Freelance networks, trade unions and below-the-line solidarity in regional film and television clusters: An interview with the Bristol editors network

This article consists of an introduction and extended interview transcript conducted with several members of the Bristol Editors’ Network (BEN), an organization established in May 2015 to support the large community of editors that work in and around Bristol and the South West of England. The interview transcript is significant for several reasons. First and foremost, it provides a rich account of what it is like to freelance within the third-largest film and television production cluster in the UK, after London and Manchester. In doing so, the transcript also offers an insight into the sometimes-fraught state of contemporary industrial relations between the region’s employers and its largely freelance workforce. Moreover, the transcript provides an account of how, by establishing BEN, Bristol editors are working to defend themselves against exploitative practices in the cluster, fostering a mutually-supportive freelance community and contributing to a more effective, equitable production culture in the city

Quark mixing from softly broken symmetries

Quark flavor mixing may originate in the soft breaking of horizontal symmetries. Those symmetries, which in the simplest case are three family U(1) groups, are obeyed only by the dimension-4 Yukawa couplings and lead, when unbroken, to the absence of mixing. Their breaking may arise from the dimension-3 mass terms of SU(2)-singlet vector-like quarks. Those gauge-singlet mass terms break the horizontal symmetries at a scale much higher than the Fermi scale, yet softly, leading to quark mixing while the quark masses remain unsuppressed.Comment: 9 pages, plain Latex, no figure

Building a Small Cinema: Resisting Neoliberal Colonization in Liverpool

In its stated aim of “creating cinemas not supermarkets,” the Small Cinema project voiced its alterity to the recent redevelopment of Liverpool’s city center and those of other former industrial cities throughout the Midlands and the north of the UK. These regeneration projects addressed the problem of a shrinking manufacturing base by replacing them with service industries, a move which has entailed the privatization of vast tracts of public space. Conversely, the building, functioning, and general praxis of the Small Cinema project suggests a mode of practice that more accurately fits within the paradigm of a collaborative commons than a capitalist marketplace. The project’s exemption from market criteria grants it the freedom to pursue public over private goods, thereby constituting a point of resistance to the ongoing neoliberalization of the city and changes to government policy that make it increasingly difficult for non-profit projects to exist. Historically speaking, cinemas have been accessible to the working class in a way that other artistic media have not. However, while the history of film as a tool for political subversion is well documented, less attention has been paid to the physical construction of independent cinematic space, its programming/running, and its potential as a node of resistance to neoliberal colonization. This paper uses the case study of the Small Cinema project in Liverpool as a means by which to understand how cinematic spaces can counteract the effects of policies that continue to have such a detrimental impact on the arts and education, as well as social health and well-being

The Effects of Group Collaboration on Presence in a Collaborative Virtual Environment

Presence in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) can be classified into personal presence and co-presence. Personal presence is having a feeling of "being there" in the CVE yourself. Co-presence is having a feeling that one is in the same place as the other participants, and that one is collaborating with real people. In this paper we describe an experiment used to investigate the effects that small group collaboration and interaction has on personal presence and specially co-presence in a CVE. We hypothesise that collaboration and interaction enhances co-presence in a CVE. We found that there was a large difference in co-presence between two CVEs which produced different levels of collaboration and interaction. This supports our hypotheses that just having virtual representations of others is not sufficient to create a high sense of co-presence, and that one needs collaboration and interaction in order to enhance co-presence in a CVE. We measured personal presence subjectively, using a questionnaire developed by Slater et al. We have developed a co-presence questionnaire which assesses the levels of co-presence subjectively. We have also developed a collaboration questionnaire which measures group collaboration subjectively, as well as the degree of enjoyment and comfort with others in the group

Screen industry collaboration: The Knock - producing fiction with Creative England / BFI

Using a case study of independent film, this article explores the identity and working practices of the academic film producer, examining the relationship with both industry and academia. For the practitioner / academic, a complex set of conditions are to be negotiated in order to succeed in producing drama alongside academic duties as the two-way focus challenges the market demands of drama production. Non-commercial funding sources enable independent filmmakers authentic routes to finance and distribution deals with government agencies, however diminishing finance and regularly changing criteria results, at times in selective funding in a postcode lottery. Students benefit from the practitioner /academic by gaining valuable skills and knowledge through real industry experience in the age of employability. However, the paper examines whether this is at the expense of experimentation and sufficient study of critical thinking, in industry driven curricula

Child hand contamination is associated with subsequent pediatric diarrhea in rural Democratic Republic of the Congo (REDUCE Program)

OBJECTIVE: The Reducing Enteropathy, Undernutrition, and Contamination in the Environment (REDUCE) program focuses on identifying exposure pathways to faecal pathogens for young children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and on developing scalable interventions to reduce faecal contamination from these pathways. METHODS: A prospective cohort study of 690 participants was conducted to investigate the association between hand, food, and environmental faecal contamination and diarrhoeal disease prevalence among young children in Walungu Territory, South Kivu, DRC. A total of 1923 hand rinse, soil, food, object, surface, stored water and water source samples were collected during unannounced spot checks after baseline enrolment and analysed for Escherichia coli. Caregiver reports of diarrhoea were obtained from children < 5 years at a 6-month follow-up. RESULTS: E.coli was detected in 73% of child and caregiver hand-rinse samples, 69% of soil samples from child play spaces, 54% of child food samples, 38% of objects and surfaces children were observed putting in their mouths, 74% of stored water samples, and 40% of source water samples. Children < 5 years with E. coli on their hands had significantly higher odds of diarrhoea at the 6-month follow-up (odds ratio: 2.03 (95% confidence interval: 1.05, 3.92)). CONCLUSION: The cohort study findings from the REDUCE program have shown that child hand contamination is associated with diarrhoeal disease in rural DRC, and that there is high faecal contamination in child plays spaces and food. These findings provide evidence demonstrating the urgent need to provide clean play spaces for young children and interventions targeting hand hygiene to reduce paediatric exposure to faecal pathogens