19 research outputs found
Culturo-Scientific Storytelling
In this article, we reflect on the functions of outreach in developing the modern scientific mind, and discuss its essential importance in the modern society of rapid technological development. We embed our approach to outreach in culturo-scientific thinking. This is constituted by embracing disciplinary thinking (in particular creativity) whilst appreciating the epistemology of science as an evolving dialogue of ideas, with numerous alternative perspectives and uncertain futures to be managed. Structuring scientific knowledge as an assemblage of interacting and evolving discipline-cultures, we conceive of a culturo-scientific storytelling to bring about positive transformations for the public in these thinking skills and ground our approach in quantum science and technologies (QST). This field has the potential to generate significant changes for the life of every citizen, and so a skills-oriented approach to its education, both formal and non-formal, is essential. Finally, we present examples of such storytelling in the case of QST, the classification and evaluation of which correspond to future work in which this narrative approach is studied in action
Sparrows can't sing : East End kith and kinship in the 1960s
Sparrows Canât Sing (1963) was the only feature film directed by
the late and much lamented Joan Littlewood. Set and filmed in
the East End, where she worked for many years, the film deserves
more attention than it has hitherto received. Littlewoodâs career
spanned documentary (radio recordings made with Ewan MacColl
in the North of England in the 1930s) to directing for the stage
and the running of the Theatre Royal in Londonâs Stratford East,
often selecting material which aroused memories in local audiences
(Leach 2006: 142). Many of the actors trained in her Theatre
Workshop subsequently became better known for their appearances
on film and television. Littlewood herself directed hardly any material
for the screen: Sparrows Canât Sing and a 1964 series of television
commercials for the British Egg Marketing Board, starring Theatre
Workshopâs Avis Bunnage, were rare excursions into an area of practice
which she found constraining and unamenable (Gable 1980: 32).
The hybridity and singularity of Littlewoodâs feature may answer,
in some degree, for its subsequent neglect. However, Sparrows Canât
Sing makes a significant contribution to a group of films made in
Britain in the 1960s which comment generally on changes in the
urban and social fabric. It is especially worthy of consideration,
I shall argue, for the use which Littlewood made of a particular
communityâs attitudes â sentimental and critical â to such changes and
for its amalgamation of an attachment to documentary techniques
(recording an aural landscape on location) with a preference for nonnaturalistic
delivery in performance