The Hetherington family and the Tim Hetherington Trust invite friends, colleagues and everyone interested in Tim’s extraordinary life to spend an evening at The Frontline Club exploring his dynamic legacy through the work of artists and journalists who continue to expand his innovative approach to visual media. The evening will introduce new work by some familiar friends, as well as some hitherto unknown voices who are bringing fresh energy to today’s media.

We will present a first look at the virtual reality project ‘The Ark’ by Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill, produced with support from the Tim Hetherington Trust and premiering simultaneously at Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The Trust will unveil the revised Tim Hetherington Fellowship, developed in association with the World Press Photo, and the evening will culminate with presentations by the five newly short-listed artists for the Visionary Award from the Tim Hetherington Trust. Frontline guests will be the first to learn the identity of this year’s winner, with an opportunity to question the jurors and the artist about the forthcoming project.

This event – taking place on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the mortar attack that took the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya in 2011 – will introduce some new reflections on their lives and will offer dynamic insights into the work of a new generation of storytellers who are challenging our expectations of visual journalism in 2016.

Acclaimed journalist and artist Molly Crabapple has drawn and reported on stories from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan and across the United States. With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.

On the release of her memoir Drawing Blood, which intersperses testimony of her own artistic and journalistic engagement with full-colour illustrations, we welcome Molly Crabapple to the Frontline Club to reflect on recent projects and to share her personal insight into the use of art as a tool for better understanding and documenting current events. With US presidential primaries now firmly underway, she will discuss her ongoing work on topical home turf issues including policing and the justice system, as well as her experiences covering the effects of conflict across the Middle East.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called “an emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery” by the New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. She is the winner of a 2015 Front Page Award for her drawings of Aleppo for Vanity Fair, and was shortlisted for a Frontline Award in 2013. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

This event will be chaired by Natasha Lennard, a British-born, New York-based writer of news and political analysis, focusing on justice, power, biopolitics and dissent. She writes regularly for the Intercept, Fusion and Al Jazeera America, and has written for VICE News, The New York Times, Salon, The Nation and Politico, among others. She is editor-at-large at The New Inquiry journal.

Illustration: Molly Crabapple for VICE: ‘What Life is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo’

A presentation and panel discussion with film editors, producers and sound designers organised by Screen.

Multimedia producers, film editors and sound designers will show excerpts from their work and talk about collaborations and interactions with photographers, directors and artists. The projects presented explore political and personal storytelling in an installation format.

The panel will feature: Adrian Kelterborn, multimedia producer and film editor; Monica Alcazar-Duarte, visual artist and producer; Philippe Ciompi, sound designer, film editor, sound artist; and Tim Harrison, sound designer. Moderated by Ivan Sigal, co-founder of Screen and the executive director of Global Voices.

Speakers:

Tim Harrison is a sound designer based in London. After studying philosophy and computing, he founded narrative audio company Aumeta, working in the areas of film and video. Installation collaborations include Gideon Mendel’s Drowning World and Ai Wei Wei’s Sunflower Seeds. He also creates interactive video work and leads the sound design component of Film Practice at UAL.

Monica Alcazar-Duarte is a Mexican/British photographer, visual artist and curator/producer. Her work focuses on societies in the midst of a struggle to change. Most recently she completed a project challenging the portrayal of Mexican live in mainstream media and popular culture and collaborated with Edmund Clark on Virtue Unmann’d, an audiovisual installation piece that explores traditions of virtue and sacrifice in war in the context of a contemporary battlefield: drone strikes on tribal areas of Pakistan.

Adrian Kelterborn is a multimedia producer, film editor and a founder of Prismago multimedia productions in Basel, Switzerland. He was a lead multimedia producer for Magnum in Motion in New York. He is focusing on projects that are blending the languages of photojournalism, film, music, video art and performance into new media hybrids for online and offline platforms. His recent projects include Shipbreaking, a cross media opera for a music theatre installation, Fieber, filmic completion of musical score based on scientific research of fever, and Streaming Nation, a 4-channel video installation based on citizen video.

Philippe Ciompi is a sound designer and dubbing mixer, also active as film editor and sound artist. Trained in Switzerland, Berlin & London in music studies, film sound design and mixing, he constructs soundscapes and films with numerous artists and directors such as Ben Rivers, Andrew Kotting, Xiaolu Guo, Iain Sinclair, Stephen Dwoskin, Pia Borg/Ed Lawrenson, Jane & Louise Wilson, Åbake, Sarah Vanagt, Nina Conti and many others. He is a visiting lecturer for sound design at the Royal College of Art London and HEAD Geneva.

Ivan Sigal is a media producer, digital media advocate and storyteller. He is the executive director of Global Voices, and has produced media projects around the world. He is also the author of White Road, a book of photography and writing about Central Asia, published by Steidl in 2012, and KCR, a nine-channel installation that traces the path of the defunct Karachi Circular Railway.

Photo: Streaming Nation, a 4-channel video installation, directed by Alexey Layfurov, produced by Screen

With shrinking editorial budgets, greater risks and lack of access it is becoming increasingly difficult for established media outlets to offer a full picture of events. Can citizen journalists fill the void?

A few organisations are working to address this reality: Nuba Reports mentors and trains filmmakers in Sudan’s conflict zones. Organisations such as Syria Deeply and Tehran Bureau aggregate and report from hard-to-access areas using a dedicated network on the ground. The human rights organisation Videre trains oppressed communities to document abuses and violations on camera.

Everyday there are even more places and stories that foreign correspondents cannot access. While the outside perspective they bring is critical, local insights are equally valuable. This discussion will bring together a few key players working on new models of foreign reporting to address the issues of verification and bias, and of which technology is working and which isn’t. They will discuss the challenges faced and delve into what the future of this new reporting holds.

Chaired by Trevor Snapp, the director of programs at Nuba Reports, a media startup in Sudan pioneering ways to tell stories of life amidst war. Over the last decade he has covered stories around the world, producing documentaries for Al Jazeera and VICE, and reporting for NPR and Newsweek. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times and The Guardian amongst others.

The panel:

John D McHugh is the co-founder of Verifeye Media, a technology driven visual news agency that represents freelance journalists and accidental eyewitnesses, delivering verified eyewitness media from the centre of a story to newsrooms, in real-time. McHugh is an award winning photojournalist and filmmaker with extensive knowledge of foreign reporting, especially from conflict zones.

Basia Cummings is a commissioning editor on the Guardian’s world networks, focused on in-depth coverage of under-reported regions, including Africa, North Korea and the post-Soviet states

Jacqueline Geis is the chief operating officer of Videre est Credere, an organisation that equips activists in hard-to-access areas with the cameras, technology, and support to visually document human rights violations safely and effectively.

Thant Sin is currently studying for a master’s degree in Media in Development at the School of Oriental Studies in London. He is a regular contributor to the citizen media website, Global Voices, and covers the latest events in Myanmar. Before beginning his studies in London, Sin worked in the development sector in Myanmar – travelling the country to work with displaced peoples.

Photo: Nuba Reports. Videojournalist Ahmad Khatir interviews an elderly farmer about an injury she sustained during a government bombing attack in the Nuba mountains of Sudan.

For this special event we are delighted to be joined by the film’s director and co-writer Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer, along with The Boston Globe journalists that the film is based on: Sacha Pfeiffer and Mike Rezendes.

In a discussion chaired by the former head of BBC News and director of the centre for journalism at Cardiff University, Richard Sambrook, they will talk about the events the film is based on and the process of adapting them for the screen.

Spotlight will be released in the UK on 29 January 2016.

The widespread abduction of journalists in Syria began in the middle of 2012, with Theo Padnos one of the first to be kidnapped. Padnos, a writer and freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New Republic, The London Review of Books and The New York Times magazine, spent two years in the hands of Al-Qaeda. At one point he was held in the same compound as the Islamic State’s foreign hostages.

James Harkin is a freelance journalist writing about and from Syria for Vanity Fair, Harper’s, Newsweek and The Guardian. In his new book Hunting Season, he traces the Islamic State’s campaign of kidnapping twenty-four foreign hostages, which ended with the execution of Jim Foley and others.

James Harkin and Theo Padnos will be joining us to discuss the current dangers to freelancers in Syria and how to avoid them, how to survive captivity and torture, the descent of Syria, and the rise of Islamic State.

This event is off the record, please refrain from filming and reporting the discussion.

 
On his first trip to London since being released from prison in Egypt we are delighted to welcome former Al Jazeera bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy to the Frontline Club.

After spending more than 400 days in prison and facing the prospect of a three-year sentence for doing their jobs as journalists, Fahmy and his colleague Baher Mohamed were among 100 prisoners released on 23 September following a presidential pardon.

He will be joining us in conversation with his lawyer Amal Clooney to reflect on his ordeal, their fight for press freedom in Egypt and his hopes for the future. Chaired by BBC presenter and chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet.

For media inquiries please email millicent.teasdale@www.beta.frontlineclub.com.

Theatre of War is an innovative project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to members of the armed services, veterans, and their families to help them initiate conversations about the visible and invisible wounds of war. We are delighted to welcome the project to the Frontline Club for a special performance for journalists who cover conflict.

Opening with a dramatic reading of Sophocles’ Ajax, an ancient Greek tragedy about the suicide of a great respected warrior, by actors Jason Isaacs, Lesley Sharp and Aidan Kelly, the evening aims to generate dialogue about the unique challenges faced by those who risk their lives to bring the truth of war to light.

Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, Blackhawk Down, The Green Zone)

Lesley Sharp (The Full Monty, Naked, Clocking Off, Scott & Bailey)

Aidan Kelly (Treasure Island – National Theatre, MacBeth – RSC, and Once – West End)

Following the reading a panel of journalists will give their reaction before opening up to a conversation with the audience.

The panel

Matthew Green has spent the past 14 years working as a correspondent for the Financial Times and Reuters and has reported from more than 30 countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of Aftershock: The Untold Story of Suriving Peace, which documents the post-conflict experience of British soldiers.

Emma Beals is a freelance journalist based in southern Turkey covering Syria and Iraq. She has also reported from DR Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Pakistan. She is a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi freelance journalist working in print and television. Her focus in the past few years has been the Arabian peninsula, primarily Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Her essay Wishful Thinking was published in the anthology Writing Revolution. She is the recipient of ElMundo’s International Journalism award for 2015.

Theatre of War is founded by writer, director, and translator Bryan Doerries. He is also the co-founder of Outside the Wire, a social-impact company that uses theatre and a variety of other media to address pressing public health and social issues, such as combat-related psychological injury, end-of-life care, prison reform, domestic violence, political violence, recovery from natural and man-made disasters, substance abuse, and addiction. He is author of The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today.

As part of marking 60 years this autumn of Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent, the Frontline Club will host an event on reporting foreign news. A panel will discuss how reporting in Britain about international news and current affairs – particularly but not only by broadcast journalists – has developed over the last six decades and explore what the future holds in a world of social media and digital correspondents.

The panel:
Owen Bennett-Jones, from the BBC’s World Service (chair)
Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4’s international editor
Paul Hamilos, world features editor at Buzzfeed UK
James Coomarasamy, presenter on BBC World Service
and Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent.

Club members and guests are welcome and encouraged to contribute to the discussion. The event will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Thursday 17 September at 9:00 AM and on the BBC World Service.

There is no charge for this event. It will start promptly at 6pm – the event is being recorded for broadcast so I’m afraid if you arrive after the start time you will not be permitted to enter.

This event is organised by BBC Radio 4.

Acts of journalism should be shielded from targeted surveillance, data retention and handover of material connected to confidential sources. This is a key early finding from a recent study commissioned by UNESCO on the state of journalistic source protection in 121 countries.

Early findings from the study, Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age, authored by Australian journalist and journalism academic Julie Posetti, indicate that legal source protection frameworks in many of the countries studied are outdated and need strengthening. It also shows that they are being eroded by national security and anti-terrorism legislation; undercut by surveillance – both mass and targeted; and jeopardised both by mandatory data retention policies and pressure applied to third party intermediaries to release data.

UNESCO commissioned the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to undertake the study and Posetti led the project in her capacity as WAN-IFRA Research Fellow.

In an event in partnership with the Foreign Press Association, we will be joined by the author of the study and other experts to discuss the implications of the findings and what needs to be done to ensure journalists can fully protect their sources.

Chaired by journalist, writer and Foreign Press Association President, Paola Totaro.

The panel:

Julie Posetti is an Australian journalist and journalism academic. A former news editor, presenter and political reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Posetti is currently based in Paris as a research fellow with the World Editors Forum and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. She is completing a PhD on “The Twitterisation of Journalism” at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she teaches social journalism, radio, TV and multimedia storytelling. She recently completed a major UNESCO-commissioned study of journalistic source protection in the digital era in 121 countries for WAN-IFRA.

Gavin Millar QC has a broad practice spanning media, information, public, criminal, employment and discrimination law. He is a noted specialist in all areas of media law including defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, publishing contempts and reporting restrictions. He often represents media outlets, journalists and politicians in both civil and criminal proceedings.

Jonathan Calvert is the longest serving editor of the The Sunday Times’ Insight team in its 50 year history, having held the job for a decade. His first scoop for the team was exposing the cash for questions scandal as an undercover Insight reporter in 1994, and he soon after became investigations editor at The Observer where he oversaw a string of major exclusives. Since returning to The Sunday Times he has headed a long line of exclusives – most recently the Fifa files investigation which made waves around the world.

Paul Myers is a BBC internet research specialist. He joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. He also runs The Internet Research Clinic, a website dedicated to directing journalists to the best research links, apps and resources. His role in the BBC Academy sees him organise and deliver training courses related to internet investigation, data journalism, freedom of information, reporting statistics, working with social media, web design and image production. He has worked with leading programmes like Panorama, Watchdog, national news bulletins, BBC Online, local & national radio and the World Service.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL