Samuel Jones
Researcher
Samuel Jones is a researcher at Demos. His research interests include culture and the arts, museums and galleries, creativity and the communication of ideas and knowledge through the cultural sector. In particular, he is interested in cross-cultural communications and the role of culture in international relations. In other work, he has focused on Global English and conversations. Recently, he has undertaken research in both the US and China.
- Louder than Words I've been meaning to blog this for a little while. A couple of weekends ago, I went to a see an exhibition by the Birmingham artist, Barbara Walker. It's currently on show at the Unit 2 Gallery at London Metropolitan University. There are two reasons to go and see this show. First, the close draughtsmanship of the works reveals close observation and familiar care. As a result, they are deeply engaging and clearly very personal images. Scenes on the walk home,... continue reading on 1st December 2006
- Cultural Revolution in the 1990s ‘By the mid-nineties museum directors had figured out along with the rest of us that the worldwide system of production had radically changed with the advent of the PC, then the Internet' continue reading on 7th November 2006 in Culture Online
- Linguistic Diversity in India This is a really interesting article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta about the dynamics of politics and langauge in India. Actually, it makes some pretty salient points about language choice and politics generally. As debates about the dominance of English and linguistic imperialism proliferate and some countries take active and coercive steps to limit its influence, Mehta argues for 'the principle of non-coercion', a linguistic policy for which he praises Nehru. continue reading on 2nd November 2006 in As You Like It
- MoMA and Tate Modern One of the most commonly heard criticisms of Tate Modern is the paucity of its collection in comparison with other major museums. This article in the New York Times makes for interesting reading, arguing that the collection has encouraged more creative curation down at Bankside. There are also some interesting comments about the participatory nature of the Unilever commissions. One of the big points to be made about, say, Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project, or Rachel... continue reading on 2nd November 2006 in Knowledge and Inspiration
- Positioning the Arts at the Heart of Society Following on from Charlie's comment below, I think that connects pretty strongly with a more general awareness amongst public, politicianas and companies that the arts and culture are more than just add ons and things that make life generally pretty. continue reading on 27th September 2006 in Making Good Work Comments (1)
- Talk Us Into It Our recent publication, Talk Us Into It, has been covered today in the Times. It argues that we need to put conversation back into the public realm. New technologies and communicaitons platforms have encouraged more and more people to 'have their say' and given more and more of us the chance to put forth our opinion, but is this at the expense of the face-to-face conversations that we need? continue reading on 19th September 2006 in Talk us into it Comments (3)
- English in China A recent article in the Chinese paper, the People's Daily, demonstrates just how global English is. It mentions a Russian, teaching English in the training department of a premier Chinese hotel.That's pretty much the reality of global English and it's something to which the UK will have to accommodate. Examples of Chinglish are easy to come by. However, no matter how humorous the misunderstandings may on occasion be, we mustn't let them distract from this reality.First,... continue reading on 11th September 2006 in As You Like It
- Nigerian English There's an interesting article in Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper today. Mrs. Adeseye Ibironke Adeyinka, Chief Lecturer in General Studies at Lagos State Polytechnic has delivered a lecture in which she argues that 'if features of the English language as used appropriately in the Nigerian environment are collated, encouraged and taught as functional English, the students in the Polytechnics and Technical Colleges will become more creative, more innovative, more focused and more... continue reading on 10th August 2006 in As You Like It
- Cultural Diplomacy and Hip Hop Following our trip to the US for the Cultural Diplomacy project, it's interesting to see today's announcement on the State Department website.The musician - and U.S. Hip Hop Ambassador - Toni Blackman, is working with USINFO to explain the values and origins of Hip Hop as an original American artform to an international audience. In her capacity as cultural ambassador, she has also performed at the Field Museum in Chicago, one of the institutions to whom we spoke whenb we were... continue reading on 1st August 2006 in Cultural Diplomacy
- Speaking of which... While in the US researching Cultural Diplomacy, I came across some very interesting parallels to the types of conversation that we examine in 'Talk us into it', some of which make use of cultural diplay and performance as a binding force. continue reading on 21st July 2006 in Talk us into it