ISSUE 3 | NOVEMBER 2009

insidepmeMonthly newsletter for staff

FORUM CREATED IN RESPONSE TO POOR COMMUNICATION“Communication will improve in the new home that is PME” That’s the promise from Associate Dean, Professor Richard Woolley who is determined that managers in the faculty should operate an open door policy for staff.

Concerns about communication between staff and PME management were raised at the Faculty Development Event held at the Conservatoire in September.

But Professor Woolley, who was appointed Associate Dean of the faculty in April 2009, believes that problems in the last academic

year were largely due to the faculty “moving house”.

He said: “I think the best analogy for it (the formation of PME) is moving house. You move into a house and everything is packed in boxes, you don’t know where anything is. Last year there wasn’t a faculty, there was only the beginning of one.”

Professor Woolley believes that a combination of the heavy workload that comes from running a completely new faculty with such a small number of management staff has affected the time it has taken to implement standards.

‘Of all the faculties that came out of it (the restructuring of faculties in 2008), the only one that was completely new was Performance, Media and English. All the others were existing faculties and had little bits added or taken away, but there was no existing structure for PME”.

Professor Woolley also believes that merging two of the university’s biggest autonomous departments, The Conservatoire and Birmingham School of Acting, along with the School of English and the School of Media, made it hard for staff to recognise where and why the faculty existed. More on Page 2

IN THIS ISSUE:JOHN KIRK’S TRIP TO THREE OF ASIA’S BIG CITIES.......... PAGE 3

STAR STUDENT INVITED BACK TO SCHOOL OF ACTING...........PAGE 2

PAGE 2

DOORS SHOULD BE OPEN TO STAFF IDEAS AND INITIATIVESBY LUCAS COE

SCHOOL OF ACTING TO INVITE BACK STAR STUDENT

(Continued from p1) “It probably appeared from below, looking up, that instead of being in a faculty such as BIAD which had been around for years and years with standard communication procedures, there had been a change to a situation where there appeared to be nobody above you at all. Staff thoughts may have been ‘BIAD is gone, but where is PME?”

However, Professor Woolley is confident there has been an improvement in communication procedures more recently.

A forum has been set up called the Faculty Standards Quality Enhancement Committee, which meets every two months and gives staff the chance to raise their concerns - a model borrowed from established faculties in the university.

A more regular forum, which has been

Helen Embleton graduated in 2006 and has since performed in theatre productions such as Motherland, which won three awards at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Daniele Sanderson, who is Head of the BA (Hons) Acting course said, “It’s always great to hear about student success and we are really trying to celebrate those successes.

“Helen was always an extremely focused student, and that together with her talent makes it unsurprising that she has been instrumental in developing her own opportunities.’

Ms Embleton will be asked to share her acting experiences with current third year acting students and give advice on how to make the most of an acting degree.

However, she warns that the life of a young actor is not always desirable: “My advice to

anyone looking to enter this industry is that you have to need it. The life of an actor is very hard, and you have to be prepared for

the months where you have to temp in a call centre, not knowing where your next job is coming from.”

Ms Embleton has clearly been committed to her professional acting career.

After leaving BSA in 2006 she signed up for another acting course at the Live Academy in Newcastle to gain more experience and make contacts.

This led to her being cast for a number of small but successful productions, resulting in the ‘Spotlight Award For Best Actress’ and a nomination for Best Actress at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Her success is not a surprise to Ms Sanderson who said, “Helen is a prime example of the spirit of BSA, which is to inspire our graduates to be entrepreneurs.”

HEAD OF ENGLISH SITS ON NATIONAL WRITING PANEL

introduced since last year, is the Faculty Executive.

Professor Woolley explained:

“The Faculty Executive meets every two weeks and this is where the Heads of School attend and report on issues which have arisen in their departments.”

The Associate Dean, who also favours much more formal and direct methods of communication, added:“There should always be informal channels,

and in that sense doors should always be open, especially if staff have ideas and initiatives that they want to discuss. They are always more than welcome to make an appointment.”

If you would like to discuss any issues with Professor Richard Woolley, contact richard.woolley@bcu.ac.uk

Birmingham School of Acting (BSA) has invited back an award-winning graduate who has been celebrating a career in the spotlight.

BY LUCAS COE

*Do you think communication in PME is getting better and have you got your own ideas about how it could be improved? If so email sue.heseltine@bcu.ac.uk or lucas.coe@students.bcu.ac.uk to contribute to a staff feedback forum for the next edition of Inside PME. Comments and ideas can be used without publication of your name if you wish.

PAGE 3

I visited all three in two weeks at the end of October as part of my secondment to PME to seek opportunities for research collaboration, student recruitment and feeder college collaborations.

John Kirk in front of Shanghai Foreign Studies University.

Thanks to strong leads to follow from Sky Zhang and Rhian Dobbs from the Birmingham City University International

Office, and pioneering work by BIAD, I managed to achieve all three objectives. It had been 10 years since I had last worked in this role, when I headed the International Office at Sheffield Hallam University.

Beijing was sunny, but cooling, Shanghai still hot and Kuala Lumpur a steamy 34oC. The jet lag was just the same as I remembered. The first weekend was spent in a recruitment fair, where the notable change was how much more competitive the world higher education market has become in the last decade. Everyone from the French to the Poles is offering to teach in English, and the USA and Australia were there in large numbers.

Beijing’s China Communications University is interested in research collaboration in media of all kinds, and wants us to join their prestigious network. Shanghai Jiaotong

University – one of the top five in China

The Petronas ‘Twin Towers’ in Kuala Lumpur – once the tallest in the world.

wants us to recruit its BA students to our Media MAs, and a linked private college has proposed a 2+2 BA suite. Finally in Kuala Lumpur a leading private university college is in talks with us about an articulation agreement for a suite of courses in PR, Branding, and Advertising with help from the Business School and BIAD.

A TALE OF THREE CITIES BY JOHN KIRK

HEAD OF ENGLISH SITS ON NATIONAL WRITING PANEL

BY LUCAS COE

“I’m delighted to serve on a very diverse panel that includes the novelist Ken Follett, literary agent Ed Victor and political commentator and BBC presenter Matthew Parris,” the Head of School explained.

The National Academy of Writing hopes that The Good Writing Awards will promote good English and help to halt what it sees as a recent decline in standards.

So in a bold move, the organisation has decided not only to reward the best written pieces in the competition, but to name and shame the worst submissions.

Professor Roberts added: “I’ve been publishing for over twenty years and reading good and bad writing for much longer. I have to say that some of the worst I’ve come across has been produced by university quality offices up and down the land.”

But Professor Roberts recognises that there is no correct style of English writing, and he anticipates vigorous debate within the panel.“There’s no single model of good writing and I’m sure that a novelist, an agent, a presenter and an academic will have some lively discussions about what works and what doesn’t.”

Next year promises to be a busy year for the Head of the School of English, who specialises in 17th and 18th century drama and literature.

In 2010, his biography of the actor Thomas Betterton will be published by Cambridge University Press along with a new Oxford University Press edition of Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague’ for which Professor Roberts has written the introduction.

Any readers who are interested in participating in The Good Writing Awards can visit www.gwawards.org for more details.

In the New Year Professor David Roberts will join other expert literary figures appointed by The National Academy of Writing to judge pieces of literature that have been nominated by members of the public.

Beijing, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur – three big, bustling cities in East and South East Asia

PAGE 4

NEW ORCHESTRA RIGHT ON CUE

ABH = Adrian Boult Hall; RH = Recital Hall; OJST = Old Joint Stock Theatre; Free/BCU = Free to staff/students; Name = member of staff.

Have you got a story for Inside PME?

FACULTY OF PERFORMANCEMEDIA, ENGLISH

Contact us by emailing lucas.coe@students.bcu.ac.uk

or sue.heseltine@bcu.ac.uk

FACULTY OF PERFORMANCEMEDIA, ENGLISH

WHAT’S ON: DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

BY JOY KRISHNA

The inevitable expansion of knowledge creates an educational challenge: how to ground students in the history of a subject, whilst ensuring they remain abreast of the latest developments. In music, this is even more difficult: Copernicus may have superseded Ptolemy, but Hildegard remains as valid as Harvey! End-of-year elective-based ensemble concerts and student-devised Major Projects are a reminder that, more than ever, students are necessarily becoming flexible specialists rather than ‘Renaissance’ musicians. Although the Conservatoire’s small ensembles aim to cover a broad range of repertoire whilst attaining sufficient depth and detail to present polished performances, the logistics of rehearsing a symphony orchestra make it tricky even to

bring the growing range of ‘standard’ works up to scratch in a short space of time. So, cue (literally) our new Repertoire Orchestra. Balancing the importance of performance opportunity with the need to experience a wide variety of great music, the Repertoire Orchestra undertakes concentrated rehearsals, presenting one or more work-in-progress masterpieces in bite-sized Snapshot Concerts. So far this year, the Orchestra has tackled student works, Martinů’s Symphony No.6 and Elgar’s Enigma Variations, with Beethoven on the horizon. The rolling out of this concept sees our Thallein contemporary music ensemble taking the same approach to Takemitsu. The flagship large-scale concerts are still there: our Senior Wind Orchestra premieres

Stephen McNeff’s Creation, our Percussion Ensemble fields a contemporary programme, our Brass Band concentrates on Derek Bourgeois and our Symphony Orchestra takes on Ravel and Wagner – all before Christmas. The Repertoire Orchestra just reminds us that, whatever we view as its centre, our musical universe is ever-expanding.

Liz Johnson, Conservatoire composition tutor

24 Nov – ‘Unexplored Britten (with dreaming cabbages)’ Prof Ron Woodley teams up with tenor James Geer to present a new work by Liz Johnson plus rarely heard Britten songs. 1.05pm, ABH. Free/BCU.

Still time to catch25 Nov – Join clarinettist Alan Barnes & Conservatoire Ellingtonia Orchestra for an evening of jazz featuring Paul Clarvis (drums) and Mark Hodgson (bass). 7pm, RH. Free/BCU.26 Nov – Sue Shortland Webb leads the Klezmer Band. 8pm, RH. Free/BCU.27 Nov – Guy Woolfenden conducts the Senior Wind Orchestra in the premiere of Stephen McNeff’s Creation and other works. 7pm, ABH. Free/BCU30 Nov – Head of Organ Henry Fairs tackles Messiaen’s monumental Livre du Saint Sacrement. 7pm, St Chad’s Cathedral. £5 (£3) on the door.

Coming up2-5 Dec – BSA presents Shaw’s Misalliance (Crescent Theatre Studio) and zany comedy

Beyond Therapy (OJST). Check the web for times. £7 (£5, students £2.50).3-4 Dec – Jazz legend Dave Holland is back in town for a concert (3 Dec, 7pm, RH) and the annual Jazz Ensemble Prize (4 Dec, 7pm, RH). Both Free/BCU. 4 Dec – The fabulous Percussion Ensemble features Maraca 2. 7pm, ABH. Free/BCU.10-12 Dec – Michael Barry directs the ever-popular Opera Scenes. All 7pm, RH. Free/BCU.10-12 Dec – BSA goes Into the Woods with Sondheim’s hit musical. Check the web for times. Crescent Theatre Studio, £7 (£5, students £2.50).11 Dec – Ian Porthouse confronts The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea with the Brass Band. 7pm, ABH. Free/BCU. 14 Dec – Sing along as Prof Julian Pike leads the Carol Concert. 1pm, ABH. Free.15 Dec – Howard Skempton hosts a new music ‘Night of the Unexpected’. 8pm, OJST. Free/BCU.

18 Dec – Lionel Friend and the Symphony Orchestra present a double-bill of Ravel’s jazz-influenced piano concerto (6pm) and the aptly-named ‘Wagner-fest’ (7pm, with pre-concert talk at 6.30). Both ABH. Free/BCU.

‘Outside PME’•In the Eye of the Beholder – The Art

of Evolution showcases fine art tutor Franziska Schenk’s work as Artist in Residence at the University of Birmingham (Biosciences). 16 Nov – 18 Dec with Artist Presentation on 24 Nov. School of Art (Margaret Street). Free.

•Paradigma is a joint exhibition of contemporary jewellery and related pieces created by staff at BIAD’s School of Jewellery and the Escola Massana, Barcelona. Co-curated by School of Jewellery Head Prof Jack Cunningham, 16 Nov – 11 Dec. School of Jewellery (Vittoria Street). Free.

FEATURED EVENT

www.bcu.ac.uk/events