magazine

For those of you who haven’t heard, unfortunately the 4Talent Networks team won’t be around in 2009.

What’s 4Talent ‘Networks’, you may cry? Well, we’re the bods who run 4Talent magazine, the 4Talent Awards and the splendid 4Talent editorial hubs in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast. Not to mention much of the on-the-ground activity you may have taken part in over the years - like Pilot, Raw Cuts, Radio HaHa and the Mobile Game Pitch.

Sad news indeed of course, but fear not: under the management of Jo Taylor and her team channel4.com/4talent will continue as your access point to all C4’s new talent commissioning strands - like 3 Minute Wonder, First Cut, Comedy Lab and Coming Up - not to mention work-related-learning schemes like Generation Next and the Work Experience Scheme.

Channel 4’s regional presence will continue through 4iP, a joint-funded initiative to encourage innovative public-service projects online.

And the outgoing team behind 4Talent Networks are busy hatching various plans to carry on the legacy with an innovative new resource, packed with insider knowledge and opportunities to get all you fiercely creative people with proven talent firmly on the radar of clients, employers and commissioners.

We’ll be knocking on your doors early in 2009. In the meantime we wish you all very Merry Christmas.

The winner of Channel 4’s first televised photography competition Picture This, Elizabeth is a film-based photographer specialising in imaginative portraiture and self-directed projects.  A background in theatre enables her to produce interesting and dramatic images, often with a good dose of humour.  Elizabeth had a solo exhibition at The Batlic, Newcastle in January 2008.

www.elizabethgordon.org.uk

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Hi, I’m Pete Ashton and I’ve been messing about with weblogs for years now. After The Guardian went and gave one of my blogs a fancy media award Nick at 4Talent magazine asked if I’d write this masterclass on running a weblog. Since the blog in question was Created in Birmingham (now run by Chris Unitt), linking up Birmingham’s creative and cultural communities, and that I do a fair bit of consulting and evangelising about the wonderful world of blogging, it seemed like a no-brainer really. So here goes.

The thing is I write for blogs, not those strange magazine things. How do you link to other stuff in a magazine? Where do the comments go? I’m sure it’s a perfectly valid form of communication but I’m really not at home there. I’m more comfortable on a blog: you wouldn’t ask a filmmaker to communicate through the medium of interpretive dance, would you?

Next in the series: the social internet >