Diaspora Screen Media Network: Charting Glocal Imaginaries

The DSMN will explore how selected diaspora screen media texts including documentaries and short films engage with new media and the digital world of the internet to create new global forms of visual awareness considered as 'glocal imaginaries'. Building on recent work that traces the global mobilization of culture, the project will fill a gap in current research by using British Asian and Black British screen texts as case studies in identifying how 'glocal' formats of the new media align with or juxtapose national, regional or transnational perspectives of today's increasingly fluid visual culture (i.e. here routed through Birmingham and Northampton).

The network events will explore diaspora screen media texts' engagement with contemporary 'media ecologies' (Fuller 2005) in order to shape new understandings of the locatedness and mobility of diasporic audiences. It will provide an arena for dialogue between the educational sector, creative professionals and the general public including student groups and migrant communities with which participants have affiliations.

In defining 'glocal' imaginaries (e.g. in media examples and their distribution), the project will examine how the work of representative filmmakers, cultural practitioners and writers is viewed by the public who use social media, and together create an open reciprocal relationship that redefines and represents diaspora themes (e.g. cultural identity, relocation, cultural translation, home and belonging, religious beliefs and practices). Methodologically the network will articulate new cross-cutting debates on diasporic media cultures, address recent modes of access to diaspora screen media texts, and communication through social media.

In identifying the changing landscape of film and online media production, reception, and promotion it asks:

1. How are diasporic screen media changing in terms of social impact through modification of themes and issues via interventions by new media?

2. Does new media's remapping of diasporic screen texts' traditional concerns encourage a more nuanced 'glocal imaginary' and how might this be defined?

The workshops and symposium will address through a specific research question (see CfS) elements of the interrelationship between diaspora cinema and new media ecologies implied by these two key research questions:

1. University of Northampton (UoN): 'Black British and British Asian Cinema and New Media' will focus on the current state of diaspora screen media texts and digital technologies used in production and reception. The changing circulation and consumption patterns of visual culture due to the impact of social media and digital technologies, will feature in discussions involving researchers and industry practitioners, film festival curators at the Errol Flynn Filmhouse (Northampton), FlatPack Film Festival and Midland Arts Centre (Birmingham), university students and the public.

2. Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham: 'Social Networks and New Media' will examine the new media formats of diasporic screen media texts. Their changing role due to new media uses will be addressed by industry practitioners, film festival programmers, university students and early career researchers. Partners, e.g. Threshold Studios (Northampton), HOME (Manchester) and MACE (Lincoln), will be invited.

3. Birmingham City University (BCU): 'Globalising the Local in Diaspora Cinema and Media', a two-day symposium with invited speakers, film-makers, university students, members of public. Drawing on workshop findings, presentations will track new pathways to a glocal imaginary identified in the case studies associated with new media.

Keynote speakers will be John Akomfrah, director of Handsworth Songs, and Vijay Mishra, author of Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (2013) and Theorising the Diasporic Imaginary (2007). All network partners and stakeholders will be invited. 4. Events will be accompanied by screenings at venues.