Centre of Television Histories Director, Helen Wheatley, won the British Association for Film, Television and Screen Studies Award for Journal Article of the Year for her article

‘Haunted Television: Trauma and the Specter in the Archive’ JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 59 (3), pp.69-80

The judging panel said: "This offers a consistently engaging, thought-provoking and timely reflection on the framing of media figures such as Jimmy Savile as specters ‘haunting’ the television archive. Relying on enlightening textual analyses from a wide range of documentaries and dramas, it convincingly explores the constant reappearance of this spectral figure and the ways these programmes work through the traumas and hidden histories that it represents."

https://www.baftss.org/awards-2021?fbclid=IwAR0HpugKn1aFDlkaxJX3AtOha2vwVu6DQTCkiTTSpizAj4xeE7fbgo9G-6w

Humans at Work is a new play, written by Stephanie Ridings for Warwick Arts Centre. Part of the Great Place Project, the play shines a light on the city’s industrial past. The piece has grown out of community engagement and creative approaches to television archives, and the Centre's Ghost Town project, in collaboration with Photo Archive Miners, were involved in the early stages of the project. We are very excited to see finished product!

Tickets available here.

The Centre was very excited to welcome the Canadian television historians Jennifer Vanderburgh and Andrew Burke as our IAS Visiting International Fellows in July 2019. Jen and Andrew were involved in a range of activities during their stay:

Week 1:

Tuesday 2ndJuly: Public Lecture (at Theatre Absolute’s Shopfront Theatre): Jennifer Vanderburgh – ‘What VHS Remembers: Activating Obsolescence for the Future of TV Heritage’ 4.30-6.30 (5pm start for the lecture)

Thursday 4thJuly: Film and Television Studies Research Seminar (Millburn House): Jennifer Vanderburgh – ‘Thinking Television Through the City: The City (Not the Nation) as a Framework for Television Studies’ 5pm – A0.28

Friday 5thJuly: Centre for Television Histories Workshop (G50, Millburn House): Community Engagement and the Television Archive. This Workshop brought together scholars, archivists and other interested parties from around the UK to discuss the possibilities of archive crowdsourcing, the citizen archivist, and models of community engagement (including the involvement of marginalised and disenfranchised communities in curation, archives, and historical research). You can read our Research Assistant Katie Crosson's blog about the day here.

Week 2:

Monday 8thJuly: Bid Writing Discussion Group: We met to work together on an AHRC Network Bid. This bid responds in part to aspects of the recent call for funding for UK-US Collaborations in in Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions (https://ahrc.ukri.org/funding/apply-for-funding/current-opportunities/research-networking-highlight-notice-for-uk-us-collaborations-in-digital-scholarship-in-cultural-institutions/).The purpose of this is to put an international network together to look at media histories in this context, getting archives/museums and academics together to think about how we might engage communities in the work of curating, researching and archiving televisual histories. IAS Seminar Room, 12-4pm

Tuesday 9thJuly:Public Lecture (at Theatre Absolute’s Shopfront Theatre): Andrew Burke – ‘From Public Service Announcements to Sign-Off Sequences: Television, Archives, Memory, and Nostalgia’4.30-6.30 (5pm start for the lecture)

Wednesday 10thJuly: Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies Research Seminar (Millburn House): Andrew Burke – ‘Cinema and the Object World of Modernity’ G50 11-1pm to include a lunch

Click here to read more about this event.

This original book asks how, in an age of convergence, when 'television' no longer means a box in the corner of the living room that we sit and watch together, do we remember television of the past? How do we gather and archive our memories? Kristyn Gordon and Joanne Garde-Hansen explore these questions through first person interviews with tv producers, curators and archivists, and case studies of popular television series and fan communities such as Cold Feetand Doctor Who. Their discussion takes in museum exhibitions, popular televison nostalgia programming and 'vintage' tv websites.

On the 22nd of March 2018, the Centre hosted Joanne Garde-Hansen (University of Warwick) and Peter Kraftl (University of Birmingham), who shared early results of their new research project on the intersections between broadcasting and flood histories.

Researchers from the Centre, led by Helen Wheatley, have begun the four-year research project, Ghost Town: Civic Television and the Haunting of Coventrywhich leads up to and into Coventry's City of Culture year. Click here to read more about the project as it develops.

An interdisciplinary one-day workshop - University of Warwick - Saturday 6th May 2017

This workshop brought together scholars interested in how war has been broadcast to the public in the 20th and 21st centuries. From the early use of radio, through to newsreel, television, 24-hour news, and now social media, the ways in which war has been broadcast has constantly evolved. Not only has the media changed, the sources of broadcasts now include state broadcasters, international corporations and citizen journalists. This workshop sought to understand the forces driving changes in the way war has been broadcast, and how it is remediated and remembered via the media, and how the public have both received and participated in those developments.

We're really thrilled to get this award for building a partnership with the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum around the extremely successful exhibition we pitched and consulted on, The Story of Children's Television, 1946 to Today. Curators Ali Wells and Huw Jones did an amazing job; the exhibition showed at the Herbert from May to September 2015, breaking the museum's previous records for attendance by a very long way, and will tour the UK until 2018. See above.

On Saturday 7 November Rachel Moseley and Helen Wheatley gave a 'Teatime Talk' on 'The Story of Children's Television' exhibition at the Herbert Gallery. Helen gave an overview of the early history of children's television in Britain and the Centre's collaboration with the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, whilst Rachel previewed work from her new book Handmade Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children in Britain, 1961-1974. They greatly enjoyed discussing people's memories of children's television with the audience and the lively discussion that followed about the importance of protecting children's culture at a time of BBC Charter renewal. The event took place at the Friends Meeting House in Warwick, as part of Warwick Words: Festival of Literature and the Spoken Word, and was very well attended and received.

The exhibition The Story of Children's Television, 1946 to the Present Day opened at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry on the 22nd May 2015 and ran until the 15th of September. The exhibition formed part of the The Story of Children's Television from 1946 to Now project. Rachel Moseley and Helen Wheatley collaborated with curators Ali Wells and Huw Jones at the Herbert on the exhibition which traced the history of children’s television, bringing together seven decades of iconic objects, memorabilia, merchandise, clips and images. From puppetry to CGI and live shows to dramas and fantasy, the exhibition encouraged visitors to share their memories of children's TV. Rachel and Helen have worked with Dr. Amy Holdsworth of the University of Glasgow on a research project at the exhibition which looks at how children’s television culture is a privileged site of memory and nostalgia, and what the role of the museum is in producing narratives of and public engagement with media history. Following its opening stint at the Herbert in Coventry, the exhibition toured the UK until 2018.

Click here for a visual tour of the exhibition.

The exhibition was very successful, and attracted unprecedented crowds to the Herbert. BBC Breakfast's coverage of the exhibition can be found here.

The exhibition is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, BBC, Ragdoll Productions, ITV, Kaleidoscope and the Children’s Media Foundation.

Accompanying the major exhibition ‘The Story of Children’s Television, 1946 to the Present Day’, this conference (organised by the Centre's Rachel Moseley and Helen Wheatley, and Amy Holdsworth of the University of Glasgow) combined discussion of the history of children’s programming with analysis and reflection on the current landscape of children’s television and its future. Papers at the conference acknowledged and analysed the significance of children’s programming in the broader context of television production, discussed its production as both a creative process and a business enterprise, and reflected on the place of children’s television in the broader history of the medium. Panels and papers also discussed the genre in relation to notions of cultural heritage, collective remembering and nostalgia, and considered the impact of change on the production and circulation of children’s television, and viewing practices and the particular issues raised by studying the child viewer. Our keynote speakers were Dafna Lemish (Southern Illinois University) and Karen Lury (University of Glasgow). Members of our industry round table were: Sara Harkins (Head of Children's, BBC Scotland), Jenny Buckland (Australian Children's Media Foundation), Estelle Hughes (Roobydoo Media), and Jenny Buckland (Children's Media Foundation).