Our Flyer!

'Whatever Tomorrow Brings' article for music page

My article for the music page focused on a ‘White British’ band called ‘Whatever Tomorrow Brings’. I did my research into the band by getting information from their MySpace and Facebook page, and I also listened to their debut EP which they uploaded to YouTube. I arranged the interview via MSN conversations with the band’s drummer, Andrew Swann. Prior to the interview, I wrote a list of questions down which relate to music and multiculturalism to prepare for it.

ON THE DAY: We originally planned to meet at the bull in the Bullring in Birmingham. Two band members turned up 40 minutes late, claiming the other 2 members were in a Digbeth pub. So plans were scuppered here as we were mean to do the interview on some seats in town then take the photographs at a nearby place that is as well-lit as possible, because unfortunately Chloe did not have a flash with her, and it was getting dark outside. So we ended up taking a 20 minute walk to the ‘Moseley Arms’ where I met the other 2 band members and we began the interview.

Unfortunately the band did not give me enough content for me to be able to construct an interview style piece, so I had to instead opt for a feature style of writing, with a few quotes combined. What this has taught me for any future interviews I conduct is to come up with as many questions as possible and also come up with some more pointers for topics etc that the subject can talk about.

Taking images was difficult without a flash as we had to find the best-lit place as possible, and this was against a wall in a lit corridor.  Preferably I wanted a picture of the group together, but this was not possible due to the limited space we had available in this corridor, and we were unable to take the pictures outside due to the lighting dilemma. The photo-shoot would have been a lot more successful and we’d have been able to be much more creative if we had the external flash, but we worked with these conditions and did the best we could considering these unfortunate limitations.

St. Patrick’s Day parade article

This article was created for the online magazine. I went out with photographer Chloe and I assisted her in what I wanted images of and I made notes on the parade itself, e.g. the walking groups and floats there. I conducted an interview with an Irish woman in the crowd who was going to watch her granddaughter waving a flag in the parade to give my article a human angle, and to make it more personal and interesting.

 Here are some of the (unedited) images Chloe took. These are not the images I ended up using in the article itself but I thought I would present some here to give a taster of the parade day and emphasise the importance of multiculturalism!

For this article, I researched into St. Patrick’s Day on the internet and read past articles on previous St. Patrick’s Day parades in Digbeth (as it is a successful yearly event). This research was useful as it helped aid me in writing my article.

ON THE DAY:

We got the train to town and walked to Digbeth before the parade even began to ensure we got a good position, which we did. We saw all of the walking groups and bands etc before they began walking in the parade, so we managed get some posed images as well as some of the parade itself. By getting there early we managed to establish our position, and we had plenty of time to get lots of photographs and lots of information necessary for my article- overall, it was a successful day.

'Cultures' page for website

Me and my fellow group member Hannah Montgomery created this draft of what we want our ‘Cultures’ page to look like on the website. We envisage the layout to look like this, and we told our web member we would prefer that when you hover over each image, that person’s profile comes up (name and culture) followed by their interview, as demonstrated in the image below.

These photographs were taken by our group’s photographer Chloe Jones.

The interviews weren’t going to be distributed evenly anyway due to the 8 interviews needed between 5 journalists but each journalist group member was supposed to interview at least one person each from different cultures for this page. However this did not end up being the case: Hannah (3 interviews) me (2 interviews) Luke (2 interviews) and Stuart (1 interview). Callum didn’t interview anyone, which is unfortunate in the sense it didn’t go as our group had planned. But Hannah and I sorted it out by making sure we had enough interviewees for the page, with back-ups also.

I set a word count of 200-250 words and provided the structure for each interview, for consistency. However one interview sent via email was far too short (the questions were longer than the answers!), so this group member had to refer back to the interviewee and get more from them to bulk up the word count to an acceptable figure.

These interviews took place over social messaging sites such as Facebook messages, and some took place via face-to-face interviews (such as both of mine).

The finalised culture content was sent to our web group member on Thursday 31^st March, and now we wait for the web team to work their magic before we get to see the finished product on the BCUltural website!

VENUE CONFIRMATION!

Our venue was confirmed on the 23^rd March!

Our BCUltural event will take place at The Rainbow in Digbeth (B12 0LD), and will include:  a photography exhibition, cinema, food, live music, fashion shows, radio broadcasts, a fashion show, a raffle etc. An update from the Production Event lecture on Wednesday 30^th March revealed that the PR group are also organising a press conference for the day, radio members are currently creating some documentaries and the music industries team have secured 9 bands. If for any reason plans fall through, Bar 42 (City North Campus) is the back-up venue for the event.