West Midlands is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the larger West Midlands region of England. A landlocked county, it is bordered by Staffordshire to the north and west, Worcestershire to the south, and is surrounded by Warwickshire to the east. The largest settlement is the city of Birmingham.
The National Science and Media Museum, located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is part of the national Science Museum Group in the UK. The museum has seven floors of galleries with permanent exhibitions focusing on photography, television, animation, videogaming, the Internet and the scientific principles behind light and colour. It also hosts temporary exhibitions and maintains a collection of 3.5 million pieces in its research facility.
Cornerhouse was a centre for cinema and the contemporary visual arts, located next to Oxford Road Station on Oxford Street, Manchester, England, which was active from 1985 to 2015. It had three floors of art galleries, three cinemas, a bookshop, a bar and a café bar. Cornerhouse was operated by Greater Manchester Arts Centre Ltd, a registered charity.
The University of Wolverhampton is a public university in Wolverhampton, England, located on four campuses across the West Midlands, Shropshire and Staffordshire. Originally founded in 1827 as the Wolverhampton Tradesmen's and Mechanics' Institute, the university was subject to a series of merges, incorporations, and expansions with other local colleges, one of which occurred under the supervision of Prince George, Duke of Kent.
The culture of Birmingham is characterised by a deep-seated tradition of individualism and experimentation, and the unusually fragmented but innovative culture that results has been widely remarked upon by commentators. Writing in 1969, the New York-based urbanist Jane Jacobs cast Birmingham as one of the world's great examples of urban creativity: surveying its history from the 16th to the 20th centuries she described it as a "great, confused laboratory of ideas", noting how its chaotic structure as a "muddle of oddments" meant that it "grew through constant diversification". The historian G. M. Young – in a classic comparison later expanded upon by Asa Briggs – contrasted the "experimental, adventurous, diverse" culture of Birmingham with the "solid, uniform, pacific" culture of the outwardly similar city of Manchester. The American economist Edward Gleason wrote in 2011 that "cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace. The streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance and the streets of Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution", concluding: "wandering these cities ... is to study nothing less than human progress."
The UK Film Council (UKFC) was a non-departmental public body set up in 2000 to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. It was constituted as a private company limited by guarantee, owned by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and governed by a board of 15 directors. It was funded from various sources including The National Lottery. John Woodward was the Chief Executive Officer of the UKFC.
Following a review of the film infrastructure in England during 2000, the UK Film Council set up nine Regional Screen Agencies, one in each of the regions of England, to deliver support for film-making, exhibition and related media activities. The regional screen agency network was closed down in 2011, with a number of services consolidated into a new agency, Creative England, and the majority of screen agencies then folded. However, a few continued to operate, most notably Film London and Screen Yorkshire.
ACMI, formerly the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is Australia's national museum of screen culture including film, television, videogames, digital culture and art. ACMI was established in 2002 and is based at Federation Square in Melbourne, Victoria.
Watershed opened in June 1982 as the United Kingdom's first dedicated media centre. Based in former warehouses on the harbourside at Bristol, it hosts three cinemas, a café/bar, events/conferencing spaces, the Pervasive Media Studio, and office spaces for administrative and creative staff. It occupies the former E and W sheds on Canon's Road at Saint Augustine's Reach, and underwent a major refurbishment in 2005. The building also hosts UWE eMedia Business Enterprises, Most of Watershed's facilities are situated on the second floor of two of the transit sheds. The conference spaces and cinemas are used by many public and private sector organisations and charities. Watershed employs the equivalent of over seventy full-time staff and has an annual turnover of approximately £3.8 million. As well as its own commercial income, Watershed Arts Trust is funded by national and regional arts funders.
Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) is an art centre in Dundee, Scotland, with two contemporary art galleries, a two-screen cinema, a print studio, a learning and public engagement programme, a shop and a café bar. The current director of the DCA is Beth Bate.
Sandwell College is the only College of Further Education in Sandwell, West Midlands, England. It predominantly serves Sandwell, West Birmingham and adjacent areas of Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Following seven years of growth in student numbers, some 6000 16–18-year-old students currently study in the college.
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England, 13 miles (21 km) northwest of Birmingham. The population in 2021 was 263,700.
Aberystwyth Arts Centre is an arts centre in Wales, located on Aberystwyth University's Penglais campus. One of the largest in Wales, it comprises a theatre, concert hall, studio and cinema, as well as four gallery spaces and cafés, bars, and shops.
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in Britain – commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom – with a population of 1.158 million in the city proper. Birmingham borders the Black Country to its west and, together with the city of Wolverhampton and towns including Dudley and Solihull, forms the West Midlands conurbation. The royal town of Sutton Coldfield is incorporated within the city limits to the northeast. The urban area has a population of 2.6 million and the wider metropolitan area has a population of 4.3 million, the largest outside of London in the UK.
Quad, is an arts centre in Derby, England, first opened on 26 September 2008. Quad provides an art gallery, three cinemas, artists’ studios, and a cafe bar. The centre also has spaces in which people can create their own artwork.
Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre is a cinema, art gallery and Café Bar in the city centre of Leicester, England. The four-screen, recently refurbished cinema shows everything from micro-budget independent films to the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and often hosts festivals and special events. The regularly changing art programme presents work by local and international artists, and the education programme provides short film courses for people to learn about, and create their own films.
FLIP is an animation festival primarily hosted by the Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton, UK. It is one of two festivals hosted by Light House, the other of which is Deaffest. Official literature for the festival says that FLIP occurs annually at the beginning of November and attracts submissions from more than 30 countries worldwide. As well as screening the selected open submissions, FLIP also consists of special screenings, talks from professionals within the animation world, workshops, industry panels, portfolio reviews and competitions. The festival was set up, managed and programmed by Peter McLuskie between 2004 and 2011. It grew out of the 'Animation Forum', also based at Light House and which was later rebranded as Animation Forum West Midlands and found a home at Birmingham City University. In 2009, the festival was awarded a Black Country Tourism Award for Event of the Year.
Deaffest is an annual deaf-led film and television festival, held in Wolverhampton, England. It specialises in the talents of deaf filmmakers and media artists from across the world. It endeavours to provide access to both deaf and hearing audiences, with festival goers able to experience screenings, performances, workshops and panel discussions.
The Seoul Animation Center is an animation and cartoon museum and activities center located on the hillside of Namsan in Jung-gu, Seoul. It was established by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in May 1999 to support the South Korean comics and animation industry and later expanded to include games and characters. It is operated and managed by the Seoul Business Agency (SBA) and jointly hosts the Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF), and other art exhibits and festivals at the center and on nearby Cartoon Street.
Janine Wiedel is a documentary photographer and visual anthropologist. She was born in New York City, has been based in the UK since 1970, and lives in London. Since the late 1960s she has been working on projects which have become books and exhibitions. In the early 1970s she spent five years working on a project about Irish Travellers; in the late 1970s two years documenting the industrial heartland of Britain. Wiedel's work is socially minded, exploring themes such as resistance, protest, multiculturalism and counterculture movements.