Tartan Noir

The second Commercial Music Research Group seminar this year will take place in the UWS space at CCA Glasgow on Tuesday 13th November, from 5.30 - 7.00pm.

Lecturer in Music/Programme Leader for MA Songwriting and Performance David Scott will present

Classic Scottish Albums: Tartan Noir

I’ve presented and researched BBC Radio Scotland’s Classic Scottish Albums for 6 years and 6 series. In that time the production team have made around 32 radio features each dedicated to one classic album. My Commercial Music Research Group seminar will focus on the critical and practical factors that can be said to influence the construction of canon and will try to identify some strands of Scottishness that feature repeatedly across the series. James Ellroy coined the phrase Tartan Noir to describe an emerging genre of Scottish crime fiction that seemed to take some of its cues from his own L.A. underworld, albeit with a more guttural, weather-beaten tone. My talk will offer some examples of the same relationships within popular music, from Tom Waits to Bill Wells & Aiden Moffat and beyond.

Please bring your Tartan Noir vinyl to the party.

World Alliance for Arts Education: cultural encounters and northern reflections

Dr Kathryn Burnett, Senior Lecturer/Subject Leader for Broadcast Production and Graham Jeffery, Reader in Music and Performance are travelling to Rovaniemi, Lapland, to participate in the World Alliance for Arts Education summit from 9th - 11th November. Both will present on aspects of pedagogy and practice in the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at UWS.

Kathryn Burnett and Tony Grace: Making a Creative Space: developing integrated approaches to creative practice teaching

Graham Jeffery: Education for cultural practice/education for cultural economy? Intersections, interdisciplinarity and issues

The full programme for the conference, and the following meeting of the University of the Arctic Sustainable Art and Design Network, of which UWS is a member, can be found here.

Recycling Mumbai: the battle for space in Dharavi’s 13th Compound

Friday November 23rd, 2012
Clubroom, CCA Glasgow, 5.30pm - 7.00pm

In 2012, as an uninvited guest, Ben Parry spent extended periods in Mumbai as researcher and artist. Based in the Dharavi slum, and working with community members, the Acorn Foundation and other NGOs, Ben has been interrogating his own outsider ‘gaze’ and that of others who come to investigate, intervene and ultimately extract knowledge about Mumbai’s informal or unofficial urban practices. Ben will be discussing Reversing the Gaze: a project which investigates the displacement of 450 families formerly living on the pipeline in Dharavi’s recycling district, known as the 13^th Compound. The pipeline is one of the most documented and recognised images of ‘slum world’, made famous through its depiction in Slumdog Millionaire and National Geographic magazine. An over-productive global interest in Dharavi has even spawned an industry in slum tours. Last year, many of the residents of the 13^th Compound disappeared without trace: they were the first residents to be evicted without entitlement to local rehousing through Dharavi’s Slum Redevelopment Schemes. The destruction of homes and livelihoods in aggressive land reclamation went largely unreported in the press.

Ben Parry is a visual artist based in London. He received his BA at Glasgow School of Art and holds a Masters in Urban Planning from University of Liverpool. He co-directs arts organisation Jump Ship Rat through which he curates and produces exhibitions, site-specific projects and unsanctioned  interventions in the public realm. He is undertaking a practice-led PhD in the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of the West of Scotland. His work explores tactical and informal urbanism; appropriations and interim uses of voids and liminal spaces. He is co-editor of the book Cultural Hijack: rethinking intervention (2012 Liverpool University Press) an anthology of experimental approaches to situation-led urban interventions.

To book tickets, please visit the CCA website.