News and Events

The Cascade Skillset diversity training programme, run by Vivienne Francis, was launched at Channel 4. The launch was attended by MDs of Independent Television companies who were delighted with the scheme. The ten lucky trainees who were selected for six month paid internships at top TV companies explained what an amazing opportunity the scheme has given them.

Past news and events

most recent first

Lansdown Lectures scheduled

We have had exceptional internationally prominent speakers for the recent season:

  • Mike Saunders, director of Digital Media at Kew Gardens
  • Prof. Sue Thexton, Visting Professor at Middlesex University, former Managing Director of ITN Source, Chair BAFTA Archive committee
  • Prof. Jonathan Raper of City University
  • Dick Rijken of STEIM, Netherlands

See Lansdown Centre site for details

SAE digital film Creamfields

Over the last bank holiday weekend, four students from the digital film course in London and one student from the audio engineering course in Liverpool were tasked with a fantastic opportunity to put what they have learnt to practice in a unique and tough environment against tight deadlines! The crew under the expert guidance of SAE London film Head Lecturer Aaron Cazzola set out to Creamfields 2009 with a mission to capture the essence of the festival on camera, film artist interviews and edit a video at the end of each day for Creamfields online content. An overwhelming success, the videos can be viewed at www.creamfields.com and so far have accumulated over 13,000 hits in the first week!

More on the story...

Stickaid 2009

Middlesex University's Television Production Students recently worked on the internet charity event Stickaid. Stickaid 2009 was a 24 hour 'Webathon', broadcast live over the internet on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th August. Set up and hosted by UK Vlogger Myles Dyer and Middlesex Television Production Student Tom Bacon, Stickaid raised more than £4000 for the Charity Unicef and boasted a total of over 200,000 viewers. Audiences watched and interacted with the live show from across the world by donating money to see challenges met, talking in the webchat and phoning in via Skype. Students helped build and run the state of the art portable studio facility inside Trent Park Campus Student Union where the event was held.

Two Lansdown Centre MA graduates have been awarded places for PHD study, with funding, at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast. They are Andrea Santini who took the Centre’s MA Sonic Arts and Sebastian Heinz who took the MA Design for Interactive Media. Both studied previously at SAE Institute, so these are also successes for the Middlesex University Skillset Academy.

Lansdown Symposium: Incorporating Evaluation Methods in Creative Work

Monday 19th January 2009

Lansdown Lecture: Anthony Rowe, squidsoup

Wednesday 10th December 2008

'Scratch' - Locative Drama trial in Liverpool

Saturday 1st November 2008

Lansdown Lecture: Alan Blackwell, Cambridge University

Wednesday 22nd October 2008

Lansdown Lecture: Dianne Harris, Art Director, Kinetica Museum

Wednesday 8th October 2008

MA Design for Interactive Media Degree Show

5th - 7th September 2008

Postgraduate Open Evening

[link to Middlesex University page]

Wednesday 7th May 2008

Lansdown Lecture: Ed Burton: Creative play the Sodaplay way

Wednesday 20th February 2008

Postgraduate Open Evening

[link to Middlesex University page]

Wednesday 9th April

Literary Festival

Tuesday March 11th & Wednesday March 12th

Details:
Middlesex Literary Festival is back for its 13th year! Fay Weldon heads up our exciting list of guest speakers including Robert Hanks. Whether you're a budding poet or established journalist, our readers and workshops will offer something for everyone.
Speakers:
Francis Spufford, Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Fay Weldon, Kwame Kewi Armah, Simon Breen, Barry Cain, Chaz Brenchley, Robert Hanks, Vanessa Walters, Russell Kane & Sadie Hasler, Jacqueline Gabbitas, Christie Dickerson, Sandra Hempel, James Graham, Writer's Inc, Anne Marie Fife
Time:
9am – 7pm Tuesday 11th and 9am – 5pm Wednesday 12th
Venue:
Middlesex University Trent Park Campus www.freewebs.com/mdxlitfest
Contact:
farah.fs@gmail.com

Dario Dendi on Mixing Techniques

Thursday 28th February 2008

Details:
Dario Dendi is an audio engineer whose credits include Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, Mika, Coldplay, Stereophonics, etc. He will be discussing mixing techniques.
Speakers:
Dario Dendi
Time:
6.15pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:
For more information contact: saelondon@sae.edu 
Please RSVP to saelondon@sae.edu

Writer for Lunch: Anna Reading

Wednesday 27th February

Details:
Anna Reading was a founder member of the feminist company, Strip Search Theatre. She has written seven plays commissioned and performed by different companies nationally and abroad. These include Kiss Punch Goodnight, Want, Hard-Core, Grandma's Garden, The Stoning; Falling and RP35. Her work is discussed in Aleks Siertz, "In Yer Face Theatre: British Theatre in the 1990s" and Faber's Women's Theatre, Volume 7. She is currently writing a new play exploring memory, gender and the body.   Anna Reading is a joint editor of the international journal Media, Culture and Society. She is on the editorial board of Memory Studies and reviews for the Journal of Holocaust Studies and Feminist Review. She is an advisor to the Women's National Commission (Cabinet Office) contributing to government policy in the areas of gender, media and cultural policy.
Speakers:
Anna Reading
Time:
1pm – 2pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:
For more information contact:  farah.fs@gmail.com

Digital Film Making Guest Lecture

Tuesday 26th February

Details:
Guerrilla filmmaker Anthony Artis has developed "Down & Dirty DV", a filmmaking method dedicated to empowering DV filmmakers at all levels to create professional-quality productions with limited budgets. Through a series of books, DVDs, and online tutorials, Artis demonstrates that it doesn't take money to make films. Anthony Artis is a 15-year veteran of the film and TV industry whose features and shows have been screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, the IFP Feature Market, Slamdance, and on MTV. He has worked professionally in positions as diverse as producer, gaffer, cinematographer, special-fx make up, sound mixer and location manager.
Speakers:
Anthony Artis - Shut Up And Shoot!
Time:
6:30pm
Venue:
SAE Institute
Contact:
For more information contact: saelondon@sae.edu  Please RSVP to saelondon@sae.edu

Lansdown Lecture: Mikael Wiberg: Interactive Architecture or ’Interaction through Textures‘

Wednesday 20th February

Writer for Lunch: Jon Courtenay GrimwoodWednesday 20th February

Details:
Jon Courtenay Grimwood was born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship. He grew up in the Far East, Britain and Scandinavia. Apart from writing novels he works for magazines and newspapers. For the last five years he wrote a monthly review column for the Guardian. JCG's novel Felaheen, featuring his half-Berber detective Ashraf Bey, won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. As did End of the World Blues, about a British sniper on the run from Iraq and now running an Irish bar in Tokyo   His work is published in French, German, Spanish, Polish,Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese and American, among others. He is married to the journalist and novelist Sam Baker, currently editor of Red. They divide their time between London and Winchester...
Speakers:
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Time:
1pm – 2pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:
For more information contact:  farah.fs@gmail.com

Writer for Lunch: Ellen Datlow

Wednesday 13th February

Details:
As fiction editor of Omni magazine and Omni Online from 1981 through 1998, Ellen Datlow encouraged and helped develop an entire generation of fiction writers, and has published some of today's biggest names in the SF, fantasy and horror genres. From 2000 until the end of 2005, Datlow was the editor of the groundbreaking online publication SCI FICTION for the SCI FI Channel's SCIFI.COM, the Web's leading Science Fiction Web site. SCI Fiction and its editor had an unparalleled record of critical success, earning ten major awards, including three Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards and a World Fantasy Award. Ellen Datlow is currently tied for winning the most World Fantasy Awards in the organization's history (seven); has won, with co-editor Terri Windling, a Bram Stoker Award for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #13, with co-editors Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, a Bram Stoker Award for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #17, The International Horror Guild Award for her ghost story anthology, The Dark, the Locus Award for Best Editor in 2005, 2006,and 2007 and the Hugo Award for Best Editor in 2002 and 2005. In addition, SCIFICTION won the Hugo Award for best Web site in 2005 as well as the Wooden Rocket award as best online magazine for 2005. Ellen was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre."
Speakers:
Ellen Datlow
Time:
1pm – 2pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:

Writer for Lunch: Jonathan Holloway

Wednesday 6th February

Details:
Jonathan Holloway has only recently joined Middlesex University as Head of Department for Performing Arts. Jonathan Holloway is founder, artistic director and auteur of the distinctive house style of Red Shift Theatre Company - one of the UK's most respected producers of leading edge high quality touring theatre. Between 1982 and 2008 it has given 3,800 performances of 56 multi-award winning productions, moved venue on 2,000 occasions, run its own Edinburgh Festival theatre 6 times, played in the UK, Chile, Ireland, Egypt and Hong Kong… As recently as 2006, Red Shift's adaptation of Get Carter was acknowledged in numerous Critic's Choice selections as a high point of the Edinburgh Festival. Jonathan has directed all but one of the company's shows, and written 17 of them including the first authorised stage versions of  The Third Man, Death in Venice, and Boileau & Narcejac's  Vertigo, alongside original shows including The Hammer (also produced for BBC Radio 3) and In the Image of the Beast (Edinburgh Fringe First).
Speakers:
Jonathan Holloway
Time:
1pm – 2pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:

Writer for Lunch: Sue Gee

Thursday 30th January

Details:
Sue Gee is the Programme Leader for the MA in Creative Writing. She has published nine novels, the most recent of which is Reading in Bed . Letters from Prague was serialised on Radio 4, while The Hours of the Night won the Romantic Novel of the year award in 1997.
Speakers:
Sue Gee
Time:
1pm – 2pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:

Film Screenings

Thursday 24th January

Details:
Final Screening of SAE Digital Film Students' final movies and other projects
Speakers:
Time:
7pm
Venue:
Pleasance Theatre, Carpenters Mews, North Road, London, N7 9EF
Contact:
For more information contact: saelondon@sae.edu
Please RSVP:
saelondon@sae.edu

Lansdown Lecture: Recapturing the Sensory Commons

Wednesday 23rd January

Writer for Lunch: Rhiannon Lassiter

Wednesday 23rd January

Details:
Rhiannon Lassiter was born in 1977. Her first novel, Hex, was accepted by Macmillan while she was still a teenager. Since then she has published nine further novels, a non-fiction book about the supernatural and co-edited an anthology of war poetry and prose, in addition to several short stories. Her most recent novels are Bad Blood (fantasy) and Roundabout, a novel of friendship and townplanning.
In addition to writing, Rhiannon maintains her own website and web-edits Armadillo Magazine, an online quarterly childrens' books review publication. She has also worked as a journalist and web designer. Rhiannon's books have been widely reviewed and translated into more than ten foreign languages.
Speakers:
Rhiannon Lassiter
Time:
1pm – 2pm
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:

CULTURES OF CAPITALISM SEMINAR

Friday 18th January 2008

Details:
The cultures of the new capitalism are transforming society and social relations. What  sociological ideas do we need to understand these changes? For futher details and to make a booking see: www.soundings.org.uk
Speakers:
Beatrix Campbell, Michael Rustin, Richard Sennett
Time:
11.00 to 16.00
Venue:
Marx House, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1
Contact:
Jonathan Rutherfor
email:
j.rutherford@mdx.ac.uk

Music Industry Guest Lecture: Steven Hillier

Thursday 17th January 2008

Details:
Steve Hillier is a Record Producer and Songwriter who's worked with everyone from Billy Bragg to Keane. Having been involved in over a dozen hit singles, Steve is a founder member of the band Dubstar, who have sold over half a million albums in the UK alone. He also is a feature writer for the magazine 'Future Music', specialising in music production and the music industry. Steve will be talking about careers in the Music Industry, drawing on his experience that has spanned three decades. He will also be looking at the huge issues that will affect us all in the years ahead, from sound engineers, record producers, recording artists and beyond.
Speakers:
Steve Hillier
Time:
18.15
Venue:
Pleasance Theatre, Carpenters Mews, North Road, London, N7 9EF (next to SAE)
Contact:
Please RSVP to saelondon@sae.edu

Writer for Lunch: Jon Ingold

Wednesday 16th January 2008

Details:
Jon Ingold is well-known as a writer of Interactive Fiction – stories played on a computer using a text-interface.  His works have received several awards for their settings, stories and use of the interactive medium to convey new and unusual experiences to the participating reader.   He has also written several plays and two novels.
Speakers:
Jon Ingold
Time:
13.00 to 14.00
Venue:
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus Room M005
Contact:
farah.sf@gmail.com
email:
j.rutherford@mdx.ac.uk