Mandy Rose

I’m a Senior Research Fellow at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England in Bristol, UK. My practice-led research looks at the intersection between documentary and the Social, Semantic and Open web. I’m investigating the role of the producer as context provider, catalyst, curator in documentary projects. I’m interested in the social, political and cultural potential of participatory and collaborative forms.

I’ve been working in participatory media since the mid-nineties.  I was co-founder and producer of the BBC’s “mass observation” camcorder project - Video Nation (94-2000) and Executive Producer of Capture Wales (2001-2007), a pioneering digital storytelling project in the UK.  I’ve developed and overseen a number of other innovative participatory projects for the BBC including Voices (2004) – a major pan-platform collaborative exploration of language, accent and dialect across the UK (Webby nominated website ) and MyScienceFictionLife (2006) (Webby Honoree) – a collective history of British science fiction.

As Editor of the New Media department at BBC Cymru Wales (2001 – 2007) I led the department which produces programme websites including Doctor Who and Tribe. From 2007 until 2010 I was Creative Director: Multiplatform at BBC Wales – commissioning new media on projects including Coal House (2007) and  Coal House at War (2008) and leading cross-platform seasons including  “What are we doing to our kids?” (2008) about contemporary childhood, and “Green Wales” (2009) which  looked at how Wales is responding to the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

My involvement with DIY and alternative media goes back to the 1970s. I was one of the founders of COW Films, a feminist film distribution group, worked with the punk band The Slits and at Four Corners Film Workshop in London’s Bethnal Green, and was one of the editors of Emergency Magazine.

My current practice-based research, The Are you happy? Project revisits Jean Rouch’s seminal documentary “Chronicle of a Summer” in the context of global collaboration and the web, and will be exploring the potential of HTML5 for the “creative treatment of actuality” (Grierson’s early definition of documentary).

I’m a contributing Editor to the i-Docs Blog.

For consultation, public presentations, teaching and other enquiries –  mandy.rose@uwe.ac.uk

Further information:

Public Appearances & Teaching 

Media Practice – Interactive & Transmedia

Media Practice – Filmography

Filmography