Digital Road Map for the Arts: Launch

Fri 22 Feb, 3 - 5pm
You are warmly invited to the launch of ‘Digital Roadmap for the Arts,’ a new publication by the CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies at the University of Leicester

You are warmly invited to the launch of ‘Digital Roadmap for the Arts,’ a new publication by Dr Sophie Frost, Creative Economy Engagement Fellow at CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies at the University of Leicester, in partnership with Phoenix and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The Roadmap provides a series of practical tools intended to help build digital maturity in UK arts organisations. The launch includes a stimulating panel discussion featuring the following diverse speakers from across the sector: Peter Bonnell – Senior Curator at Quad Derby, Rob Lindsay – The Space, Dr Sophie Frost – CAMEo, Uzma Johal MBE – Co-Founder and Director of Threshold Studios and Professor Sophy Smith – Director of the Institute for Creative Technologies, De Montfort University. Refreshments and a networking opportunity will follow the event.

Phoenix has been working with CAMEo to develop its digital maturity as it looks to expand the organisation through a capital development project, adding a new, larger gallery space, two additional cinema screens and more production and educational spaces by 2020. Our art programme explores the creative and cultural impact of media and digital technology through exhibitions, screenings and educational events.

All welcome. Tickets are free but limited. Please book your place here.

SPEAKER BIOS

Peter Bonnell: Peter is a Senior Curator based at QUAD in Derby. He has been a professional Curator for almost 15 years, and prior to that a visual artist exhibiting work in the UK, across Europe and in the US. Peter has been based at QUAD since early 2012 where he has led on a range of projects, including the mass participation film work Derby Soap Opera with the artist and filmmaker Marinella Senatore involving almost 15,000 Derby Residents; group exhibitions Illuminated; The Pride and the Passion: Contemporary Art, Football and The Derby County Collection and the AI/ robot themed exhibition Our Friends Electric. Solo shows he has curated/ organised at QUAD include significant projects by Lindsay Seers; Benedict Drew; susan pui san lok; Susan MacWilliam, and Joey Holder. He has also managed and curated a number of digitally focused projects at QUAD – including the immersive AR gallery-based game-experience Glitched: Quest for the Lost MacGuffin; the interactive installation What a Loving and Beautiful World by Japanese digital art collective teamLab; the digital installation Line Segment Space by Korean based Kimchi and Chips, and most recently a new VR commission by the American artist and digital art pioneer Rebecca Allen. Before this, Peter was Curator at ArtSway, in the New Forest, where he was responsible for the exhibitions, residency and commissioning programmes and the education programme, working on significant exhibitions by artists such as Nathaniel Mellors; Hew Locke; Christopher Orr; Gayle Chong Kwan; Jamie Shovlin; Anne Hardy; Beate Gutshow and many more. Whilst at ArtSway he worked on a number of digital-focused projects, by artists such as boredomresearch, and Gibson/Martelli. In addition, Peter co-curated along with ArtSway Director Mark Segal the New Forest Pavilion at the 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011 Venice Biennales. He studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University, graduating in 1995, and completed an MFA in Art (majoring in painting) at the University of Arkansas in 2002. In 2004 he graduated with an MA(RCA) in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London; for the final graduate exhibition at the RCA Peter co-curated This much is certain working directly with the artists Jeremy Deller and Dexter Dalwood.

Sophie Frost: Sophie is an interdisciplinary scholar of Visual Culture and Cultural and Creative Industries, based in London. Having concluded her AHRC Creative Economy Fellowship at CAMEo, where she researched the digital impact of Phoenix Arts Centre, she is now Digital Fellow (Royal Pavilion Museums Brighton & Hove) on the AHRC ‘One by One’ project led by Museum Studies at University of Leicester. Sophie lectures on the BA Arts and Festivals Management course at De Montfort University and leads the case study module at Southbank Centre for King’s College London’s MA Education in Arts and Cultural Settings. Sophie also works as a freelance research consultant for a range of arts organisations, including Southbank Centre and Freelands Foundation, an arts education charity established in 2015 by Elisabeth Murdoch.

Uzma Johal MBE: Uzma’s extensive career in arts and media began in 1994 after graduating from King Alfred’s College, Winchester where she studied Drama, Theatre and TV Production. Inspired by the power of live and recorded media in giving voice to communities, she sought out experiences in both broadcast and community settings.

After relocating from London, Uzma, along with like-minded creatives, set up Don’t Look Now, a voluntary artist-led organisation committed to developing local media artists and supporting local communities in Northamptonshire. Its rapid success evolved in the establishment of Threshold Studios, a social enterprisewhose mission is ‘Creative Media for Social Change.’ As Co-Founder and Co-Director of Threshold Studios, Uzma has been producing new media art since 1998, and is Festival Director of Lincoln’s Frequency Festival of Digital Culture, a biennial celebration of digital arts and culture established in 2011.

Uzma has also undertaken significant strategic development work in arts and education sectors across the East Midlands, delivering digital strategies and facilitating organisations to embrace technology into their futures, as well as brokering partnerships with the Higher Education sector to unlock opportunities for meaningful, sector specific internships and collaborative production in new and emerging technologies.

She served on Arts Council England’s Regional and then Area Councils for eight years championing and advocating for diversity and equality in the arts, especially for new and emerging talent, as well as the opportunities technology affords the sector in connecting with a wide spectrum of audiences and communities.

Uzma was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours List for services to the Digital Economy in the East Midlands, recognising her significant contributions in championing diversity and equality of voices in the arts and media sector, fostering talent and devising routes into industry for those who are currently under-represented.

Rob Lindsay: Rob is a Digital Producer and Social Marketer, who specialises in helping arts organisations use digital media to engage meaningfully with new and developing audiences. Having worked in arts and broadcast for over fifteen years, Rob focuses on audience responses, and how social videos have to behave differently to other media.

Sophy Smith: De Montfort University, Leicester