Two courses in using visual analysis software from the CAQDAS team at the University of Surrey, UK. Click the links below for more details and to register:

March 14th 2012 One day introduction to Transana –  an inexpensive video-analysis software programme that allows you to import, code and store video data

March 16th 2012 One day introduction to Visual Analysis Using Qualitative Software

‘Creativity and Business: Connectivity, Values and Interventions’ in partnership with The British Library.

Monday 12 March 2012, 9.30am – 6.30pm at The British Library and Central St Martins

IBM’s 2010 Global CEO Study found that of 1500 CEOs surveyed, the majority believe the key to navigating today’s volatile, uncertain and increasingly complex business environment is creativity.  The ability to instil creativity throughout an organisation was rated as more crucial than rigor, management, discipline, integrity or even vision as a means to future success. The conference will explore whether this is actually the case. Furthermore, it will consider how the dynamics between creativity, business and research is changing and delegates will be challenged to think about their place within this triangular relationship in new ways and will be provided with a real opportunity to make professional contacts in and beyond their sectors and fields.

It will present a diverse and provocative range of keynotes, panel discussions, case studies and interventions that will explore questions such as:

-       Is creativity really being more sought after now than ever and if so, why?

-       How does the corporate sector value creativity and vice versa?

-       What are the pros and cons of government intervention in cultivating creativity?

Please see attached flyer for registration details.Creativity and Business eflyer

An eBook has just been published that includes a chapter by Sam Warren summarising some of the key debates around visual issues and organization told through the themes of the inVisio seminar series. The book, edited by Rozi Bako, is called The Chair: Visual Encounters with Power and although most of the chapters are in Romanian, there are abstracts in English.

The e-reader format the book is published in is quite delightful too!

Fourth Edition of “Contro-Sguardi: International Anthropological Film Festival “ Perugia (Italy)

Theme of the year 2012: “For a culture of Work”

CALL FOR VIDEO, PHOTOS, SOUNDS AND PERFORMANCE  (Deadline: 20 February 2012) For more information click here please note the website is translated from Italian via Google Translate so might read a little strangely!

The International Visual Sociology Association’s annual 2012 meeting is in New York, July 6-9th. You can see the call for papers here. Perhaps if inVisio members are going they could reply to this post and hook up at the conference – it would also be great if you anyone going could email swarren@essex.ac.uk so I can equip you with promotional inVisio materials to litter the coffee break hall with!

Call for papers for the inaugural issue of Visual Methodologies<http://journals.sfu.ca/vm/index.php/vm/index> (VM). Visual Methodologies is a new international peer-reviewed post disciplinary journal with a focus on visual aspects of material and social practice and their symbolic representation. Submissions received on or before the 1st of March 2012 will receive priority consideration for the inaugural issue. Anticipated publication date is July 2012.

VM is international in its scope and places no restriction on the topics discussed other than the need to demonstrate the potential to contribute to knowledge and inform the academy and society. We invite original contributions which have not been previously published or under consideration for publication elsewhere.

For general information about the Journal, please see the attached flyer or visit the VM website at: http://journals.sfu.ca/vm/index.php/vm/index

“Cary Peppermint and Leila Nadir founded the ecoarttech collaborative in 2005 in order to explore environmental issues and convergent media and technologies from an interdisciplinary perspective, including art, digital studies, philosophy, literature, and eco-criticism. For ecoarttech, the term “environment” does not refer only to nature or geographic spaces; rather, we understand it as part of an interwoven network of biological, cultural, mental, and digital spaces, and we imagine the health of each as indistinguishable from the health of others. In the words of Gregory Bateson, the planet is part of humans’ “eco-mental system”: “if Lake Erie is driven insane [by pollution], its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experience.”"

http://www.ecoarttech.net/

Call for Contributions to a Journal Special Edition dedicated to Critical Reflections about the Relationship between Arts and Management

Journal of Arts and Communities  ISSN: 17571936, published by Intellect

Guest Editor:  Martin Beirne, University of Glasgow

Deadline:  Full papers should be submitted no later than 30th June, 2012.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to promote critical reflection and establish a constructive dialogue about cross-boundary relations, and indeed tensions, between management and the arts.  Despite a long history of exchanges, alliances, links and associations, the connections between communities of managers and artists, researchers and practitioners, have been uneasy, frosty and often fraught.  They also remain open for development, as a basis for generating fresh insights about the nature of organizations and the challenges that confront their populations, though also for practical interventions that offer constructive routes towards performance improvements and better or more progressive experiences. Artists have a strong tradition of challenging management ideas, orientations and preoccupations, and have delivered some very powerful critiques of top-down, quasi-scientific management orthodoxy.  The Detroit murals by Diego Rivera, and the Frank McGuinness play about the working lives of Factory Girls, provide two very telling examples.  Arts organisations and workers have also been on the receiving end of management orthodoxy as funding agencies have tied strings to their awards, insisting that indicators of ‘good’ management practice enhance confidence about outcomes and value for money (Beirne and Knight, 2004).  Unfortunately, this has been associated with a tendency to import management prescriptions from the commercial sector, often with disruptive consequences and poor experiences from dealing with consultants and purveyors of universal solutions who fail to differentiate between the principles, priorities, aims and working patterns of organizations, arts or otherwise (Beirne and Knight, 2002).  It has also generated something of a backlash, intolerance and underground critique of management and managers (Protherough and Pick, 2002).

By contrast, some of the most prominent management commentators in recent times have invoked idealized images of art-making as a platform to challenge orthodox thinking about job design and employee relations, and to claim space for skill enhancement and participative ways of managing and organizing.  Tom Peters and Rosabeth Kanter have presented variations on the argument that artists tend to have a high degree of  autonomy in their work that is functional for the delivery of good quality art, reasoning that this has wider applicability in a commercial world that puts a premium on  the responsiveness, creativity and voluntary commitment of employees.  Conceding control and re-modelling management on artistic rather than industrial traditions is a message that has been well-received in some major corporations, though usually in the absence of any detailed analysis of art-making per se (Schiuma, 2011).

Unfortunately, available evidence that aims to illuminate management connections to arts-based practices is also rather mixed.  Strong endorsements (Schiuma, 2011; Chong, 2002) and pronouncements via agencies such as Arts and Business contrast markedly with accounts of faddish and token projects that involve managers as ‘users’ wrenching ideas and practices out of the arts to ‘do a bit of theatre’ or stage a performance for team-building purposes or to boost motivation (Beirne and Knight, 2002).  For authors such a Clarke and Mangham (2004), theatre in the commercial world of staff development is too often impoverished by reduction to a management technology, aided and abetted by theatre companies eager to tap fresh income opportunities, regardless of any complicity in management dilution of art.

This Special Issues provides an intellectual space to explore – theoretically, practically and in policy terms – these tension-laden yet underdeveloped linkages between management and the arts.  It is positioned for multidisciplinary and international contributions, and to promote a constructive dialogue across subject boundaries.  Submissions are welcome on any of the following topics, although this is intended to be an indicative rather than an exhaustive list:

. Artists and arts workers experiences of managerialism or of ‘being managed’, constructively or otherwise.

. Coherent and considered critiques of management or business influences on the arts, or of arts-based initiatives in commercial, public sector or voluntary organizations.

. Reflections about collaborative ventures between artists and managers, for example, via creative contributions either to artistic projects or management initiatives in educational, developmental, organizational or market contexts.

. Reflections about direct involvement and the fortunes and effectiveness of artists as managers in arts or other organizations.

. Analyses of the possible contribution of arts to the development of fair, just or ethical management and leadership, especially in cross-cultural contexts.

. Empirical (especially case and action research) studies that have transparent theoretical and practical/policy implications are particularly welcomed.

The guest editor is happy to provide feedback on proposed submissions, and can be reached at the follow email address: Martin.Beirne@glasgow.ac.uk.  Summary proposals will be considered until the end of February 2012, and follow the formal review process when worked into a full submission.

Contact and Submission Details: Submissions should be 5000-7000 words long, excluding references.  Please refer to the publisher’s guidelines:  http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/misc/contributornotes.pdf

Contributions to this Special Issue should be sent initially to the guest editor who will forward shortlisted papers to the Editorial Board for the peer review process. The special edition is intended for publication during the first half of 2013.

References

Beirne, M. and Knight, S. (2007) ‘From Community Theatre to Critical Management Studies: A Dramatic Contribution to Reflective Learning?’, Management Learning, Vol 38, No 5, November, p. 591-611.

Beirne, M. and Knight, S. (2004) ‘The ‘Art’ of Reflective Management: Dramatic Insights from Scottish Community Theatre’, The International Journal of Arts Management, Vol 6. No 2, p.33-43

Beirne, M. and Knight, S. (2002) ‘Principles and Consistent Management in the Arts: Lessons From British Theatre’, The International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol 8, No 1, p. 75-89.

Clark, T. And Mangham, I. (2004) ‘From Dramaturgy to Theatre as Technology’, Journal of Management Studies, Vol 41, No1, p.37-59.

Chong, D. (2002) Arts Management, Routledge.

Protherough, R. And Pick, J. (2002) Managing Britannian: Culture and Management in Modern Britain, Edgeways.

Schiuma, G. (2011) The Value of Arts for Business, Cambridge Uiversity Press.

A brief article in Visual Communication Quarterly.

“I feel the need to give back to the community and I like to offer
my expertise in the field as a professional photographer. Most
unemployed people do not have the money to go out and get a
professional photograph”

reference: Albany, M. (2010). Business Portraits for the Unemployed. Visual Communication Quarterly, 17(4), 252-253. doi:10.1080/15551393.2010.515459

There are lots of blogs on photography out there – I call attention to 2 that I find interesting, both are based in Rochester.

(Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography, curated by James Johnson

http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/

A thousand words – Kodak’s official blog, Jenny Cisney, Chief Blogger

http://1000words.kodak.com/thousandwords/