Author Archives: Liz Milner

Photojournalism – retrospectives

Posted on by

Two features on British documentary in one week! One on the BBC news website about an exhibition on the miners strike at the National Coal Mining Museum for England, at Caphouse Colliery near Wakefield, Yorkshire. ‘No Redemption’ is a body of work by Keith Pattison who was commissioned to photograph the miners strike at Easington Colliery in Co Durham for month but stayed until the end of the end of the strike 8 months later documenting events from the miners perspective.

The second feature is a blog post in The Guardian online about Chris Killip’s new exhibition – in Germany. Sean O’Hagan, author of the post argues that Chris Killip is one of Britain’s great photojournalists, comparing him to Tony Ray-Jones, Graham Smith, Chris Steele-Perkins and Brian Griffin and suggesting that Killip should surely be having this major retrospective here in the UK. Continue reading →

Curzon Cinema, Clevedon – photography workshop

Posted on by

The wonderful Curzon Community Cinema in Clevedon has won some funding from The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts to run a film-making project with some lucky primary schools in Clevedon as part of the Start Programme. It’s a big project that runs over several months working with the excellent Bristol-based production company Calling the Shots. However, not every child will be able to take part in the film-making process so the Curzon’s Education Officer, Cathy Poole, arrived at an ingenious solution to ensure everyone has a chance to participate. The solution was to create a team of project documentors who would track all aspects of the project with photographs. Continue reading →

The Ballad of Bournville

Posted on by

Theatre Orchard is North Somerset based project which is “shaping the arts landscape in North Somerset. Theatre Orchard seed performing arts projects throughout the region to grow community, creativity and skills.” I’ve been involved with the project since 2007 documenting many of their productions [links to come], designing publicity material and advising as a Board member. Continue reading →

Connections and Twitter

Posted on by

I’ve been a bit slow to take up Twitter (had been warned it was full of people telling the world what was in their sandwich or stuck to their shoe) but after a few months I’m learning the value and interest to the point where I’ve just indulged/invested/wasted (delete as your ethos sees fit) a morning checking out links from tweets by people I now follow – see below for a selection – and then extended the trail beyond that which has taken me to some very immersive terrain about past and future technologies.

This trail led to a rediscovery of the 1970s TV Connections series by James Burke. I’d often thought I was a out on a geeky limb in believing that this introduced a revolutionary, and for me exciting way of looking at history / science. Pleased to find a copy of the ‘book of the series’ tucked away on a shelf at home! Continue reading →

It’s Electric December time – a personal reflection and celebration!

Posted on by

Every Electric December I have ever worked on, 2003 – 2006, + 2008!

Today is the launch of Watershed’s online advent-style calendar Electric December. Though I’ve only been involved in ED indirectly this year I’ve had various connections with the project for a long time so thought I’d add a post about this now fondly anticipated feature of Bristol’s cultural landscape! Continue reading →

V&A Photographs

Posted on by

Looking forward to a trip to London to see the new Photographs gallery at the V&A. It’s amazing that this  institution has been collecting photographic images since the mid C19th and has such an impressive array of iconic photographs, many more of which can now be seen in this new space. There’s an article about the conservation of the collection here.

The V&A also have a wonderful collection of Artists’ Books but you do need a reader’s ticket or arrange a group visit through a college or school to view them, but really worthwhile.

Magnum Contact prints

Posted on by

Contact prints were such a feature of work and personal practice, along with all those chinagraph and felt-tip pen markings and scribbles, they were an index of my life; more on this topic at some other point maybe, meanwhile I’ll be pleased to take a look at this book of Magnum photographers’ contact prints, though maybe won’t be buying it at £45!

Watershed: Part-time employment

Posted on by

relays_header_blueredFor 2 days a week I’m the Development Co-ordinator for ‘RELAYS at Watershed’ – a SW Cultural Olympiad project organised by Universities SW and focused on activities for young people. Watershed’s contribution to this programme is to work with young people in a range of settings to create projects that explore the meeting of sport and media/culture.

Activities I’ve been involved with over the last year include a short film project Short Cuts, Media Literacy Workshops for schools – just starting to plan these for 2012 – and a citizen journalism project that’s leading up to taking a group of young people to the Olympic sailing and cultural events that will be taking place in Weymouth in 2012. I’m also covering the developing phases of this citizen journalism project in a blog.

Here’s an audio slideshow that gives a flavour of the Media Literacy strand of this project and demonstrates the enthusiasm that can be sparked in teenagers when you put them into a new setting with some interesting challenges and stimulating people! I took the photographs and recorded the audio during the series of workshops we ran in 2009 with local secondary schools and put them together in Soundslides to help promote future workshops to schools in the Bristol area. The workshops were led by David Goldblatt and assisted by volunteer production staff from the BBC.

Save

Save

Save