Jazz and Visual Style

A free, one-day symposium examining jazz's engagement with media will take place on Thursday 6 July at The Parkside Building.

Jazz and Visual Style will explore the artform's engagement with the worlds of fashion, photography, dance, film and television. It responds to a current resurgence of academic interest in the presentation of jazz through moving-image technologies (Wald 2015; Heile, Elsdon, Doctor 2016; Pillai 2017) and contemporary design (Perchard 2017). 

The event aims to open up the questions posed in these studies to a wider consideration of visual culture. Birmingham School of Media will welcome four speakers from diverse fields to address the symposium, whose papers will act as a starting point for discussion with the audience. The day is the launch event for the AHRC-funded research project ‘Jazz on BBC-TV 1960-1969’ and will recruit for a proposed ‘Jazz & the Media’ network. Lunch and refreshments will be provided and the event is free.