Winners of New Media Writing Prize revealed at BU

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A sitcom based around conversations with voice-activated app Siri, a multi-media project on gang warfare in El Salvador and an interactive poetry website were named winners at the New Media Writing Awards.

The international competition, run by Bournemouth University’s Media School, showcases innovative story-telling designed to be accessed through new media devices.

The winners were announced at an awards ceremony at Bournemouth University, with prizes awarded to an overall winner, a people’s choice winner decided by an online public vote, and a student winner.

Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos was named overall winner, receiving a prize of £1,000.

Her entry, Siri and Me, consisted of a virtual sitcom made up of conversations between her and the voice-activated phone application.

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Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos receiving the New Media Writing Prize award via Skype, for her virtual sitcom Siri and Me

Esmeralda, who lives in New York, received her award over Skype, saying: “I’m really excited and happy,”

“The way Siri talks to me now may be the way my fridge will start talking to me in the future. You will start to have relationships with your appliances.”

The student prize was won by David Devanny from Falmouth University, for his project Orange Sweatshirt.

His interactive site generates poems, which readers can then alter by changing words, the tone, and format used.

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Student prize winner David Devanny (right), with Peter Phillips of Unicorn Training

David, whose prize was a three-month paid internship with e-learning company Unicorn Training said: “It’s amazing. The whole thing has been a very good experience, and I’m very shocked and surprised.

“I like the idea of giving over control to the reader as much as possible, so I try to make a point of doing that in my work.”

The winners were decided by a panel of judges which included Dan Franklin, Digital Publisher at Random House; Chris Meade, founder of if:Book UK, which explores the future of books; and  Joanna Ellis, Associate Director of The Literary Platform.

Chris Meade said: “What I love about this competition, and this year more than ever, is it’s about a new kind of writer. They are creating things for different platforms and not just writing for a book.”

There was also a People’s Choice Award, decided by an online public vote, with a prize of £250.

Ann Luce and Jim Pope

Ann Luce, one of the creators of People’s Choice award winner The Engineer, with event organiser Jim Pope.

Over 1,000 votes were received and the award was won by Mathew Charles, Juan Passarelli and Ann Luce for their multi-media project The Engineer, which follows El Salvador’s only forensic pathologist and looks at gang crime in the country.

As well as the winners being announced, the awards ceremony also featured talks from leading new media figures, including Rob Sherman, author of Random House’s first fully interactive fiction Black Crown, and Julian McCrae, creator of multi-media thriller The Craftsman.

They spoke about their work and gave tips for students in the audience who wanted to go into digital storytelling, including quickly making the reader care about your piece and characters, and knowing the genre and audience expectations.

 Andy Campbell, who has created Dreaming Methods – a digital scrapbook for authors featuring animation and visual imagery alongside written pieces – also spoke at the awards ceremony.

He said: “It is really a fantastic event and a great showcase for this type of work.

“It’s a nice chance to hopefully influence some up-and-coming writers and encourage people to give it a go.”

The New Media Writing Prize is now in its fourth year and organiser and judge Jim Pope said it was bigger and better than ever.

“I think it has been the most successful awards ceremony we have run, the biggest and most varied range of entries and audience,” said Jim, who is also Course Leader for BA (Hons) English at Bournemouth University.

“The quality of the entries was fantastic and it was so hard to choose a winner because they were all so different, it was like choosing between chalk and cheese.”

Media School runs citizen journalism workshops for disability charity

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Staff and students from Bournemouth University’s Media School have been helping people with disabilities develop the skills needed to become citizen journalists.

Journalism academics and students have run a number of workshops with volunteers from charity Access Dorset, which is establishing a citizen journalism project.

The charity – which supports older people, people with learning disabilities and their carers – wants to enable volunteers to create films for their website and share the stories of their members through their Access Dorset TV project.

Dave Thompson, Development Manager for Access Dorset, said: “In order to have it very much led by disabled people and carers themselves, we wanted to be able to skill up people to do it themselves. So not only are they sharing the stories and issues affecting disabled people, but they are also telling the stories themselves.

“We are on a huge learning curve at the moment and we are really grateful for the support that we are getting from the Media School to help us to develop that skill base, enabling us to move forward quickly.”

Dr Ann Luce, Lecturer in Journalism and Communication, has been running weekly workshops in the Media School with the volunteer citizen journalists – covering everything from how to use the cameras, to interview techniques and how to create sequences of different shots.

She said: “The purpose of this project is to empower disabled people to use their voices and become a part of the media and tell their stories, but also, more importantly, give them the skills to go on and empower other disabled people.

“My hope is that we can stop marginalisation, stigmatisation and sensationalism of disabled voices and stories in the media – this is just the first step.”

Third year BA (Hons) Multimedia Journalism student Nicolas Williams has been assisting in the workshops.

He said: “I’m helping out with the technical skills, like how to use the camera and editing equipment. I’ve also been showing them some of my work as well as going through it with them.

“It’s not easy, but it’s nice to see them going through it and trying their hardest, learning and doing really well.”

The workshops have been funded by BU’s Fusion Investment Fund and the BU team will continue to work with the citizen journalists throughout the first year of the project, before helping to produce a report of its progress.

Kelvin Trevett, of Poole, was one of the volunteer citizen journalists taking part in the workshop.

He said: “I was looking for some voluntary work and this looked really interesting and exciting.

“It’s been really good and very informative, and I think I will be more confident to actually go out there and do it now.

“I’m looking forward to putting everything we’ve learnt so far into practice.”

Media School US Election coverage wins award

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Bournemouth University Media School students’ radio coverage of the US 2012 Presidential election has won a Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) award for best radio news day.

Media School students won the award for working through the night, broadcasting live on Hope FM and online, giving the latest news and results from the US 2012 Presidential election.

The radio coverage included hourly bulletins and news flashes throughout the night, along with live debates and guest speakers including Conor Burns MP.

The radio broadcast was only one strand of the US 2012 coverage as students were also tasked with producing a live television broadcast and a stream of online news coverage about the election.

Multimedia journalism students Beth Graham and Jodie Packwood both worked on the radio coverage as Editors and were in Coventry to receive the BJTC award. They said, “It feels really good as we put a lot of effort and time into this project. It’s the first time the radio side of the project has been recognised with a prize so it’s nice to know our coverage was award winning.

“We learnt that radio journalism takes a lot of pre-planning – you can’t just go on air and have a chat. We planned this right from the beginning of term. A highlight was when we called the result of Barack Obama winning, before the BBC.”

The students were also quick to thank the lecturers who made the radio broadcast possible, adding, “We would also like to thank the lecturers who helped out on the night and in the run up to the event – particularly Cat Greeves who helped us so much. And the project wouldn’t have even been possible without Mat Charles and Ann Luce who were the ‘big bosses’ of the event and put it all together.”