A promise and a nice time: engaging young people with visual sociology

What’s on offer?

As an academic and filmmaker, I am forever curious about the social world. I take a visual approach to my research, mixing sociology with filmmaking, always from a personal perspective.

The live performance and screening with musician/composer Lois MacDonald will be followed by a 30 minute discussion about how filmmaking might be a useful collaborative tool for academic research into the social world. The audience will be invited to not only immerse themselves within the experience but also to share their reflections and thoughts.

What’s it about?

A promise and a nice time is a performative film-essay with two speakers and a musician with additional sounds, images, and words about different things, like love letters, cruel optimism, city streets, Kathleen Stewart, objects of desire, encounters with strangers, the ordinary, letting go, the word ‘affect’, broken promises, Lauren Berlant, walking barefoot in the rain, questions of geography, circuits and flows, and experiments in academic writing. The ideas are not linked and are mostly “wrong”.

Who’s leading the event?

Dr David Jackson is an award winning filmmaker and academic. 'This Is Not My House', a documentary portrait of his father, was winner of the 2014 Hot Shoe Photofusion Award. 'Winterlong', his debut feature film, premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Film Festival and received a nomination for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film. He is currently Programme Leader for Filmmaking at SODA, Manchester Metropolitan University and his current research mixes writing, photography, and film to explore the politics of urban space.

Lois MacDonald is a multidisciplinary artist and musician with over a decade of experience working in the music industry.  She is plays guitar/synths in the Manchester group PINS, and is a vocalist/guitarist in art punk project Grave Goods. She has recorded around the world and toured extensively with different projects.  Lois is a lecturer in Music and Sound Design at SODA, Manchester Met. Her current research is on AI use in music composition. Her most recent project ‘PATIENCE’ is an ongoing enquiry into the human voice, new technology and extended human expression.

Open to

Everyone with a curious mind is welcome to attend

Of particular interest to

The event will be of particular interest to young people who are looking for more visual ways to express their ideas and experiences.

Scheduling information

Please just turn up at the venue