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OBJECTIVE
The
objective of the Akademie is to enable artists and organisations
to develop community, education and outreach initiatives. Participation
in the arts will be the priority, thereby encouraging an appreciation,
and the confidence to be creative. Opportunities for the young,
unemployed, disabled and disadvantaged within the community will
be developed, making full use of the potential of Information and
Multimedia Technology.
Up
to the present time a large number of former dockworkers, often
with their partners or children, have attended various trade union
courses and introductory information technology projects through
John Moores University and the WEA.
THE
FILM
 In
the creative arena, Jimmy McGovern and Irvine Welsh worked on a
play commissioned by Channel Four and Ken Loach's company, Parallax
Pictures. The script for this drama was written by a group of dockers
and their partners as part of a writers workshop in which both Jimmy
McGovern and Irvine Welsh attended to give guidance and support.
The workshop met weekly and was also the subject of a 'fly on the
wall' documentary undertaken by a local film production company,
Wild and Fresh (Planet Wild). The film, titled "DOCKERS",
and the documentary, were both shown on Channel Four television
on Sunday 11th. July 1999. The Initiative Factory acted as co-producers
for the entire project.
CD-ROM
The CD-Rom History Project has been completed, and now a group of
twenty-five people have embarked upon a digital film project. It
is hoped that this group would form the basis of our film documentary
centre. Projects already identified, will be community based, aimed
at providing alternative perspectives on events and covering a wide
span of interests. It is intended that this activity will have a
commercial aspect. Planet Wild, a local based subsidiary of Planet
24, are involved, and have agreed to input advice and training to
those taking part.
INTERACTIVE
HISTORY
A flag-ship project has been identified in the production of a CD
Rom interactive history of Liverpool as part of the city's 800 year
celebrations in 2007. Similar virtual history projects, based in
San Francisco and Chicago,
have agreed to assist and link-up with a Liverpool based initiative.
Chris Carlsson, the director of the San
Francisco project has already visited Liverpool and an extensive
partnership base already includes JMU/IF/LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY/NORTH
WEST LABOUR HISTORY GROUP. This project would enable the young unemployed
to take part in researching their own history, giving them the potential
for opportunities from which they were formerly excluded.
PARTNERSHIPS
Partnerships in film production also extends to France, where a
Paris based film production company AMIP, have agreed to examine
various joint venture film documentaries. This Paris connection
also covers the performing arts with ARTIS Diffusion whose interests
extend from Opera to Jazz, street theatre and poetry. They have
agreed for us to promote various exchanges and to organise production
of music and performing arts festivals. In San Francisco, a local
poetry group, headed by acclaimed West Coast poet Jack Hershman,
(right) 
have also expressed great interest in developing cultural exchanges
with IF acting as promoters, as well as participants and beneficiaries.
It is envisaged that our projects should reflect the cultural and
ethnic diversity of Liverpool whilst having a global network of
partnerships from San Francisco to New York, Ireland and Europe.
Music and film production techniques, skills and access reflecting
the concept of a 24-hour city with particular emphasis placed upon
the young, especially school-aged children.
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The
Arts Fusion project was set up to enable 10 young unemployed people
from different cultural backgrounds to study the potential of fusing
diverse musical influences. The course ran for 10 months and was
practical based and hoped to help the beneficaries gain
invaluable experience in the music industry.
Areas
covered during the course were : Marketing , Management, Promotion
and Publicity, Performance, Retail , A & R and Publishing.
The Arts Fusion Project entered into partnership with numerous local
industry based organisations with the aim of providing placement
experience and to raise the profile of the course in general.
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