The legend of St Catherine’s well

A short story written from the research of local history sources and produced as an audio work. The piece was commissioned by Nottinghamshire County Council for the development of the successful £1.3m Heritage Lottery bid to renovate historical features within Sconce & Devon Park, Newark, Nottinghamshire

Bill Ming: stories of wood, wind and fire

Engaging with “ The Work and Identity of Artists” is research theme that has pre-occupied many of Andy Mckay’s film projects. A previous faculty research seminar discussed “ DV Miniatures “ , a slate of his experimental film collaborations with poets, dancers, choreographers, jazz composers, visual and performance artists which was made to celebrate “ Year of the Artist “ and funded by Arts Council England. Though there are exceptions, he has long been puzzled by the question of why mainstream media habitually speaks of visual artists as heroic visionaries after death – conferring a strange posthumous celebrity, when during their lifetime the same media often infers that their work is weird, usually anti social, publicity seeking, largely bonkers and basically unnecessary to the rest of an otherwise functioning society. All this, whilst the study of their posthumous significance provides for significant bulk of academic study, including the odd TV programme, and the aspiration to be a creative artist looms large in the consciousness of many young people. Whilst a literary biography or biographic novel may take years of research and many days or weeks to read, a film biography of a living artist recorded from live events spanning many years not only requires significant research and logistical production practice, but also raises different considerations of substantive editing, audience engagement and mediation. Set in the context of current events, the film biography of the “ un-dead artist ”enables us to consider the significance of their work in the present, both to ourselves and to those whose current life experience also forms part of its motivation. The risk is that such contemporary film portrayal is viewed solely as media publicity, attempting to confer undeserved fame before posthumous analysis, rather than simply being current, informative and enlightening whilst also perfectly capable of being entertaining. The presentation will raise issues of documentary film making, making choices and omissions, as well as show the film for comment

Growth and poverty reduction in Africa in the last two decades: evidence from an AERC growth-poverty project and beyond

SubSaharan Africa has seen a return to good economic growth performance in the last 15 years, and especially in the last 5-10 years; as has been quite widely recognised, several factors have been important here, not just good performance of commodities. The World Bank’s global poverty statistics show a good reduction over the past 3 years, and two other studies have suggested that progress in poverty reduction associated with this growth has been impressive, but there has been no careful assessment of what household survey evidence says. This paper represents a first move in that direction. Focusing on carefully conducted studies of 11 countries undertaken by leading African researchers, guided by specialist international resource persons in the field, this paper synthesises what can be said about changes in monetary poverty using this evidence. In addition the paper examines evidence on non-monetary outcomes from Demographic and Health Surveys, which were conducted more than once in all countries. We find that poverty in both monetary and non-monetary terms has fallen in most countries, though to different extents in different countries. Some countries have been successful in many dimensions over an extended period, while in others the pattern is either much less positive or more mixed. Growth is probably only one factor behind the changes, and especially in relation to non-monetary poverty

Strata streams

Images from the physical world of natural forms often inherit characteristics that the brain is able to comprehend in the process that takes place as information from the senses is absorbed to give context, sense and meaning to that which we are seeing – thus providing us with a collective sense of narrative to our experience of the physical world around us. (We can mostly agree when a tree is a tree). When some of the layers of this information are removed, changed and reconstructed; or we are simply induced - even mesmerised - into giving more time for the seeing and hearing, the link between the image/sound source and the sensory context is broken - necessitating a form of narrative reconstruction. ( eg. When the image of the tree loses some, or even all, of its “ treeness “ ) Does this phenomenon reduce audience appreciation and understanding, or actively challenge our imagination to build new, more individual, diverse and subjective associations and narratives through creative interaction with the work? In narrative terms – that less is more. Strata Streams is a poetic constantly changing sensory journey that seeks to explore visual and auditory abstraction and narrative association, asking, en-route, questions about perception

Does climate aid affect emissions? Evidence from a global dataset

Donor countries have been using international aid in the field of energy for at least three decades now. The stated objective of this policy is to reduce emissions and promote sustainable development in the global south. In spite of the widespread use of this policy tool, very little is known about its effect on emissions. In this paper we perform an empirical audit of the effectiveness of climate aid in tackling CO2 and SO2 emissions. Using a global panel dataset covering up to 131 countries over the period 1961 to 2011 and estimating a parsimonious model using the Anderson and Hsiao estimator we do not find any evidence of a systematic effect of energy related aid on emissions. We also find that the non-effect is not conditional on institutional quality or level of income. Countries located in Europe and Central Asia does better than others in utilising climate aid to reduce CO2 emissions. Our results are robust after controlling for the Environmental Kuznets Curve, country fixed effects, country specific trends, and time varying common shocks

Nottingham on film: part 1 & 2

Nottingham on Film, written, produced and edited by filmmaker Andy McKay pieces together rarely seen and newly restored films of the city of Nottingham from 1920 to 1980, arranging these hidden gems into ten themes so the viewer can choose how to make their exploration of twentieth century Nottingham. Known as “The Queen of the Midlands”, Nottingham is an ancient city with a rich cultural and industrial history. The twentieth century saw rapid change for Nottingham, in the market square - the largest in England outside the capital and scene of many civic celebrations, in industry and transport, as well as in everyday life - and the new medium of film was there to record this change. Among the rarely seen films, all preserved by MACE, are scenes of enjoyment at the Goose Fair, coronation celebrations, life on the shop floor in knitwear, lace, bicycle and tobacco manufacture, trade on the River Trent and a wealth of news reports from ITV’s regional news magazine programme, ATV Today. These include the opening of Nottingham Playhouse and building work of the ‘new’ Victoria Centre in 1964

Does energy related aid affect emissions? Evidence from a global dataset

Donor countries have been using international aid in the field of energy for at least three decades now. The stated objective of this policy is to reduce emissions and promote sustainable development in the global south. In spite of the widespread use of this policy tool,very little is known about its effect on emissions. In this paper we perform an empirical audit of the effectiveness of energy related aid in tackling CO2 and SO2 emissions. Using a global panel dataset covering 128 countries over the period 1971 to 2011 and estimating a parsimonious model using the Anderson and Hsiao estimator we do not find any evidence of a systematic effect of energy related aid on emissions. We also find that the non-effect is not conditional on institutional quality or level of income. Countries located in Europe and Central Asia do better than others in utilising this aid to reduce CO2 emissions. Our results are robust after controlling for the Environmental Kuznets Curve, country fixed effects, country specific trends, and time varying common shocks