloomsbury Bluestocking, while working on her first novel. Now that’s true dedication to the craft of writing - which is why I wanted to introduce her to you all here on Fusion View who love words, writing and reading.

Here is our interview:

What is your novel about and what inspired you to write it?
The novel seems to be about things that have been buried - buried bones, buried secrets, buried treasure! I first got the inkling of an idea for it when I walked to Canterbury last Easter, with my husband Phil. Long walks seem to be very good inspiration for writing. Lots of the things and places we came across on the way have found themselves into the plot.

How are you finding the writing process?
Slow! I’ve never tried to write anything of this length before. I work as a journalist, so tend to think in terms of 350 words for a lead story, 1000 words for a feature. I’m aiming for 80,000 words for the novel. It seems an awful lot and it’s hard not to get daunted by the sheer scale. But when I actually sit down and write, it’s fine and I enjoy it. I tend to write the bones of the plot quite quickly, then have to go back and fill in the detail later.

Do you have a routine or a particular approach to the writing process?
The main challenge is to find a stretch of time when I won’t be interrupted and force myself not to do anything else! I can write for about 2 hours before I need a break, and I think I start writing rubbish after about 4 hours, so I try to stop then. In an ideal world, I’d get up early, write all morning and go out for a long walk in the afternoon. In the real world, I go to work, come home, make dinner and then switch on the laptop for a couple of hours before bed.

How does it compare to writing as a journalist or blogger?
The scale is the main difference. Plus, of course, it all has to come out of your own head, as a sustainable story. Making a coherent plot is a real challenge. I’m surprised how much I’ve enjoyed that bit. I do summaries of each chapter, and I’m about 5 chapters ahead in terms of plotting, compared to what I’ve actually written. But the time frame so different. I’ve no idea when I’ll finish the novel, while journalism and blogging are both pretty instant hits. I’ve always written fast and I tend to do blog posts in lunch hours or spare 10 minutes here and there. For the novel, I need at least a couple of hours, or there’s not much point starting.

What do you enjoy about blogging in contrast?
The immediacy of blogging is great. I can think of an idea, write it up, find a photo and post it in less than an hour. It couldn’t be more different from writing the novel. It’s also a great excuse to put off writing the novel! In fact, I’ve started a second blog, BloomsburyBluestocking, just to have more space to witter on in a non-professional manner. Trouble is, writing is addictive and the more I write, the more I seem to want to write.

Photo: Anna Sayburn, from her blog

Chinese-English translator, Nicky Harman, who has previously written for this blog, emailed me last week with some information about a talk she is giving tonight on literary translation. I’m sorry for the short notice about the talk, but if you can make it, it looks like a really interesting insider’s view of the world of translation.

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The Meridian Society/BBCN will be hosting a talk on Tuesday 17th November, 2009 in association with the CSSA of London School of Economics. The lecture will be delivered by Ms Nicky Harman Lecturer at Imperial College.

The many lives of the literary translator

Nicky Harman divides her time between lecturing in technical translation at Imperial College, London and translating literary works from Chinese to English. Her recent book-length translations include Xinran’s Letter from an Unknown Chinese Mother, and Han Dong’s Banished! (awarded a PEN Translation Fund Grant and long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Award, 2008). She also works on the website Paper Republic, which promotes Chinese literature in translation, and is actively concerned with the need to encourage and mentor beginning Chinese-to-English literary translators.

Her research interests focus on aspects of Chinese to English literary translation, and she was Visiting Scholar in the Chinese Departments of Fudan University, Shanghai; and Peking University, Beijing, in 2008, as well as at the Research Centre for Translation at Chinese University Hong Kong, 2006.

Nicky says: “This lecture talk will look at a number of different aspects of literary translation. I will draw on examples from my own work to illustrate the linguistic and cultural challenges of Chinese-to-English translation, and will also examine how the translator needs to present their work to the outside world, that is, publishers and, beyond them, the readers. Just as literary translators have to assume many roles - talent scout and promoter, as well as translator - so this seminar will touch on a whole kaleidoscope of issues. The aim will be to communicate to the audience some of the passion which I feel for translation as a whole, and Chinese-to-English literary translation in particular.”

Time and Venue

Date: Tuesday 17th November, 2009
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: D302 in Clement House
Address: The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Houghton Street, Aldwych, London, WC2A 2AE

Transport: The nearest tube stations are Holborn and Temple (both are 5 mins walk)
The nearest Main Line stations are Waterloo and Charing Cross (both are 10 mins walk)
Buses go to Aldwych: 19, 38, 55 59, 68, 91, 168, 243, 341 & 521
Alternative: For more options please go to:
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en

Tickets are not required but you are urged to RSVP to reserve a seat.
Tel: 07973796866 or Email: themeridiansociety@gmail.com.
TMS/SACU Members free Non-members £3 donation
Note: This talk will be conducted in English

The Meridian Society is a registered charity (No. 1115664) and a company limited by guarantee (No. 5572806

My good friend and co-author Silvia Cambie had a week or more of the ultimate nightmare - her blog was down due to hosting problems. She has just tweeted that her blog is back up and running - what a relief!

In case you’ve had trouble locating her blog and website in the last little while, here is the URL again: www.chandacom.com

For those of you who’ve not discovered Silvia’s blog yet, you must go and check it out - she writes on cross-cultural matters from her own wide experience of working in Europe and internationally as well as being the kind of brilliant communications professional who can catch and analyse the latest trends in her field. Her blog also shares some of her personal stories and is a great example of blogging for business purposes without losing the personal touch. (OK, so I’m her friend and we wrote a book together and some of you might be thinking I’d be biased - but don’t take my word for it: read her blog and judge for yourself!)

Leadership coach and good pal Nicola Stevens interviewed me this afternoon about my book International Communications Strategy and using social media for business. She used the Ipadio app on her iPhone to record our conversation and then posted it up to the web within minutes of our chat - so it was a little nerve-wracking knowing there was no opportunity for any editing before we went out “on air”!

She also snapped me in full flow with her iPhone and posted it up to her Posterous site.

Off record after the interview, we talked about how easy it is these days to publish images, video, audio and text. A click of a button on a mobile phone is all it takes! Even just a few years ago, it was still very fiddly to get the content from whatever source - a digital camera, a video tape, an audio recorder - convert it to the relevant format and find the software to FTP transfer it up to some specialist server and then to get it to your website… Now, even a self-confessed non-tecchie like Nicola can be a one-woman multimedia hub - all she needs is her iPhone!

That was the question that the Pan Asian Women’s Association asked at their inaugural launch event last night.

PAWA (sounds like “power”) was created by a group of UK based Asian women with backgrounds from the Indian sub-continent, Korea, Malaysia and more and its tag line is “Empowering Asian Women Worldwide”. The event took place at the lovely premises of Asia House and was packed with high-powered, high-achieving professional women and entrepreneurs - they were mainly of Asian origin but the organisation is also open to men and non-Asian women with an interest in the region. I was delighted to have been invited and it was so energising to chat to so many dynamic women representing 30 countries ranging from Iran across to Japan.

The high aims and global vision of this association was signalled from the start with an opening addres by Baroness Lydia Dunn who had been a member of the the Cabinet in Hong Kong and is a leading light on the international business stage.

The evening began with a short vox pop film asking ordinary people in one London street “What comes to mind when you think of an Asian woman?” There were young white men, Asian men, older men, white women and young Asian girls, a young Chinese boy so the answers were many and varied. But there were some themes that kept recurring: charming, strong, outwardly subservient, sexy, strong mothers, good wives. When asked about role models, the answers ranged from Indira Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benathir Bhutto and Michelle Yeo to “don’t know” to one lovely man who said, “My wife.”

But there was not among the stereotypes in the vox pop an image that described many of the women in the room. Business woman. Lawyer. Accountant. Entrepreneur. TV executive. Journalist. Sure, many of us there were charming, strong, sexy, mothers and spouses and perhaps outwardly subservient when we needed to be but we were - are - also engaged in the business and professional world. There was a lively panel discussion following the film where a consultant psychiatrist Dr Ghazala Afzal Hameed, an acclaimed choreographer Gauri Sharma Tripathi, a formidable financier Sonia Lo and a policy advisor on women’s issues Anni Marjoram discussed the stereotypes and their own experiences of being an Asian woman in their respective fields.

The formal part of the event came to a close with some remarks by the Founder and President of PAWA, the striking SungJoo Kim, a leading entrepreneur who built her billion dollar business from nothing.

I had been invited along with my co-author Silvia Cambie by Mei Sim Lai and also Betty Yao, two lovely women whom I’ve recently got to know. When we first met, I liked them immediately - they are down to earth, charming and friendly. It was only later, when I Googled them (as you do these days!), that I discovered that Mei Sim is an OBE and Betty is an MBE and they are both amazingly high achieving in the field of finance (Mei Sim) and Asian culture and arts (Betty).

For me, the power (ha ha) of yesterday evening was seeing all these extraordinary - and also in many ways, ordinary - women all gathered in one place. In my daily life, I mix quite happily with a primarily English crowd and a range of international friends. I have Malaysian and Asian friends but they are often dispersed around London and the UK. In the daily news and public media, it’s not often that an Asian woman makes the news - other than sad stories about poor Indian/ Pakistani women murdered by their families or Chinese migrant women (and men) found dead in the back of a lorry and other disempowered images. So in my daily consciousness, dynamic Asian women don’t really feature. Which made the impact of last night all the stronger for me - I had a sense of relaxing, that these women understand some of the challenges that I’ve faced being a Malaysian-Chinese woman in the UK and I also felt inspired by the vibrant energy buzzing around the room!

So, yeah, I’m going to be signing up as a member of PAWA - I’m off to fill in my form now!

If you check them out because of this post, do mention FusionView.co.uk and also come back and let me know and we can keep an eye out for each other at their next event.

I met indie filmmaker Anne O’Connell a few years back through filmmaker David Grey. She told me that she was making a series of documentary films on “Hidden London” and the idea intrigued me immediately. She was on the lookout for interesting and unusual stories for the series and with my legal background, I wondered if I could come up with an idea around a legal theme that might fit in with the series.

Anne picks up the story:

I must confess that when Yang-May suggested making a film about Garden Court Chambers, I knew nothing about the Inns of Court, nor how a set of chambers was run. There was a lot to learn!

However, from the first reading of the company’s website, Colin Cook stood out as the ideal person to be at the centre of the film – someone who had worked at the Chambers for nearly thirty years and who had not only seen the changes taking place in the heart of the British legal system, but as a black senior clerk, he actually embodied some of those changes.

‘A Different World’ is the second film in a series of short films called ‘Hidden London’. The idea behind the series is to find London’s local institutions, places which are often unnoticed by the majority of Londoners, but which have seen all the changes of this constantly shifting city over the decades.

The key to a good documentary, like a good drama, is often to find a character at the centre of the film who comes across to the audience and who can carry the story. Colin turned out to be a charming and willing interviewee, so that aspect of the film happily fell into place.

The rest of the filming was not so easy! One of the key parts of the film is the day when two of the Chambers’ barristers were going to ‘take silk’ and become QC’s. However the two people involved from Garden Court decided at the last moment that they didn’t want to be in the film and I had turned up for the day only to have nothing to shoot!

The ceremony was taking place in Westminster Hall, which is inside the Houses of Commons, and not in Westminster City Hall as I had been told, which is on Victoria Street. In retrospect this made more sense and was far more opulent. But this did mean that I could get nowhere near the entrance – the police were unimpressed by my pleas to be let in!

All in all I had to be very inventive that day finding scenes to film which told the story I wished to tell. I also had to work very hard in the edit as the anticipated script didn’t materialise.

In the end, I think that all the effort to overcome these obstacles proved useful as the film has twice been shortlisted for Best Documentary in short film festivals and this has taken me to such exotic locations as Pentedatillo in the very south of Italy and er… Wood Green in North London!

The ‘Hidden London’ series will one day be for sale on one DVD. The films so far are:

• ‘Blustons’ – life in an old-fashioned ladies-wear shop on the Kentish Town Road
• ‘A Different World’ – change in the heart of the British legal system
• ‘Hampton Pool’ – As London’s outdoor lidos close, one pool is saved by local action.
• The 4th film about Wilton’s Music Hall in East London is in post production.

Photo credits:
Anne, my own album
Colin & barristers, still from Anne’s film