For students in the School of Arts

Welcome to the latest issue of the School of Arts Touchpoint newsletter. Throughout the following pages you’ll find information about changes in the school, news from your subject area and details of how we’ve responded to your feedback and comments from last term.

2.1. OCT>2011

Register your laptop with the Connect-Team to get wireless access in the Gaskell Building https://connect.brunel.ac.uk

A new common room for all School of Arts students is now open. The newly refurbished room on the ground floor of the Gaskell Building provides space for students to relax between classes, discuss group work and meet others from across the school.

Let us know what you think of the room by completing a pink feedback postcard available at the Gaskell Reception.

Feedback updates and news

The Placement and Careers Centre (PCC) is here to help you: Find out what career opportunities are open to you Make informed and realistic career choices Acquire the skills you need to get a good job such as marketing yourself effectively in job applications Find work experience, voluntary work or a graduate job That’s me - Stephanie Darking, the Careers Consultant for the School of Arts. My job is to support and advise you on issues such as postgraduate study, finding work experience, making career choices and improving job-seeking skills. You can come along to see me when I am on duty for Quick Query (our daily drop-in sessions) or you can email me to book an appointment for a longer discussion. I am happy to see students at any level – you don’t have to be in your final year. In fact the earlier you start using our services the better.

Some things to look out for:

The Job Shop – advertises hundreds of part time and vacation jobs, including on-campus jobs which are very popular. It also advertises internships and organises a part-time jobs fair each year. Graduate vacancies – we advertise graduate vacancies (2,049 so far since the start of the current academic year) and details of graduate training schemes. Access to the graduate vacancies is restricted to Brunel students and graduates which makes them a bit less competitive than some of the national graduate job sites. News and events blog – includes listings of events on and off-campus with a strong focus on diversity and career exploration activities. Posts in July included Raindance’s 40 Seconds Straight film competition and a competition to create a poster for the London design company hat-trick. http://brunelpccblog.wordpress.com/ Events programme - consisting of recruitment fairs, careers insight events and skills workshops. Need to brush up on your interview performance or upgrade your CV? We organise over 400 events a year and we will have just the workshop for you, often presented by graduate recruiters from top companies. PCC Employability Reps Last year we recruited a team of Employability Reps to promote the PCC’s activities to fellow students and gather their thoughts on what we could be doing better. We were looking for lively, creative and outgoing people to bring new ideas on how we could get our messages across to students in fresh and effective ways. We will need more Employability Reps for the new academic year and I am keen to get a strong response from Arts students, so if you are interested in a position with responsibility which gives you the opportunity to use your creativity, look out for the advert which will be posted on the Job Shop vacancy pages.

Placement and Careers Centre, 1st Floor Bannerman Centre Careers: 01895 266840 Job Shop: 01895 265759 Web: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/pcc We are open from 9.30am – 4.45pm Monday – Friday. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

On the 22nd September the School Welcomed all new students to take part in a collaboration between artist Katie Etheridge, the School of Arts Touchpoint team and a group of final year students - the first of its kind to take place at Brunel. The event featured performances by current students , interactive exhibitions , live music , ‘Faceback’ and a Quiz, as well as providing an opportunity for new students to meet tutors and reps. Look out for more Touchpoint events later this year.

Drama & Theatre News

Mary steps down as Subject Leader and Meretta tries to fill her shoes On July 1st this year after three and half years Mary Richards started to take a well earned rest (only joking) and Meretta Elliott took over as subject leader. Mary will continue as the PALS co-ordinator and Exams Officer. The team say thank you to Mary for all her great work and wish Meretta good luck!

BA Theatre starts this year The first students to undertake our new programme have arrived! They are very keen to meet and work with current Drama Studies students. I know you will make them welcome and help them to settle into life in the School of Arts. Where is Gretchen?! Gretchen Schiller is spending this year as an invited visiting professor at Grenoble in France. We miss her already but also wish her well. Gretchen will return next academic year.

Level 2 games student Luke Smith presented some of his game prototypes at the Clickteam convention, prefaced by lecturer Justin Parsler at Cambridge University on the 21st of August. Clickteam is the company that make Multi Media Fusion 2, the game development tool used by students studying Games Design. His work went down so well that he was offered a publishing deal and it is to be showcased at the Games Developer Conference in San Diego next March.

The conference was recorded and is available at http://www.justin.tv/clickconvention/b/293056164

Games News

Theatre: New Staff

We are delighted to announce four new members of staff who have already settled in to their offices and will be teaching you this year.

Alyson Campbell comes to us from Queen’s University Belfast . Alyson has also lectured at The

University of Melbourne, Australia, and (2005-6). She also completed her practice-based PhD on Sarah Kane’s ‘experiential theatre’ at the University of Melbourne (2009). Alyson is a director, and has worked in a broad range of situations: from the four-stage Los Angeles Theatre Center, through Fringe, independent and community theatre, to making forum theatre with secondary students. Her work with Melbourne company Red Stitch Actors Theatre includes Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (2007) and the Australian premieres of Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies (2006) and Don DeLillo’s The Day Room (2004). Alyson has recently collaborated with Lachlan Philpott on his play Bison, which was performed at Queen’s University for the OUTburst Queer Arts Festival (2009) and subsequently at the Oval House Theatre, London (2010).

Broderick Chow comes to us from the University of East London, where he was a lecturer in Theatre

Studies in the Institute for Performing Arts Development. He has also taught at the Central School of Speech & Drama, where he was also the first-ever doctoral graduate. Broderick trained as an actor in Vancouver where he also performed in musical theatre (Miss Saigon) and film and TV. Since coming to London he has performed as a stand-up comedian, and has also been exploring forms of physical performance training, including parkour and professional wrestling. His research centres around a political, economic, and material understanding of the performance event, especially with regard to performances that are usually considered "pop." Look out in the new year for his performance Work Songs, a musical/physical comedy piece about the mindless tedium of office work.

Joel Anderson trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, and received degrees from Queen Mary, University

of London and the University of Paris VIII. He has taught at Central School of Speech and Drama, at Kingston University, and at Queen Mary, University of London. He has worked in a range of theatre settings and roles, including performing and directing, and was based at the Paris Centre of the Theatre of the Oppressed for several years. This term, he will be teaching on Community Project, Devising, and Histories. Joel’s recent research, including his PhD, completed in 2008, has concerned the relationship between images and theatre, with a particular focus on theatre and performance. photography.

Ian Morgan is a key member of the Song of the Goat theatre in Poland, touring with Chronicles,

Lacrimosa and Macbeth across the world (Sydney opera House, RSC, Barbican, LA Live, etc). The company was nominated for the European Theatre Prize 2009-10. As an independent theatre practitioner from Wales he specialises in performing, actor training and as a collaborator/leader in devised work. Ian studied at Hull University (UK), gaining a degree in theatre studies in 1990; trained at Monika Pagneux and Phillipe Gaulier's school in Paris (1991) and worked at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski in Italy (1992–95) - as a member of the performance team led by Thomas Richards, participating in the active research: Art as vehicle. After leaving Italy he made performance work with Mkultra Performance Collective; ManAct; U-Man Zoo; Centre for Performance Research; Zecora Ura Theatre; Meredith Monk; Guillermo Gómez – Peña and Teatro Pirequa at the Théâtre du Soleil. He has taught and directed in drama schools and HE institutions across the UK; facilitating workshops in Italy, France, Germany, Greece, the USA, Canada, Cuba and Mexico.

New Publication: http://www.choreomania.org Tanz und WahnSinn / Dance and ChoreoMania, ed. Johannes Birringer & Josephine Fenger Yearbook 21 of GTF, German Society for Dance Research. August 2011 / Leipzig: Henschel Verlag, ISBN-10: 3894877103 In German and English. € 19,90

Announcements & Reviews

Frank Griffith Big Band with Tina May,

Holland Park Non-Stop (Hep) Full Review in HERALD SCOTLAND

Oregon-born saxophonist Frank Griffith hasn't just settled in the UK to give Brunel University students

the benefit of his considerable jazz experience. He's also brought with him a conviction that the golden age of the big band doesn't need to be recreated. With arrangements that sing clearly and a mostly home-reared orchestra that swings crisply and surely, those big band days can simply be continued. That's certainly what's happening here as Griffith combines his admiration for Duke Ellington, Count

Basie and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra with an approach that's both classic and fresh and a programme that follows the form of vintage big band radio broadcasts, complete with a guest singer,

Tina May, whose three classy contributions leave this listener at least wanting more. Griffith's own compositions, including the bluesy JCC and the waltzing Holland Park, are similarly classy and played

with relaxed exactness. But for the ultimate then-is-now experience, try Shine, a 1920s piece that sounds newly minted thanks to Griffith's masterly and at times mischievous clarinet playing.

Throughout the history of civilization, dance and madness have been intricately linked to each other – from the Dionysian Mysteries of antiquity to contemporary flash mobs and techno raves. Individual and collective states of exception have found expression and reflection as well as cathartic healing through dancing. Tanz und WahnSinn/Dance and ChoreoMania presents a provocative collection of interdisciplinary studies on dance and madness combining historical, cultural, schizoanalytic, medical, philosophical, therapeutic and artistic perspectives that explore the phenomenon.

Congratulations to proud parents Jessica Cox,

Lecturer in English and Murray Dick, Lecturer in Journalism, on the birth

of their son Keir.

New faces Journalism are thrilled to welcome two new visiting tutors this term. Rachel Sharp will be working with Sarah Niblock delivering news writing modules on BA Journalism. Until recently, Rachel was Group Editor of seven Newsquest newspapers covering north London, as well as five online editions. She is also an experienced NCTJ examiner, so her input and insights will be invaluable. We also welcome a new media law tutor, Angela Millen, who will be delivering NCTJ modules to BA level 2 this year, and running six weeks of refresher sessions to Level 3s in advance of their NCTJ certificate exams in November. Angela has been teaching and examining law on NCTJ courses for nearly a decade.

NCTJ visit The NCTJ will be back at Brunel in November, hopefully to re-accredit BA Journalism for a further two years. This year, we are welcoming record numbers of new first-year students.

Journalism

Guest speakers This term we will be hosting weekly Tuesday lunchtime guest lectures from 12-1pm for all Journalism students and staff. Already lined up to speak is Richard Peppiatt, who resigned from the Daily Star over accusations of Islamaphobia last year. More details will follow on our blog – bruneljournalism.wordpress.org

Upgrading...

We are pleased to announce the availability of new equipment and software for

journalism students. This term we have a new range of Canon 550D DSLR cameras,

for video and still image recording, and we have upgraded the software in AA005 to

the latest versions of Final Cut Pro, Indesign and Photshop.

HADITHI YA AFRIKA Hadithi ya Afrika (Stories from Africa in kiSwahili) is a collaborative project between novelist Sarah Penny and dramatherapist Paula Kingwill. Using a fusion of dramatherapy, creative writing workshop practice, and final co-writing consultation, Hadithi ya Afrika enables autobiographical story writing by participants who have had little or no previous access to formal training skills in writing. Hadithi ya Afrika aims to work with communities who have undergone a shared transitional moment which has had a strong positive impact on the community. Through the Hadithi ya Afrika workshop process, personal stories of the transition can be created, recorded and disseminated to other communities facing similar challenges.

Amabali isiKapa Hadithi ya Africa’s pilot project ‘Amabali isiKapa’ (‘Coming to Cape Town’ in isiXhosa) was funded by the Brunel University BRIEF award scheme and took place at St Francis Adult Education Centre in Langa, Cape Town, in March 2011. We had six learner/participants and the project ran over five days. The shared experience was a background of growing up as a Xhosa speaker in the Eastern Cape/ former Transkei Bantustan and facing massive educational challenges, either during Bantu Education or its aftermath. All the learners migrated to Cape Town in search of job opportunities and further education. Their stories focused on this transition and its impact on their lives.

Hadithi ya Afrika would like to thank Brunel University for the opportunity to run the pilot project.

English & CW

You need to check your university email account regularly and get to grips with

Brunel computer systems, especially u-link and evision.

To get started go to: brunel.ac.uk/intranets

Remember you have a personal tutor. Make sure you find out where your tutor’s office is and when he or she has office hours. Arrange to meet your tutor if you have any questions or

worries about your studies.

The undergraduate office in the Gaskell

Building is open 9.30-4.00pm Monday-Friday during term time. Staff in the office will be able to answer questions about your timetable

and the practicalities of your course.

Top Tips for School of Arts Students

Get involved

Course Reps, School Reps, and Disabled & Dyslexic Student Reps are elected by you to represent your views and push for change that will improve your life at Brunel. They can help with you with academic issues at module, course, and school level, and give you information on how to resolve any other problems you may have. You can find more information on what Reps do and how to become a rep at: http://www.brunelstudents.com/studentreps

If you’d like to contribute to the next issue of Touchpoint contact the editor: claire.lynch@brunel.ac.uk

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