Notes On Workshop 3 Sessions

WFHN – UK/IRELAND: NOTES FROM WORKSHOP 3

The Women’s Library, 3-4 December

By Clare Watson

Friday 3rd December

1.00-1.20 Introduction: Summary Issues from Workshops 1&2

Workshop1: What Is Women’s Film History? Crossing Disciplines and Media Practices

• meaning/interpretations of ‘women’s film history’
• equality in the film industry and for women writers of film history
• gap between studies of history/women’s representation, and work around memory bringing these areas closer together
• tensions between ‘women’s history’ and ‘feminist history’
• how history connects with feminist policy
• whether ‘women’s film history’ is filling a gap or re-directing the focus of traditional film histories.

Workshop 2: Transnationalising Women’s Film History

• national designation of the Network – UK/Ireland
• whether national boundaries are relevant to an industry that has been international since its start
• how the digital realm blurs borders and makes connections easier
• difficulty of analyzing the impact of the transnationality of films
• emphasis of American contributions on preservation related to availability of resources in the US.

Shared Concerns

• need to focus on ‘unheroic roles’ within the film industry
• move away from a director-centred approach
• recognition that a film’s success may not be attached to its most obvious aspects (N. Kalmus’ work on colour, for instance)
• categorization and presentation of data by archives/repositories & historical sources.

1.20-3.00 Session 1: Making Networks Work

Teresa Doherty stood in for June Purvis (Women’s History Network)
who was unable to attend (see attached handout from June)

Women’s History Network
• Opens membership to both academics and the general public w. fees on sliding scale.
• Formal structure, involving articles of association, needed for: professionalism, sustainability and applications for funding
• Run by a Steering Committee, meeting 4 x yearly, travel paid from membership fees.
• SC members serve 4 years and include secretary, treasurer and gift aid overseer.
• Affiliated regional groups run events and meetings.
• Linked to International Federation for Research in Women’s History
• Runs Women’s History Magazine (3 issues yearly) which addresses both a popular and academic readership.
• Holds a relatively large annual conference (200+).
• Women’s Library will host the next one in 2011 and would welcome speakers from WFHN.
• Offers sponsored prizes/scholarships, both involving younger people and students and introducing women’s history into the curriculum.
• Hosts a website at: http://www.womenshistorynetwork.org/which includes members’ pages, so making women’s history more visible.
• Hosts a discussion list where members post news.
Q&A/Discussion
• Prizes are sometimes sponsored by publishers and other organisations; are sometimes only open to members.
• Other groups such as Domitor offer a student essay prize.
• Being affiliated to a national federation (i.e. as committee member) can help in terms of organising international and large conferences.
• A subscription fee may make it possible to offer limited travel expenses for members to attend international conferences.
• A network needs dedicated members, volunteers, and ideally any voluntary work would fit with the research interests of those undertaking the work.
• Requires up-to-date, well-managed website, and other digital outputs such as an e-newsletter, etc
• Also effective links with outside organisations.
• Greater visibility of the Network would lead to greater engagement and so more easily to further funding.
• Mix of scholarly and general interest key, linking into the growing interest in family history.
• The Women’s Library refreshes its committee every four years; it is a charitable organisation and requires certain formalities (treasurer, responsible for looking after gift aid, website manager), thus costing is a real issue.
• Pool of active academics required, but inclusion of non-academics, early career researchers,etc. important.
• So running of TWL is very formal; requiring a legal basis becauseregistered as a charity (i.e. duty to report).
• Linda Kaye explained that the Film Archive Forum had just completed this process, which took two years to formalise under the instruction of a lawyer.
• The pros are sustainability and the status that comes with being a professional association.
• A charity must draw up articles of association, etc, and can then apply for various funding (it could institute gift aid).
• Membership fees mean members must be able to see what they get for their money, especially institutional members.

Key Issues/Questions

• SHOULD WFHN USE AN INFORMAL OR A FORMAL/LEGAL STRUCTURE

• IS SUBSCRIPTION DESIRABLE?**

• WHAT SIZE OF COMMUNITY IS AIMED FOR?**

Kate Henderson & Christine Schaeffer (Bildwechsel, Glasgow & Hamburg)
• Bildwechsel is a networking organization, set up 30 years ago by women art students as a means of sharing skills.
• It aims to create meaningful, long-term connections between women, queer and transgender artists, filmmakers and audiences.
• Run by 1) a core group and 2) international bases and agents who work on behalf of the core, artists, supporters and volunteers.
• Main base in Hamburg where it stores various collections of women’s art in its archive.
• Other bases in Berlin, Glasgow, Basle, Warsaw.
• Began with initial government funds but ongoing battle for funding to pay for overheads and projects.
• Core group of about eight are involved in fundraising, caring for the collections, developing the network’s presence, etc. while monthly donations from some supporters contribute to running costs.
• Examples of events include: club-night screenings (relationships are built with local cinemas); visits to/by artists; small events; tours of the archive; attendance/presence at film festivals.
• In order to keep the archives alive, artists share their work at small events, thereby involving new artists that may lead to future donations.
• Organisation amongst the core group is informal, loosely defined and collaborative, functioning as network of friends and emphasing ‘personal’ connections.
• It draws on a wide range of communities, social and political.
• Rather than scheduling long-term planning meetings, small member groups organize to propose ideas, often emailing the larger group asking for involvement of those interested in particular initiatives.
• Not everyone is always aware of what others are doing and the network does not demand consensus, but hierarchies do evolve according to changing initiatives.
• Often an annual theme is used to help generate ideas; this is easier than describing a series of aims.
• So while there are roles and functions, these are not formally defined, and work is based on trust.
• Time is too limited to fully engage with other online and social networks.
• Expectations of users cannot be met by limited facilities, so focus on archive basics: i.e. supporting, collecting and caring for the work of women artists, avant-garde and independent filmmakers who work in precarious conditions.
• Provides a ‘space’ for exchange, networking, resources, a platform: a place where new ideas can develop.
• Agents around the world collect work, conduct interviews and report back.
• Reciprocal relation with artists who donate work in exchange for preservation and exposure to audiences – a living archive, in continuous development, rather than collection for its own sake.
• Material from the archive is shown overseas, building the network further, and developing an international, panoramic view of women’s filmmaking.
• An email newsletter circulates information.

Q&A/Discussion
• The organic nature of the network.
• A collection of work began to develop.
• The work of the “virtual” Welsh Women’s Archive has some similarities.
• Dearth of funding.
• Occasionally the network received project funding or money from supporters, but does not ask for set fees/dues.
• Re UK/Irish women’s filmmaking groups of the 70s/80s, a few films are held at the Women’s Library, and Julia Knight’s AHRC Film & Video Artists’ Database is recording on line where other films/videos are to be found, but it was suggested that many still need to be made available.
• TWL has been collating resources/catalogue descriptions for the past 10 years through its Genesis project
• It was suggested that the WL on-line hub may be able to support the WFHN and pool/provide cataloguing information, but in small organisations resources are often too limited even to carry out the initial cataloguing.
• Question of how web resources can be managed, and whether there are too many sites.
• Need to think about the audience we are targeting in terms of website design.
• BEV cited as a good example of a lively and engaging site.
• The benefits of social media in keeping people in touch and making connections with new/existing audiences.
• Whilst Bildwechsel network relationships are relevant to WFHN, its archival and exhibition activities may not apply.

Key Issues/Questions

• NETWORK AS CHAMPION OF FILM DEPOSIT AND ADVOCATE FOR WOMEN’S FILM HISTORY.

• WOULD THE NETWORK BE INVOLVED IN COLLATING KEY RESOURCES?

• HOW MIGHT THE WEB RESOURCE BE MANAGED?

• AUDIENCES/USERS MUST BE IDENTIFIED.

• WEBSITE DESIGN MUST TAKE ACCOUNT OF THESE.

• HOW MIGHT SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES BE USED?

Heather Nunn (Women’s Media Studies Network – MECCSA) could not attend.

4.00-6.15 Session 2: Who Are the Users? Needs of Researchers, Programmers & Educators

Jane Fish (Imperial War Museum)
• IWM collections hold a wide range of films, predominantly British and shot by military personnel in a range of formats from Boer War, through WW1 & WW II to present.
• But it includes films made by and for women, professional (e.g. Kay Mander) and amateur.
• Films offer instructions for male audiences, while amateur footage focuses on details of women’s lives.
• Online catalogue and 40% of the collection can be accessed via the internet.
• Coverage is piecemeal rather than systematic, but spread across the collection.
• Further information has to be accessed onsite via the traditional card index.
• The web is drawing in audiences, appealing via accessibility of film-viewing online, organisation of information according to themes, and ability to make international links.
• More users online than visiting to view material.
• But many want to view film at the IWM or buy DVD material.
• Some films streamed through Screenonline or Soundfilmonline, but predominant users are TV cos.
• Private users are interested in family history, hobbies, academic research, school education, military and social histories, veteran memories, undergraduate research, exhibitions and film festivals.
• IWM archive also draws international researchers both online and personal visits.
• Runs annual student film festival and competition.
• Users expect more access and want digital copies, but primary materials need supporting materials, although a thoroughly documented database could be off-putting to the general user.
• Online site offers short-cuts for general users and help with understanding the catalogue and its terms.
• Film/video sales extends user base, while broader (Amazon type prompting) search categories encourage users to explore different routes through the collection.
• Current (commercially motivated) restructuring means that the IWM is now organised according to operations/functions (i.e. access, preservation) rather than according to media.
• There is no ‘women’ category in the catalogue; in the old card index women came under the category ‘sex’!
• But many documentaries have ‘women’ in the title and so searchable in this way.
• Delegates were interested in the idea of collecting a list of references relating to women in the IWM collection.

Key Issues/Questions

• COULD THE WFHN PROMOTE THE COLLECTING TOGETHER OF REFERENCES/RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS?

• OR ADVOCATE FOR GREATER VISIBILITY?

Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Institute) could not attend.

Sarah Gilligan (Lecturer, Media, Film & Photography, Hartlepool College)
• Sarah works with the curriculum for 16-19 year olds set by the exam boards.
• Updating curriculum prizes relevance and accessibility, turning the focus to ‘modern’ film texts and contemporary media forms (i.e. twitter).
• Results in ‘masculinising’ the syllabus – e.g. AQA cited media studies as being ‘too girly,’ disadvantaging male students, and thus seeking to introduce more graphic material, such as military themed film trailers or IT games.
• Specific strategies required to introduce women’s film studies indirectly.
• Pressure to aim for high results and perform well in league tables which determine funding.
• Films from the 1980s – eg. Matrix or Strange Days – conceived by school children as historical and wider historical context of any era pre-1990s is required.
• Lack of resources and limited access to films, means teachers resort to their own personal film collections, but the price of especially ‘classic’ films restricts such use.
• Resort to clips via YouTube although quality and relevance may be compromised, and restricted by filters imposed on internet use within educational establishments.
• Moreover film is taught in different subject areas by staff who lack expertise and rely on BFI’s ‘Teaching Media Studies’ series.
• Male and increasingly female students reject female-centred texts in preference for more graphic and often violent subject matter.
• No module available on ‘Women’s Cinema’ or ‘Women’s Film History’ so women and cinema must be introduced by stealth: e.g via representation, audiences, consumption
• Use the Amazon style prompt—‘if you like this, try that’—to lead to unfamiliar material and a teacher can promise more marks for enterprise if a woman director is chosen.
• Collaborative links with cinemas and regional theatres and screen agencies.
• Need to exploit students’ interests — e.g. BAFTA awards; facebook groups; twitter; Utube—to inspire students to undertake their own research.
• Since universities must register their impact and engagement with outside communities, they should think about ways they can share their resources and expertise with colleges/schools.

Nicky North (BFI Education) pointed out:
• Women’s events at the BFI’s Southbank tended not to book up so well, and in terms of school bookings this may reflect the lack of women’s film history in the syllabus.
• Events based on topics included in the film syllabus book much better, for instance, masculine and youth cultures.
• Women’s films could be incorporated into modern foreign language courses from primary to Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14).
• The Schools section of the BFI was ultimately revenue driven.
• The term ‘history’ is thought to be still somewhat limited/limiting, largely focused on the ‘dead white male’.

Q&A/Discussion
• Copyright and licensing restricts access to certain materials and university licenses do not always cover use by non-students.
• BUFVC offers diverse resources, including off-air recordings, but subject to a membership fee.
• Social media such as Facebook are important sites of access; e.g. IWM now has its own site.

Key Issues/Questions

• A NEED FOR ADVOCATING/STRATEGISING FILM HISTORY AND EVEN MORE SPECIFICALLY WOMEN’S FILM HISTORY.

• THE LACK OF RESOURCES AND NEED FOR NEW TYPES OF RESOURCES TO ENGAGE A YOUNGER AUDIENCE.

• MAKING LINKS BETWEEN THE PRESENT AND THE PAST.

• THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA SUCH AS FACEBOOK AND YOUTUBE WHICH ARE THE EVERYDAY OF THE YOUNGER GENERATION AND WHICH CAN PROMOTE ISSUES ON A WIDE SCALE (GOING VIRAL).

• HOW TO MARKET/BRAND WOMEN’S FILM HISTORY.

• THE PROBLEM OF ‘WOMEN’S’ AND ‘HISTORY’ AS PERCEIVED GHETTO AREAS RATHER THAN A MORE FLEXIBLY GENDERED FIELD OF ‘WOMEN IN/AND FILM, THEN AND NOW’

• NEED TO ENSURE ISSUES OF GENDER ARE INCORPORATED ACROSS CURRICULUM AREAS, DRAWING ON HISTORICAL EXAMPLES

Sarita Malik (Race Network – MECCSA)
• Revived Race Network is in early stages of development and consists of Sarita and a few interested individuals.
• RN is ‘open’ and non-exclusive.
• Shares similar concerns with the WFHN and welcomes dialogue re: how race, media, culture overlap with WFHN, integrating ethnic issues into WFH research.
• RN endorses cultural value of memory political and pedagogical usefulness of ‘looking back.’
• Memory as space of overlap between the concerns of diverse groups working in the doubly marginalised areas of race and gender, marginalized again in professional practice and production histories as a highly politicised act.
• Archives represent cultural power: ethnic minority women should be part of the critical story of texts and the industry.
• Need to decolonise our own critical apparatus, to look at roles of ethnic minorities.
• 1980s black independent workshops generated range of critical debates around concepts that intersect with WFH (third cinema, identity, diaspora, hybridity).
• Need to trace the journey of black women, critics, festival organizers and interconnected stories of race and women’s film history.
• Network needs to chart this history, not just ‘fill in the blanks.’
• 1920s actualities/travelogues; 1960s documentaries re black Londoners; 1980s feature films and emergence of certain black film genres
• Collect interviews; paper notes etc.
• Question of how to preserve such materials following demise of workshops
• Influence in more recent history of women such as Chaudhuri in transnational forms of cinema.

Q&A/Discussion
• Importance of following the journeys of women filmmakers from the workshops to the present.
• Importance of regional film archives, their process of collecting of these films, and their untapped resources in terms of social and cultural history.
• Research needed on how policy impacts on women’s and minority filmmaking, and how various different factions worked alongside one another.
• Equally a need to ‘fill in the gaps’ remains.
• TWL is aware that some collecting is happening now in these areas (black, minority,
• 1980s), but such initiatives need follow-up by tangible research bids from academics.

Key Issues/Questions

• HOW CAN WE PRESERVE THESE MARGINALISED HISTORIES, ESPECIALLY GIVEN THE SPEED OF CULTURAL TURNOVER?

• NEED TO HIGHLIGHT AREAS OF POSSIBLE RESEARCH.

• RECOGNITION OF UNTAPPED RESOURCES/REGIONAL ARCHIVES.

Summary Discussion of Day One
• If the designation, ‘Women’s,’ is problematic, the name the network: Women’s Film History might be better expressed as ‘Women and Film History’ as more inclusive. (This point was not resolved.)
• The importance of advocating ‘women’ in the curriculum was confirmed.
• The work of WFHN might lead to a ‘re-conceptualising’ of established film histories; rather than simply adding information about new names, it decentres the focus on auteur directors, Hollywood.
• This aligns with general shift towards social aspects of film history, which women can permeate – e.g. consideration of types of work/roles not so far emphasised by film historians.
• Network is about action not semantics: cf. conference title ‘Doing Women’s Film History.’
• BECTU interviews with filmmakers currently emphasise ‘dead white males’ and include only a few female and only one minority ethnic film workers.
• BAFTA is currently conducting/making available interviews with film industry workers via its website.

Saturday 4th December

9.15-10.30 Session 3: Part One: Making the Web Work: Networks & Researchers

Mark Duguid (Senior Curator of Screen/Archive Online – BFI/NFTVA)
• Mark oversees the Mediateque, BFI entries to YouTube, the National Archive on the web, and Screenonline.
• Screenonline is like an online encyclopaedia covering British cinema and television history with circa 4,000 entries: including 1,300 biographies, 700 hours of film clips, interviews and images.
• Aims to address a wide and diverse audience and to present an intelligent, authoritative yet accessible ‘voice.’
• Used by schools, colleges & HE; about a third of users access the site each month and some from overseas.
• Access to viewing films on-line is restricted.
• SoL mainly accessed via search engines or other internet sites, especially Wikipedia and BFI site.
• The site is not structured hierarchically, but as a set of interlocking ‘collections’ that encourage browsing, although certain themes, formats, etc., form links to groupings, offering a structure for knowledge.
• Initially each film or person entry was envisioned as a ‘lego brick’, but these have now evolved into a series of organically-interlocking cells to form a rich ‘eco-system’.
• It can expand indefinitely, and thus no linear path is formulated; it is rather a messy web–like film history itself.
• It represents elements from familiar histories but looks beyond the box to marginalised areas, e.g. Chinese British films or the relationship between music-hall and cinema.
• It tells broad narratives (e.g., of the horror genre from its earliest forms to the present), with the familiar leading to the unfamiliar.
• There is already a substantial amount of material included about women in terms of biographies, women in documentary, women’s collectives in the 1970s/1980s, women animators, costume designers, and SoL is developing more on women in television.
• Women’s careers need putting in context to make them meaningful (something WFHN researchers could do)– e.g learning from patterns of employment (i.e. what roles women tend to play and how and why they have ended up doing these jobs.).
• SoL hopes to highlight women’s roles more fully by weaving more biographies of those still unknown within bigger narratives; e.g. entry on a Hitchcock film might then lead to other stories about women involved in the production.
• Given lack of funding this would be an incremental, brick by brick process.
• Mark was positive about potential collaboration between Sol and WFHN.

Luke McKernan (Curator / Moving Image, British Library)
• Luke focused on the British Library’s plans concerning their moving image collection whose remit covers not its own history but to support other collections.
• BL now holds some 40,000 titles collected as part of the National Sound Archive, including pop videos, TV broadcasts, silent cinema DVDs, oral histories, recordings of theatre companies, ethnomusicological records, and so forth.
• Due to rights issues access is exclusively onsite with no web presence; however, late 2011 digital resources may be available, again only onsite.
• Film/TV related sources held at the BL include books, newspapers, film and television journals, business records, etc.
• The user is central to the BL’s vision, focusing on identification of content, research tools, rights, networking, metadata, storage, etc.
• On-going or future projects include:
• 3-year project to digitize 10% of the moving image collection.
• Creation of a UK sound map whereby members of the public can record and upload everyday sounds using portable media (e.g. phones), thereby breaking down the barriers between the archive and its users.
• A new Music Network to acquire materials from independent bands and to establish a website for this.
• ‘UK Sound and Vision Collections’ initiative to establish how the national moving image collections (BBC, BFI, National Libraries of Wales and Scotland, IWM, National Media Museum) are to be cared for while providing better access.
• ‘Growing Knowledge’ initiative on the future of research and research tools.
• Television news has been recorded via BL video server service since March, and BBC television programmes will be available in BL Reading Rooms, meaning that user searches will cross media type.
• Audio Search technology is being developed to enable the conversion of speech into text, potentially giving access to the National Sound Archive.
• BL to establish a version of BBC’s production tool, Fabric, which reconfigures how content is managed by enabling tapeless production to connect with BBC archive through one computer system.
• BL to make a limited 100 hours of BBC content available in Humanities 2 from January 2011 as the start of the BBC making its entire content available.
• A multi-media resource service is planned following closure of Colindale Newspaper Library and its relocation to North Yorkshire.
• Some access to newspapers via microfilm will be available at St. Pancras in an AV resource centre planned for 2012.
• BL’s ‘Search Our Catalogue’ will integrate print and audio-visual media.
• searchbeta.bl.uk —the ‘database of all databases’—will show what other institutions hold, and so change the nature of research.
• In 2011 the catalogue will be on the front page of the British Library website.

Q&A/Discussion
• Debate about lack of references on Screenonline which potentially undermines trust by suggesting lack of scholarly rigor.
• However, the site seeks a wide audience and is not primarily an academic resource, so avoids footnote culture.
• The personal touch preferred over the heavy citations of Wikipedia.
• Screenonline is a ‘shop window’ for the BFI’s collection, an online exhibition, which is itself a primary source, like an encyclopedia.
• SoL unearths buried histories and through links between entries creates relationships with other sources through which new stories emerge and other audiences found.
• We need to avoid telling such stories only to each other—and to reach non-academic audiences in order to grow the community.
• However, the historiographic implications of WFH’s project—e.g. concepts of women’s ‘unheroic,’ ‘invisible’ roles—depart from orthodox histories.
• Narrativizing women filmmakers’ histories is a crucial step towards theorizing women’s film history.
• The WSBC site logs the results of such research for the silent period but there is a notable lack of work for the sound era.
• BFI plans a new union catalogue to unite film catalogues across the UK via a shared search engine, which will integrate technical and bibliographic information about holdings.
• However, user expectations need managing in so far as the existence of a print does not necessarily mean it can be accessed, but knowledge of a film’s existence may then lead to demand for preservation/access.
• While materials for researching women’s film and television are often marginalised, the visibility of the Network would provide positive support for any requests for funding in this area.
• WFHN could deal in metadata and ‘piggyback’ off TWL Genesis, linking into its subject guides & source notes or into other websites.
• So the Network could create a series of smaller, specialist sites that might be linked to larger ones.
• A ‘web ring’ links a number of sites together, with each site working as a separate unit according to the interests of the individual/s running it.
• WFHN’s role might be less about creating data and more about making the subject area visible—e.g via collaboration with SoL and TWL.
• ‘Tagging’ is a useful strategy, using the British Library catalogue, for example, so that other users can create virtual bibliographic lists—but this requires BL membership.
• We need an equivalent to Virago Press for women and film industry. NB International Women’s Film History series published by University of Illinois Press

Key Issues/Questions

• REGARDING THE WEBSITE, WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT THE USERS – ACADEMIC & GENERAL USERS

• CONSEQUENTLY, THE TONE OF THE SITE MUST BE CONSIDERED.

• NEED TO DEAL WITH THE TENSION BETWEEN COLLECTING INFORMATION/FILLING GAPS AND THEORISING WFH.

• THE PARAMETERS OF THE NETWORK’S REMIT – MAKING THE SUBJECT MORE VISIBLE.

• IF WE ARE AGGREGATING A RANGE OF WORK, HOW SHOULD IT BE PACKAGED?

• HOW CAN WE INTEREST USERS AND DIRECT THEM TO OUR NETWORK?

• WHAT FUNDING STREAMS EXIST AND HOW MIGHT THE NETWORK BE ALIGNED TO THESE (RANGE OF USERS, WIDER SOCIAL IMPACT, CHANGING MAINSTREAM HISTORIES, ETC).

• HOW NEW RESEARCH AREAS FOR PHDS MIGHT BE OUTLINED.

• HOW TO PRESENT THE NETWORK.

10.45-12.10 Session 3: Part Two: Making the Web Work: Networks & Researchers

Clare Holden (Adventure Pictures / SP-ARK)
• Adventure Pictures is a small private company set up by Sally Potter 20 years ago, to make/distribute films and explore new technologies – w. 2 full-time and 2 part-time staff + PhD student interns.
• First film was Orlando; latest, Rage.
• AP, an early adopter of the Internet (eg. using a blog to advertise Yes, premiering Rage via mobile phones) was one of the first companies to provide direct access to a film’s director.
• Engagement with the public feeds back into film production.
• AP holds a rich archive (located in London) of material related to Potter’s productions. both conventional and unconventional, from storyboards and audition footage, to a pitching document scrawled on a napkin.
• Many requests to access this material makes traditional forms of access labour- intensive, and no footprint of research is left behind.
• SP-ARK set up as ‘the world’s first interactive multi-media film archive,’ originally created by Goldsmiths students and built using wordpress (also used for the WSBC website) and tested at Queen Mary and Essex universities.
• A second version, with a better interface, was developed by an engineering PhD student at Surrey University and hosted on Adventure Pictures server.
• SP-ARK developed as a virtual archive, currently containing 4000 'assets' representing about half of the material generated during the making of Orlando including digitised film footage and other contextual materials.
• Provides material for marginalized roles such as fashion sketches and photography.
• Organising taxonomy derived from film studies/film theory
• SP-ARK prototype based on concept of ‘pathways,’ by which visitors leave their footprint across the archive by adding tags, creating their own personal profiles, building microblogs, creating a virtual notebook of their journey through the archive.
• Users can see one another’s pathways, contact one another, and build up collectively annotated texts – a form of 'organic knowledge sharing.’
• The project has been tested on HE institutions with students and lecturers.
• At Queen Mary, London it has been used to teach adaptation and to create different forms of assessment in place of the traditional essay—e.g. creation and presentation of a pathway according to chosen criteria (e.g. colour palette).
• SP-ARK is now entering Phase 3 with a new site to be launched in January 2011, using a new browsing tool that will enable paper materials to link directly to scenes or individual shots within the finished film.
• It aims to demystify the process of making films—a form of digital democracy aimed at students, aspiring filmmakers and industry professionals.
• SP-ARK is now partnering with other organisations and directors—e.g. Ken Loach and Sixteen Films will make their archives available so enabling students to contrast different approaches of the two directors.
• SP-ARK also used as a means of pre-release promotion; a type of virtual trailer.
• If anyone in the network would like access to SP-ARK, Clare can be contacted at ku.oc.serutciperutnevda|eralc#ku.oc.serutciperutnevda|eralc.
• Sophie Mayer is an academic researcher working on developing SP-ARK.
• A password is needed to access the older version of the site: www.sp-ark.org.

Q&A/Discussion
• Use of volunteershow to make sure they are not exploited and ensuring procedures and guidelines are in place.
• Records of the pathways used by different types of researcher
academic, individual—revealed emergence of archiving as a sexy’ subject.
• If the digital archive increased the demand for physical access to non-digitised material (as TWL has found), how to deal with sustainability and digital preservation?
• SP-ARK is working with the academic sector on this, talking with Howard Besser at NYU about digital preservation, most of which is completed there by student interns
• An AHRC (?) ‘Knowledge Transfer Partnership’ paid for two PhD students to work on the project.
• Problem of conforming to national/international cataloguing standards to ensure collaboration across collections and sustainability of SP-ARK.

Key Issues/Questions

• BUILDING COLLABORATIONS FOR FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES.

• NEED TO SET IN PLACE A STRUCTURE FOR VOLUNTEERS (TD noted the existence of a guidebook for this at the WL).

• NEED FOR A LOGO FOR THE NETWORK.

• THE NEED FOR METADATA THAT IS INTER-OPERABLE.

Gaylene Gould (writetalklisten) could not attend.

12.15-1.15 Session 4: Network Mission and its Web Presence – Questions for Decision

Christine Gledhill, Linda Kaye on key issues and questions raised by the Workshop (Julia Knight could not attend)

• The network should work in incremental stages and not try to do too much at once.
• A long-term plan needed.
• Is a broad aim of the Network to provide a shared space and/or working tools for its members?
• Is its website a means of linking people together in a WFH-based social network?
• What kind of spaces? Meetings? Events? On-line, gathering in disparate interests?
• We need to decide where the Network fits on the spectrum of forms from formal organization to organic activities arising from specific types of work.
• Will WFHN function as an umbrella organisation that is informal, but which seeks to galvanise and link disparate activities not necessarily of its own initiation?
• How far will the Network take on consciousness raising, campaigning, advocacy and fund-raising functions?
• The network is to a degree already present, but will it rely on volunteers and those committed to it, or does it require institutional support and to what extent?
• To what extent will it be useful to adopt social networking tools?
• While social networking sites are good for maintaining contact, an official site may be needed for the Network proper.
• A Wiki is already established, but how might this be improved?
• Wiki or website can be used as a means of collective data sharing: a repository of knowledge, including blogs and tit-bits.
• And/or as a hub to which other activities can be linked/joined up, and although not necessarily organising these other activities, can help to stimulate new initiatives.
• Also a resource directing users to sources, archives, collections and other websites & providing tool-kits to enable individuals to set up their own specialist websites.
• Wiki/Website must represent the Network: Who we are; what we do
• Must be authoritative but also user friendly and accessible.
• Raises issue of maintenance and curation (e.g. will it require copy-editing?).

POST WORKSHOP 3: DEBRIEF

Present: Christine Gledhill, Amy Sargeant, Angela Martin, Nathalie Morris, Clare Watson, Lawrence Napper, Elaine Burrows, Laraine Porter

Proposal: Network as Tripartite Structure

A. Website

B. Activities & Events

C. Steering Group

Clare: via the website the Network could function as a Bildwechsel style hub, providing a context and information exchange for any activities generated by any group anywhere which relate to its defining interests.

The network would then not itself have to take responsibility for generating all activities associated with it, nor would it act as a centralizing controller of activities.

However, it could instigate a running annual event series, which might be organized by and circulate annually between different institutions in the Network’s name.

A. Website

Our gratitude to Alexis for setting up the wiki and facilitating the preparatory stages of Network formation.

Discussion re whether to build on the wiki or develop an alternative via, e.g. Word Press which some found easier to use than wiki.

Neither require institutional server space, although Teresa Doherty had suggested that The Woman’s Library server could host the eventual WFHN website.

Discussion about the kind of website required and its function.

Nathalie: website could function as basic blog which:

• gives the Network an identity
• functions as an umbrella for projects set up by different groups not organized by the Network but seeking to identify with its aims
• posts links to sources, events, other sites; e.g. De Montfort’s Centre for Cinema and Television History (CATH), Amber Films, Tyneside Film Theatre, Women Film Pioneers, Women and Silent British Cinema website, etc.
• hosts discussion
• organises advocacy campaigns

Agreed: a logo for the Website and Network is needed

Angela Martin has a designer contact and agreed to investigate costs.

Clare Watson, with experience of creating the Women and Silent British Cinema website, is willing, with some funding, to work on expanding a replica wordpress website to serve the Network.

Funding for website construction/maintenance

Laraine said a bid might be made to De Montfort’s CATH for support.

Advice or help from WiFTV should be sought.

B. Activities & Events

B 1: Research Initiative

Amy: Network in collaboration with HE institution might apply for PhD placement on a research project which could involve setting the website up.

C. Steering Group & Network Organisation

Elaine: we require a “Third Way” between the institutional formality of Women’s History Network and the ad hoc practice of Bildwechsel.

Although Bildwechsel operate in a democratic, decentralized, ad-hoc way, one of the founders seems to function as linchpin and to provide continuity over 30-year period.

We need a group of volunteers, based in different HE institutions, and supported to carry out key defined roles:

• Maintaining website
• Ensuring an annual event and liaising with its organizers
• Running annual meeting at the event, at which modifications to the way the Network runs could be proposed, information exchanged, new projects announced
• Advocacy actions undertaken

Conclusion – Next Priority

A brief for the Network — and so for the website.

A small Blueprint Group (Christine Gledhill, Yvonne Tasker, Laraine Porter, Clare Watson, Bryony Dixon, Nathalie Morris, Julia Knight, Melanie Bell, Emma Sandon, Elaine Burrows, Linda Kaye) will meet in London 19 February to thrash out a draft blueprint to be circulated round the Network and put to the April Conference (13-15 April, University of Sunderland).

We have kept the group small and to people with key institutional connections or experience in order to expedite focused and practical outcomes to be submitted to wider discussion.

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