The Memory Workshop Open Days
A series of workshops and conversations about technical, narrative, and ethical considerations when archiving and documenting contested histories and heritage.
The Memory Workshop Open Days
15 Nov 2024 - 13 Dec 2024
Explore the Memory Workshop Open Day events below, please note you need to book a ticket for each event separately:
Podcasting is an important medium for storytelling. It is used as an oral history and a place to redress historical injustices. Creatives and academics are increasingly using podcasts to produce discourse and archive the voices of those not normally present in the official record.
This session will bring a full studio podcasting suite into the UCL Urban Room to show students, academics, and creative collaborators how to use the medium as a tool for workshopping histories.
As an open session, we invite participants at entry skill levels and who are interested in historical, heritage and urban issues that relate to social-cultural storytelling.
Specialists or prospective students can check out the MA in Audio Storytelling for Radio and Podcast
The Urban Room and Memory Workshop are invested in collaborative co-production for research, archiving, and exhibition making. This type of work is often challenging and requires a certain ethical framework to ensure that memories relating to urban, cultural, or political injustices are meaningfully understood. In this session Dr Kara Blackmore will present the new ethics framework for the Memory Workshop. She will share her experiences as Curator with four different collaborations done to date with the Urban Room. Ethics statements and risk assessments will be shared in detail to empower students, artists, academics, and community organisers interested in doing work together.
For specialists and prospective students interested in ethical-coproduction in Urban or historical settings check out the MaSc in Global Urbanism and Public History MA
The imaginative relationship between the archive and documentary filmmaking practices
Archival materials – films, photographs, oral histories, objects – possess a material, affective and sensory dimension that brims with possibility. Far from being inert objects that we can use as a simple representation of the past, archives are 'active' in a myriad of ways, creating an imaginative link between the past and present.
Through the presentation of examples drawn from a wide range of documentary and experimental films that incorporate / rework / interpret archival materials, in this session Caterina Sartori and Ishbel Tunnadine will lead participants to reflect on the relationship between documentary filmmaking and the archive; and they will facilitate discussions about approaches, aesthetics, methods, ethics and access.
The aim of the session is to inspire participants to develop inventive ways of working with archives and film, which make the most of the material, affective and sensory qualities of archives and of the moving image’s affordances. The session will include a presentation and discussion of example films, followed by a hands-on session in which participants will be encouraged to develop and workshop ideas for their individual projects, and receive feedback from the workshop leads and their peers.
Book your ticket for Archive and Documentary Filmmaking Practices
Join Professor Nishat Awan in an interactive session about research and archival practices through digital platforms. Architectural practices and research on unsettlement, which uses film, coding, exhibition and collaging. The discussion will focus on the platform, topological atlas and the considerations that researchers, web designers make in co-producing open-access resources. Throughout this session participants will understand how to relate between lived experiences and map-based digital platforms.
Nishat is Professor of Architecture & Visual Culture. Her research focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and space, including questions related to diasporas, migration and border regimes. She is interested in modes of spatial representation, particularly in relation to the digital and the limits of witnessing as a form ethical engagement with distant places.
Join us for a fun and interactive workshop where you'll learn about using our Memory Workshop facilities to archive, podcast and more!
Memory is transacted nearly every day. What is remembered and what is forgotten is central to the negotiations around regeneration and development. But how much does memory cost? Does documenting and archiving have a specific line item on the balance sheet? This session invites audiences into a difficult conversation about money and memory. It will look at the real economy of memory and the relationship between community-based knowledge systems and academic ones.
This conversation is inspired by the work of Toby Laurent Belson who has moved between roles as an artist, activist, board member, educator, and policy maker. Operating from a perspective that ‘power speaks to power’ Toby will share his experiences across these various positions and recent collaborations with UCL to inform the creation of a social justice archive in North Kensington.
Plan your visit
The Memory Workshop Open Days run from 15th November 2024 – 12th December 2024. Visit the Urban Room between 10am-6pm Monday-Saturday during this time to find out more about the Memory Workshop.
Special events will be hosted during this time exploring specific aspects of collection and digitisation. These events will require a ticket.
About the Memory Workshop
The Memory Workshop is a collecting and digitisation project within the UCL Urban Room. Using the idea of lab-based learning, the workshop records oral histories within London and on campus in our mini-studio. Students and partner users of the workshop can digitise vinyl records, VHS and cassette tapes as well as edit their own digital materials. This work is part of Urban Room’s commitment to supporting impactful student research and developing collaborations with artists, residents and organisations around the Olympic Park where UCL East is located.
About the UCL Urban Room
Located at One Pool Street, the public-facing UCL Urban Room hosts events, exhibitions, workshops and engagement with local stakeholders, professional audiences, and the wider public. Exploring the impact of industry, globalisation, regeneration and gentrification on the six Olympic Park boroughs and their people, UCL Urban Room is a partnership between UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett, School for the Creative and Cultural Industries and UCL Library Services: Special Collections. For more information email urbanroom@ucl.ac.uk
The events and workshops are curated by Kara Blackmore, Spencer Samuel and Ishbel Tunnadine
Dr. Kara Blackmore
Dr Kara Blackmore is a curator and researcher who works at the intersections of arts, heritage, and social repair. Her practice is informed by long-term collaborations in areas affected by conflict and migration. Kara is the Curator of the UCL Urban Room where she supports experiential teaching, leads exhibition-based research, and fosters community dialogue. She is also the co-curator for the 15th Dakar Biennale (2024) under the theme of The Wake with a special guest curator section entitled We Will Stop When the Earth Roars. In this work she builds on her decolonial and feminist curatorial practice.
Spencer Samuel
Spencer Samuel is a Media Production Technical Manager working in ISD, responsible for managing and overseeing the specialist media spaces and studios within SCCI, including Media Studios, Specialist Computer Cluster rooms, BlackBox in Marshgate and the cinema in Pool Street. With over 20 years of experience in media departments and education (specifically digital media, and film production) Spencer has supported school projects, advised academic teams on practice, overseeing equipment needs for multiple modules, and led practical workshops for media classes.
Previously Spencer taught practical film modules for London Metropolitan University on their film courses. Between 2015-2023, he worked as the Senior Technical demonstrator in film & media, where he played a key role in developing and delivering audio-visual specialisms within the faculty. Before leaving, he designed, established and project managed the new London Met film studio. During the pandemic Spencer lead devising new ways to connect and teach media students online. Spencer also ran the broadcast studio at London Met, supporting journalism students in practical media production.
Spencer also has extensive experience as a freelancer on various commercial projects, working with clients such as BBC football league show for IMG, The National Gallery, Royal Academy of the Arts, London Electronic Orchestra and Hot Natured.
Spencer incorporates his rich industry experience into his teaching, aiming to share commercial knowledge to bridge the gap between theory and practice in education, with many of his students going on to earn RTS student awards.
Ishbel Tunnadine
Ishbel Tunnadine is an image-based artist who works with experimental photographic processes and filmmaking, writing, print and film. Her work is often site-specific, exploring the relationship between fiction and memory in the urban fabric of cities, with an interest in grassroots histories and struggle, and the politics of archival practices.
Working collaboratively is central to her art practice. With several years of experience facilitating art and filmmaking workshops in both education and arts such as BFI Film Academy, Studio Voltaire, Wysing Art Centre, Camden Summer School, City and Islington College, and PRU Schools across Bow and Hackney boroughs. She has also worked for Batalha, Centro de Cinema (Porto) as an editor of programming and their publications. Recent art residencies include BRAW Collective, Aqtushetii (Georgia), and involved in research projects as part of Stacion CCA (Kosovo).
Further information
Ticketing
Ticketed
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes