Bass Culture is a response to the disengagement and lack of education surrounding the heritage of Jamaican and Jamaican-influenced music in Britain over the last six decades. A direct line can be traced from pioneering British sound systems in the 1960s to modern chart-topping artistes such as Soul2Soul, Goldie, and Tiny Tempah. Jamaican music is recognised as a key catalyst in integration and multiculturalism in London and beyond. An understanding of the contribution made by the Jamaican community is also vital for anyone researching and performing popular music production, dance, and fashion. This heritage is, however, largely a hidden history, and its value and importance is underestimated by both the Jamaican and wider communities in the UK. This history is neither readily available to schools or universities, nor to other cultural institutions such as archives and museums. In addition, in the absence of research and preservation this history is being lost. First generation pioneers are now in their 80s, making the capture of their experiences urgent. Many physical objects were not created with a view to longevity, and are often valued more as family heirlooms than community heritage. This project will locate, capture and preserve memories, experiences and ephemera from three generations of musicians, music industry participants, and audience members. The term 'Bass Culture' has been adopted to identify the British experience, as separate to the Jamaican. Bass Culture will be the first in-depth retrospective of Jamaican music in the UK. The University of Westminster's Black Music Research Unit (BMRU) will operate as a central hub for research and link to the community, working with School of Oriental and African Studies, and Black Cultural Archives (BCA). The research will be conducted through oral history and archival work, led by professional researchers but involving community volunteers at every stage who will receive training. Researchers will conduct 100+ interviews, with additional material solicited from the community directly. Archival research will be conducted primarily at BCA and British Library-Popular Music section. Community volunteers will also work with Fully Focused Community, a youth media organisation, to create their own oral history-based 60-90 minute film, focusing both on key individuals within the history of Jamaican-inspired music in Britain, and also exploring the participants' experience of rediscovering this history. Four inter-generational workshops will allow community members from three generations to share and discuss their memories and feelings as music makers and consumers. Volunteers will perform and talk about their music and what it means to them, and also curate a new soundtrack for the Exhibition. The research will form the basis for a free landmark Exhibition at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, to be accompanied by a programme of events and publications aimed at both general public and academic communities. Running for 5 months, BCA anticipates 10,000 visitors. The project will have a further legacy when the Exhibition tours. A Web Portal will provide an ongoing hub for publicising the project and opportunities for community involvement. The Portal will be used to solicit additional interviews or recollections from family, neighbours, etc, using personal equipment such as mobile phones or tablet computers, and will also extend our reach beyond London. Academic outputs include an edited, contextualised volume of oral histories, and a monograph focussing on the period 1976-81. Two academic conferences will further explore the heritage uncovered before, and after, the Exhibition, and papers presented will be used as the basis for the first two issues of a new scholarly journal on black music research.

This network is framed by the concerns of the Westminster Menswear Archive (WMA), a unique teaching collection held by the University of Westminster. The collection holds over 2000 menswear garments from 1780 to the present day, primarily focused on post-1940s British men's dress - clothing produced, designed, worn, or retailed in Britain. It includes designer fashion, streetwear, everyday dress, sportswear, workwear, and uniforms. It receives over 800 visitors each year and is utilised for research purposes by students, scholars, and designers in industry. It is modelled on Italian garment archives, particularly the menswear label C.P. Company, founded by designer Massimo Osti. Osti's collection was non-hierarchal, housing military, utilitarian, industrial, and fashion garments together. The WMA mirrors this approach, directly aiming to overcome the gender and high-fashion biases inherent in most teaching and museum collections of fashion. Menswear, relative to womenswear, is still underexplored in fashion research and exhibitions, despite growing interest in the field exemplified by an increasing number of menswear exhibitions, including Reigning Men (Los Angeles County Museum, 2016), Invisible Men (University of Westminster, 2019) and the forthcoming Dandy Style (Manchester Art Gallery, 2022). However, scholarship on British menswear has tended to focus on tailoring and tradition; spectacular and dandy style; and London. This network seeks to question these preoccupations by interrogating the fashion practices of the inhabitants of four key cities. Through a series of workshops, the network will bring together academics, curators, designers, retailers, and fashion industry professionals to investigate the links, relationships, and encounters between the local (Liverpool and Manchester), national (London), and international (Milan) menswear industries and communities. These will allow for the development of a framework for expanding to other cities. Workshop 1 London - Archiving, collecting, and curating British menswear Tour of the Westminster Menswear Archive. Before the workshop, each participant is invited to engage with the WMA through its online catalogue to select one garment relevant to their research or practice. These will be used as the starting point for discussion of the place of archival collections in researching and creating British menswear. Workshop 2 Milan - The location of the industrialisation of menswear Tour of the C.P. Company design studio and archive to examine how it is used to document the company's material culture and the foundation for a research methodology to inform concepts for new menswear outcomes. Workshop 3 Liverpool - The significance of a port city as a site of cultural exchange Specialist menswear retailers play an essential role in disseminating new menswear, acting as intermediaries between industry and consumers by curating garments relevant to specific local audiences. Workshop 4 Manchester - Subculture / Mass Culture: Menswear and Youth Style. The final workshop will focus on menswear, leisure, and youth cultures, using cross-generational participatory research that invites members of the public to share their narratives of youth style. The network will innovate in its approach, diversify its collaborative partners, and engage with previously overlooked menswear communities and creators by involving non-academic participants and practitioners, including those outside the fashion industry, and utilising the network's social media platforms for dissemination, feedback, and dialogue. A multidisciplinary approach strengthens the project, with academics from several disciplines such as music, youth studies, fashion design, fashion communication, and history bringing their unique perspectives to light on the network's questions.

My research explores architectures of extraction in the Caribbean specifically with a special focus on British colonialism within The National Archives and how this can inform the use of hybridised marine-based sculpture, emerging media and collaborative community engagement as direct interventions for restorative ecologies and practices.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Media enterprises are under more severe pressure today than perhaps at any time in their history. National newspapers throughout the western world are shedding jobs, regional newspapers are closing, broadcasters are reining in expenditure and closing foreign bureaux. Two factors have conspired to challenge the traditional business model of media corporations. \n\nFirst, the cyclical problem of a global economic recession is being compounded by the progressive migration of advertising revenue to the web. Second, new technologies are fragmenting audiences and transforming consumer behaviour. With newspaper readership and TV news in decline, both the print and broadcast media are finding it increasingly difficult to make journalism profitable. Attempts to monetise the web show no prospect of compensating for lost revenue. \n\nFor many of these companies, the easiest route to survival is some form of amalgamation with other media enterprises. There is an industrial logic to such consolidation which allows for rationalisation of 'back office' functions, greater centralisation and - theoretically - release of resources to invest in the core activity of news production. \n\nBut what of the impact on media pluralism? Diversity of expression and editorial approach underpins democratic life: the fewer media outlets which control those editorial agendas, the less healthy it is for a vibrant democracy. There is some compensation from the cacophany of voices on the internet, but these are fragmented and often unreliable sources with tiny audiences which conduct virtually no newsgathering. For the vast majority of people in mature democracies, the traditional press and broadcasting instutions are still by far the most important conduits for information and debates about the world around them.\n\nThis raises two crucial issues. First, in what ways does the ownership of a media enterprise actually impact on editorial output? Theoretical concerns about the dangers of consolidation require some empirical evidence of how influence is exerted on editorial direction, distribution of journalistic resources, investment in foreign reporting and overseas bureaux, deployment of specialist correspondents, the omission and commission of particular stories, and the myriad ways in which news organisations organise their journalistic priorities. In broadcasting, which in Western Europe is governed by impartiality requirements, slightly different questions are raised about whether and how these requirements impact on editorial diversity. A comparison of experience in the UK and the US where the equivalent 'Fairness Doctrine' was abolished 25 years ago would be instructive.\n\nSecond, what policy initiatives might reconcile the apparently conflicting aims of media pluralism and industry consolidation? For struggling media corporations, consolidation is a blunt but usually effective form of salvation. For governments, a policy regime which prevents consolidation can be equally blunt as well as politically difficult in the face of threatened job losses and bankruptcies. Creative solutions such as Trusts, incentives for smaller media businesses, guarantees of investment in journalism, or other structural means (including public funding) of mitigating the effects of concentrated media power urgently need to be explored.\n\nDuring the course of 2007/8, I was special adviser to a House of Lords select committee which examined and reported on News and Media Ownership. The enquiry, which included a visit to the US, compiled a huge volume of oral and written evidence on the editorial influence of owners and on the policy regime governing media ownership. Using that material - which has never been properly exploited - and supplementing it with original interviews with UK policy makers and regulators, this study will seek to address the question of whether and how media diversity can be sustained in the face of unparalled economic and technological upheaval.