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The following paragraphs are my supporting statements from an application to Arts Council Northern Ireland's Support for Individual Artists Programme. Even though I reside in England I was encouraged to apply on the basis that others who have had to move from Northern Ireland to Britain for work have been awarded grants in previous years and much of my work is still concerned with home and I still have a family address there. My application was ineligible this year.  *** In observing arts and culture in Northern Ireland for the past 15 years, initially as a scholar of film and visual studies and now as a practitioner developing a creative-critical writing practice, I have identified what I call a performative impulse. The generation of artists prominent in the 1980s to 2000s, to generalise, exhibited more of an archival impulse associated with memory and post-memory processes as examined by Marianne Hirsch, and for example include Willie Doherty, Alastair MacLennan, Victor Sloan an...

Dear Recruitment Panel, Application for the post of Hub Administrator – Tyneside I was delighted to learn of this opportunity through my friend ___, and I enclose my CV with this letter for your consideration. Through previous work experience and qualifications, I am highly competent in using the full suite of Microsoft Office applications and their open source equivalents, particularly Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as Outlook. I have training in using content management systems for maintaining websites and am familiar with WordPress. I am quick to learn new systems and if I do not know or understand something, I will make a point of finding out. I work diligently and make the utmost effort to pay attention to detail, for which I have received praise from proofreading clients and publishers of my academic work. I manage my time and tasks by keeping my diary up to date, making prioritised lists and keeping a well-labelled archive of documents. I keep ahead so that I can be ...

Experience producing podcasts I have been making Audiovisual Cultures with a consistent biweekly output for four years. It is an arts and culture podcast exploring different aspects across film, art and media with an emphasis on their significance in or impact on culture more broadly. The episode format is determined each time by the topic and who is involved and includes interviews with practitioners or researchers about their work, analysis of specific works or phenomena with a guest or co-host, scripted essays, panel discussions, and conference coverage. In the past couple of years I have mostly recorded remotely using Zoom, Zencastr or live streams and have connected with fascinating guests all over the world. AVC is regularly downloaded in at least 20 countries. Through making Audiovisual Cultures I have developed knowledge and skills in audio recording and editing, including extensive use of Digital Audio Workstations and editing software, and ways to achieve the best possible qu...

I was delighted to learn of the Deputy Director post as this is exactly the opportunity I am seeking to take a more active role in the arts and culture sector. I am interested in the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival as I am drawn to areas of convergence between cinema and the visual arts. An experienced film academic, I have extensive knowledge of contemporary film and visual art as demonstrated in my peer-reviewed publications, contributions to arts magazines, making Audiovisual Cultures Podcast and holding degrees in the field. As a skilled administrator and networker with a passion for facilitating others’ development, I will excel in this post. My experience in a comparable role is shown in my directorship of Cosy Pea Pod, the creative company under which I produce Audiovisual Cultures , a film, arts and media podcast featuring analysis of cultural works and interviews with a wide range of practitioners, including artists, filmmakers and organisers of film festivals and symp...

In November 2020 North East-based artist Sally Madge died. At 74, Madge was still creating her legacy. She was renowned for her radical approaches to arts pedagogy with a reputation as a mischief-maker at Sunderland where she taught for years, and for being a woman who made space for others in the arts throughout her lifetime. An avid collector, particularly of debris, detritus, discarded objects and clothes, minerals and animal droppings – all traces of life in waste – Madge left a wondrous (or wandrous) archive from her encounters with the Northumbrian landscape and coast. Barring essays by Tom Jennings, there has been little formal engagement with Madge. I interviewed her for Audiovisual Cultures Podcast in 2019, and in 2021 produced a 2-hour episode filled with testimonies of fellow artists and colleagues who had been impacted by Madge’s interest in them (she also collected the living whom she nurtured). I propose to use this opportunity to create a text for and using the WA...

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My commensurate programming experience lies in my extensive planning and development of screenings for modules in many undergraduate and postgraduate film degree courses throughout the UK since 2012. Select examples that indicate my breadth of knowledge include weekly screenings for ‘Cinema and the American Avant-garde’ at University of Aberdeen, ‘Documentary and Contemporary Art’ at Lancaster University, and ‘Filming Literature’ at Newcastle University. I have also programmed for specialist film clubs, such as the Insight film club at Lancaster University in 2016 (where I gave them a taste of home in Good Vibrations ), what I affectionately termed as ‘Wrinkly Film Club’ at an Abbeyfield residential care home in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2017, and a season of Silver Screenings at Strand Arts Centre before I moved to England in 2014. In addition, I mentored Queen’s Film Theatre’s youth panel throughout 2010–2012 and helped them programme the Takeover Film Festival those thr...

Climate Emergency Writer In Residence  800 words on why you want the role and what you’d like to achieve with it I was delighted to learn of this opportunity from my friend and colleague ___. I am a freelance writer, researcher and podcaster with a background in humanities academia. This residency offers an ideal chance for me to develop and hone my writing and research skills with a view to publishing for general audiences on important topics. The challenge of communicating pressing messages about the ecological emergency offers a testing ground for my communication skills – one for which I am ready and equipped. My academic interests centre around social change with emphasis on intersections between society, culture and politics. My PhD research examined ways that artists and filmmakers respond to ongoing issues stemming from conflict and their continuing implications in post-conflict society. Place and human interaction with landscape are recurrent themes, and are rooted in ...

I was delighted to learn of this exciting new programme assistant post with your organisation as it is just the opportunity I have been seeking for some time. As a creative freelancer and researcher based in Newcastle, I am keen to help facilitate the city and region’s cultural life while maintaining my own practice, and this part-time role offers the ideal chance to do so. As a podcaster and published author myself, I understand many of the challenges and tasks involved in the role as shown in my CV and detailed further in this statement. While the job specification lists no required or desired qualifications, I would like to point out the ways my tertiary qualifications have given me excellent training for the programme assistant role. Firstly, on a personal note, I am from a working-class background and my university attendance hinged on being awarded scholarships and bursaries due to my economically underprivileged upbringing. This has afforded me a high-quality arts and ...

Application for Lecturer in Film and Television Dear Prof. ___ and Selection Panel, I felt tremendously enthused when learning of this post as it is exactly what I am looking for to re-enter academia after a period away due to illness. As my CV indicates, my postgraduate studies involved a blend of film and visual culture and my subsequent research has been underpinned by concerns with convergences between different modes and practices in contemporary moving image production. Informed by these research specialisms, my teaching will be a great asset to the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media. Knowledge of television has figured significantly in my research on contemporary film, visual culture and moving image production, largely in the ways artists and film-makers engage with television archives. This is the focus of my article currently under review at Screen which compares the ways historical narratives of real events in 1980s Chile and Northern Irela...