Cultural and Media Policy Studies News and Events

The Centre for Cultural Policy Studies will be home to the University of Warwick's first Popathon as part of The Mediasmith Project led by Ruth Leary. Popathon is an international series of hackathon events which bring digital storytellers, technologists and designers together to prototype the future of web-native storytelling. Participants will collaborate in a 24 hour 'sprint' to create an interactive story experience.

On Wednesday the 28^th January CCPS will be delighted to host a talk from Peter Horrocks, former director of the BBC World Service and soon-to-be vice-chancellor of the Open University. Over a 30 year career with the Corporation, Peter has worked as a journalist, editor, producer and executive producer and in a range of senior management positions in TV, radio and on-line. He has edited Newsnight and Panorama and, following appointment as Head of Current Affairs in 2000 worked as executive producer on influential and ground-breaking documentaries including Brits, Dirty War and The Power of Nightmares. He will look back on his career in these various roles and reflect on the opportunities and challenges for a globally connected BBC. As a key figure in Britain’s media for the last three decades, he will offer some provocations for our students aiming to shape their careers in the contemporary and emerging media landscape.

The event will be hosted in G50 Millburn House at 5pm-6.30pm. We expect this event to be popular so please e-mail Paula Watkins to reserve a place on p.watkins@warwick.ac.uk 

Refreshments will be provided.

Oliver Bennett has published a new book - Cultures of Optimism: The Institutional Promotion of Hope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

In this sequel to his book on Cultural Pessimism, Oliver Bennett explores how individuals and societies sustain hope. The book focuses on the institutional propagation of optimism in diverse domains: democratic politics; work; the family; religion; and psychotherapy. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including social and evolutionary psychology, intellectual history and organisational behaviour, Bennett addresses a number of questions: what are the functions of optimism in modern societies? How and why do institutions promote it? What values and attitudes are involved? The institutional actions explored, conceptualised as cultural policy in its broadest sense, point to the promotion of hope and optimism as a near-universal cultural imperative.

For reviews and further details see here