The Art of Doing Something Artistic

Artist in Residence with Southbank Artistic Director Jude Kelly OBE, third from left

Summer is set to tuck itself into its shed, as autumn makes its long-nights presence felt. And amid the concrete fixed facades in East Wing of London's cultural playground sits a beguiling sight.

It could be construed as a piece of art, and perhaps is one, but its main function is the meeting place for the Southbank Centre's Artist in Residence.

If you happened to pass by it at about 9.30 a.m yesterday you'd have caught us seating cosily inside catching up on what we're doing and our plans ahead.

Artists like, Poet and writer Lemn (Sissay) whom I haven't seen for a good while; he's just come back from touring Australia and is about to commence work with a hospital, plus the many other things he does.

And then Oliver Coates, an in demand solo Cellists and musician, who has recently completed a projected using the bowels of the Royal Festival Hall's hidden tunnels: the scene is something out of The Shining.  The lists of Artists is here

Meeting and sharing ideas with fellow artists is invigorating and then the bar is always raised and some with Jude Kelly, Southbank Artistic Director, mapping out plans for the Southbank in the months ahead and the work she would like, love to see from her artists.

This includes the up coming Festival of Death; Festival of the World; a Festival in collaboration with Brazil and then the Olympic games project.

For the Festival of Death I'm considering a narrative of the funereal procedure of Ghanaians, and the experience of my family when my father passed away two years ago and we had to take him back to the family's burial place in Ghana. The whole process was documented with pictures and is quite something.

A more filmic project explores what I'm loosely calling "A right to passage" which will explore space, movement as long tracks but delving into psychoanalysis - sans flaws.

Art videojournalism -Why the Arts and websites should embrace art-videojournalism

24 hour news at an end says former Sky News boss Nick Pollard from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

You have to give credit to the suits, for the primacy of video programme making as a commodity to sell invariably boils down to news.

Trouble is it's transient, often too transient. When was the last time you kept a newspaper. No wait! If you're like me, almost everyday.

Today I threw away video and design magazines and a small mountain of newspapers dating back to 1999.

But I digress, my point is the journalism in video, as in videojournalism can be a swift transaction that takes a lot of effort to sate the appetite, with not the best of returns, literally.

Fifteen years ago, we came by the same answer, so the videojournalism station I worked for diversified and some of its popular and non-transient programmes involved arts and culture (A&C).

For the Vjs we could be more creative with the form. For the listeners a chance to have us respond to ideas featured in their local newspapers or quite often sent in. Yep social programming circa 1990s

I never quite understood how important A&C was in the early phase of my broadcast career, but over the years have looked to consume much I can get my hands on, because as you likely know more than I do, everything we do is seeped in A&C.

It's an unbroken timeline, unless you count dark ages.

From the Internet, a revised version of the Victorian telegraph; to news of import captured in their own way by the artists of their time e.g. Caravaggio and Velasquez, A&C is our DNA.

Today, the Guardian newspaper featured: Culture on Television: a lost art? The article illustrates how the disappearance of a major Arts TV programme, The South Bank, is bad news, and asks whether digital channels could provide an alternative.

Arts - Videojournalism's Ratings Winner
Should media execs and newspaper proprietors be concerned? Why yes! For one thing, done right it's a ratings winner.

"When you read the annual report it's the arts programmes that create value, our content is at the heart of what we do", says Channel 4's arts commissioner Jan Younghusband.

Another quote in the article that caught my attention was how "Arts organisations are becoming producers". This indeed is nothing new. But the use of video reportage is relatively a newcomer.

Reporting the arts as a videojournlist is less about the revolution about doing all by oneself, but about relating context and providing a hmmmm insight for others. It's not news, yet can be, so calls on creative video productions and a clarity in reportage.

Somehow the more knowledgeable and worldly you sound the more we're inclined to embrace you, which is why Sister Wendy Becket could become a hit almost overnight. Er, no she's not a videojournalist.

During the summer, I have a number of ideas for the South Bank centre, our own august arts body. Out of the blue last year I produced a report about the Arts and TV and that was well received, but I also intend to illustrate how the brand of videojournalism I have been honing over the years attempts to in some way treat some news events artistically e.g interviews etc.

Why?

Because it goes back to the matter of primacy of video making as a commodity, that hopefully the it's something you're likely to come back to watch again and adds value to the quality of news.