• To examine the potential of creative use of audiovisual strategies, particularly in the relationship between artists, educators, students, community, audience and industry, within local, national and international frameworks and to deploy appropriate findings within pedagogic processes

• To create a platform for dialogue between academic creative processes and those of commercial partners in developing new understandings

• To develop collaborative research with Academic Partners following on from the research undertaken in the 2012/13 Teaching Fellowship Award Online and local television networks: A new pedagogy for a changing media which interrogated the pedagogical benefits of such relationships, with academics from Plymouth University working with Academic Partners at Exeter College, Truro and Bristol and others developing in USA and China

• To continually question and redefine the contested term “What is Media Arts now and What is television now?”

• To explore how we can best use media to disseminate research outputs.

• To develop a shared online research TV channel managed by key researchers and research students with input from researchers, industry and the wider community. The group has explored (through the projects mentioned above) community engagement and impact and this channel will be a research hub and primary feature of the focus and will use Tenantspin (http://www.tenantspin.org/) as a research context

• The launch of a new website as a repository and dissemination for the research undertaken in the Teaching Fellowship Award which will also become a launch platform for the PUMAr group

• The release of a series of short documentaries containing the research undertaken in the TFA

• Monthly live streamed research seminars with invited industry and academic guests with international guests streamed to the seminar. First seminar will invite Tenantspin (http://www.tenantspin.org/) to contextualise their activities with our research

• Development of local, national and international broadcast platforms that challenge existing pedagogical strategies employed in teaching and learning television and media arts.

• Members of the group have experience in research that challenge mainstream media approaches (subculture, DIY live streaming/TV and media archaeological strategies). This is explicit in much of the research trajectory and will be a feature of the focus of PUMAr

• The group anticipates some shared connections betweens its research and that of the Moving Image group in that both will explore distinctive features of media construction and receipt but where Moving Image highlight narrative and editing as key themes, PUMAr will focus on strategies relating to community, industry and DIY in an academic context

One element of the methodology emerges from the practice of teaching through incorporating experiential ideals and research into the practical dissemination and processes incorporated into our relative and collective pedagogic processes.

This is combined and runs parallel with an awareness of ‘industrial’ opportunities and practices as they emerge in a rapidly changing environment within the landscape of TV evolution.

Questions that emerge from this are related to the relevance and problematics of teaching processes that themselves are in a state of flux and continual change. What is Television, how can it be taught, are questions that feed into each other as teaching embraces emerging practices and those practices are distilled into aspects of, or the subject of, teaching.

• To pose the simple question What is TV? And consider it within the educational environment through both research and practice.

• To work strategically with the production house PUMA (Plymouth University Media Arts) to develop and embed a research dimension to commercial and community media and interrogate how it can be balanced effectively with the need for socially responsible and community practice as well as the development of creative excellence.

• To engage in research that creates Impact, Engagement and Inclusivity

A new pedagogy for a changing media 2012/13 Teaching Fellowship Award which interrogated the pedagogical benefits of such relationships, with academics from Plymouth University working with Academic Partners at Exeter College, Truro and Bristol and others developing in USA and China

Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)
While women have made many gains in STEM subject representation and impact in recent decades, there remains a significant gender imbalance and a dearth of women at the most senior levels.

Through a series of videos, this project aims to connect young women that are still forming their professional goals with female role models in STEM subjects at Plymouth University. The project aims to give young women greater confidence in pursuing careers and a better understanding of available options and pathways to achieving success.

Media Arts proposes the establishment of a socially inclusive, creative media venue called the Media Factory. This would be a permanent venue for a range of media related activities aimed at engaging diverse audiences. This initiative will build specifically on the work of the PUMAr research cluster.

The focus of the venue would be experimental creative media. Thematic explorations of Media Arts will be offered through events, workshops, screenings and exhibitions. The venue will be open for people to drop in and enjoy the space in an informal social way as well as taking part in structured activities. It is important to us that the Media Factory has an open, fully participatory ethos and is seen as an accessible and attractive as a venue for a wide ranging audience.

Reenacttv: 30 lines / 60 seconds is an ongoing series of reenactments of John Logie Baird’s collaboration with the BBC of July 14th 1930 to produce the UK’s first TV drama, specifically the broadcast of a version of Luigi Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in his Mouth to less than 30 Baird televisors in the UK, Dublin and Porto.

This 360 project seeks to ask questions around the creative possibilities of the 360 arena environment as a projection space, a performance space, a space of audience experience and a space offering new possibilities of meaning and not forgetting its roots seeks to explore the fixed paradigms of historical interpretation and how these might be evolved – or broken free from with the advent of new narrative and interactive forms.

John Fitzsimons

Global Local TV is a collaborative project between Exeter College and Nashville State College, USA.

Working with The Volunteer State College in Nashville Tennessee, students on the FdA TV production course at Exeter College have completed two 30 minute music based programmes that will be shared across the internet and broadcast on the cable channels in Tennessee.

This project was produced with partner advice from Reflected Eye Media

Allister explores notions of imperfection within participatory Media Art practices as a means towards building collective experiences. In 2010 he initiated the DiY open-access film and video project Imperfect Cinema as part of his PhD research. The collective have since facilitated over 20 events and workshops, including: the Interstate gallery Brooklyn, New York, the Supersonic festival in Birmingham, the Plymouth Art Centre and last years collaboration with Peninsula Arts. Allister has exhibited films across the UK, Europe and the USA and his research articles have been published in the Avanca International journal of Cinema, One Plus One Filmmakers Journal and the Making Futures journal. He has also presented at the Dirty Hands symposia, the Theorising Practice, Practicing Theory conference at the University of Roehampton and the NECS European Network for Cinema and Media Studies. Allister is currently facilitating workshops with Devon Care, Children with Autism, and the Plymouth University Film Club, where the practical and conceptual aspects of imperfect practice can be experienced and applied.