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Patricia Francis

Art and Design and Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University

Thesis title:

Close Up: A creative-critical intervention in women activists and activist documentary filmmaking

My thesis investigates the impact that social activism has on women’s lives and explores how insurgency in women fosters courage and transformation.  It analyses how womens’ activism extends beyond their cause and into their individual lives. My practice-led research will include the production of a film which will feature two groups of female activists: women insurgents in the 1984-5 miners’ strike, specifically the protest group ‘Women Against Pit Closures’ and a current movement against social injustice, ‘Black Lives Matter’. Both female-led organisations have been openly militant in their desire for change. Their causes have divided opinion and occupied a controversial position in the media. My thesis will examine the unintended and unpredicted consequences of women’s activism, the impact that this experience has had on the lives of miners’ wives and investigate how dissent is affecting women active in the Black Lives Matter movement now. What do these experiences have in common? To what extent do the activists (past and present) perceive themselves to share common ground, experientially, politically and, specifically, as women? Why does involvement in protest empower women to re-evaluate their role and aspirations and to take action in order to realise their potential, in and outside an activist context? It is important too to consider the ways in which the presence of social media and developments in technology have altered the organisation of protest for women.

The discourse relating to activism and insurgency usually has a masculine frame, firmly placing men in the foreground of the revolutionary picture. When women have been vociferous in their charge for change e.g.  the Ford sewing machinists’ strike (1968), the Women’s Liberation Movement from around 1970— and the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, (1981) (which was an influence on Women Against Pit Closures), such movements have been positioned outside the frame as auxiliary or different. They have required recovery research to bring them into the foreground, or to situate them in contextual relation to activism that is discerned to be broader, itself a gendered assumption. 

My research refocuses the image, with the spotlight on women in the Midlands region.


Research Area

  • Art and Design and Arts and Humanities

Publications


  • 'The Burden of Expectation: Where are the Women in Steve McQueen's Small Axe Films' in Thomas Austin (ed.), Refocus: The Films of Steve McQueen (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh 2023).
  • 'Black Lives Matter: How the UK movement struggled to be heard', 7 June 2023, available on The Conversation website at https://theconversation.com/black-lives-matter-how-the-uk-movement-struggled-to-be-heard-in-the-2010s-161763 (viewed 21 September 2023).
  • 'Perfect Storm for a Black Revolution', 10 May 2021, available on Nottingham Trent University Expert Blog at https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2021/05/expert-blog-perfect-storm-for-a-black-revolution (viewed 21 September 2023). 
  • 'The Killing of George Floyd: A Powerful Lesson for Change', 22 June 2020, available on Nottingham Trent University Expert Blog at https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2020/06/expert-blog-the-killing-of-george-floyd-a-powerful-lesson-for-change (viewed 21 September 2023). 
  • 'We are women, we are strong': celebrating the unsung heroines of the miners' strike', 9 March 2018, available onThe Conversation website at https://theconversation.com/we-are-women-we-are-strong-celebrating-the-unsung-heroines-of-the-miners-strike-92448 (viewed 21 September 2023).



Conferences

2023: When I Dare To Be Powerful International Conference. Covenor and lead organiser of the conference and talk series - Link

2023: Making Oral History International conference: Is Collaboration and Co-Creation an Illusionary Practice?

2022: International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy: They Will Be Heard:
Representing and re-presenting voices of marginalised and racialised women through film.

2022: Arts and Humanities Research Conference: Re-visioning Cultural, Historical and Gendered aspects of Nottingham's Past and Present.

2021: The 8th Annual Leicester Human Right Arts and Film Festival: Visualising the Muted Effect of Dissenting Women's Voices - Link

2021: Steve McQueen Symposium: "I Want the Burden." 14th Annual Contemporary Directors Symposium. And Some of Us are Silenced. - Link

2018: Radical Film Network: Filming the plurality of the Black British Experience Across Two Generations - Link  

2018: 'Movements: Protest, Politics and Activism in the 21st Century' Conference: Women's activism and political transformation through the lens of the 1984 miners' strike.


Public Engagement & Impact


2023: When I Dare To Be Powerful International Conference. Online interview with award-winning filmmaker Irene Lusztig – Link

2023: When I Dare To Be Powerful International Conference. Podcast with award-winning filmmaker and artist Ja'Tovia M. Gary - Link

2023: When I Dare To Be Powerful International Conference. Podcast with award-winning filmmaker and artist Ally Zlatar - Link

2022: Panel Chair:  Diaspora Cinema and Media: Globalising the Local.    Link

2022: Guest Speaker: Generation Wiley UK - The Art of Oppression, (2021) - Viewing and discussion. 

2021: Film Screening and Q&A: The Art of Oppression (2021). Arts Council funded. At the intersection of womanhood and art. At the intersection of womanhood and art my film follows three women who use their art as a means of activism to 'speak' of their experiences of marginalisation and social injustice - Link  

2021: Guest Panellist: Ne w Art Exchange and Nottingham Trent University Advasi Life and Follklore Event - featured filmmaker Seral Murmu – Link

2018: Chair, book Launch and Q&A, Sleaford Mods film and Invisible Britain – Link

2017: Chair, panel discussion, The Place Is Here. The Time Is Now - Link

2017: Steering Group Member: Journey To Justice Link

2015: Film Screening and Q&A: Making Waves (2015):  Almost 40 years after the 1976 Race Relations Act, my film  documents the life stories of first and second-generation black, British citizens from the African-Caribbean - Link

2015: Guest Speaker and Film Screening: Many Rivers To Cross (2013) and Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess (2015) – Link

Media

2021: Aljazeera News: Inside Story – 'How can racism against people of African descent be tackled?' - Link  

2021: Notts TV: Ey Up Notts Interview relating to my commissioned film series 'Roots/Routes'. - Link

 



Other Research Interests

Independent Films

Commissioned Productions and Documentaries




Memberships

  • British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.
  • Radical Film Network.

Employment

2012 - Present.

  • Freelance television production.

2020 – 2022.

  • Nottingham Trent University. Associate Lecturer: Creative Documentary filmmaking.

2022 – Present. 

  • University of the West of England. Senior Lecturer: Creative and Experimental Documentary filmmaking.

Commissioned Productions and Documentaries.


Awards and Grants

2022 - Cohort Development Fund. Awarded funded support for When I Dare To Be Powerful International Conference. One-day conference and a series of online and podcast talks. (Funders: Midlands3Cities, AHRC, Bonington Gallery and New Art Exchange).

2022 - The Art of Oppression - Winner Best Film: Windrush Caribbean Film Festival (2022).

2022 - The Art of Oppression - Best Director Nominee: Midlands Movies Awards (2022).

2022 - The Art of Oppression - Quarter Finalist: Serbest International Film Festival (2022).

2020 – Awarded Arts Council funding for The Art of Oppression (2021).

2015 – Awarded Heritage Lottery funding for Making Waves (2015)

2013 – Awarded Heritage Lottery funding for Many Rivers to Cross (2013).