My afternoon at the BFI

I had a thoroughly enjoyable day at the BFI Media Studies conference today where I was invited to talk about the state of advertising studies and deliver a paper titled "the cultural contours of digital advertising". Organised for post-16 and A-level lecturers and teachers I was not sure what to expect, and I did wonder if I'd pitched my paper at the wrong audience given that it flows straight from the book I'm finishing off (The Mood of Information, Continuum). I'm glad to say the paper seemed to go down well with kind comments and rigorous questioning offered at the end. What surprised me most was how engaged people were. In the media studies field there are few people interested in advertising and even less so digital advertising, and on more than one occasion I've been asked "so why internet advertising"? Having zero experience in teaching A-level Media Studies I was also interested to find out about what goes on over the other side of the fence. I'm glad to say there appears to be very interesting work that puts a few undergraduate programmes I know to shame. I spoke with Andrew Jones [edited for incorrect surname] afterwards (who attended my talk and seminar) who looks to be up to all sorts of interesting stuff with local activist groups, the Museum of London and a variety of other means of politicising media studies and harnessing new media. I was also interested to hear there is little in the way of a network for A-level media studies lecturers. It seems ripe and timely to me to cross the divide and for us to better understand the other via a bolt on network to MeCCSA. I think from a teacherly point of view, there may be a few lessons we ourselves can learn.