Assignment 2 - Reflective Essay

After reading that Afflecks Palace was to be saved, the stories published on the matter seemed to follow a similar pattern. They all concentrated on the fact that a “Northern Gem” had been saved. However, it was not made clear in any of the articles I came across in my research, what the impact was for many of the stalls who had to move out of the building when there was the threat of closure.

I had previously spoken to a girl named Claire Harris, who I bought clothes off over the internet. I found out she was creating her own clothing and selling them through a stall in Afflecks named “Me & Yu”. After a visit to the building when the rumours first began regarding the closure, she was unable to comment on the matter, as all staff were warned not to talk to the press, at risk of creating more panic. However, after keeping in contact with her, and after the stall she worked on had no choice but to leave Afflecks Palace, she was an active member of petitions to save the building, and had posted bulletins on her Myspace page announcing she would be leaving there. She also kindly sent me a picture of herself, and of the stall to make my article more aesthetically pleasing. I felt this would be an interesting angle and interview for my first article, as people like these were very much unrepresented on the whole Afflecks-closure story. Although many stories, particularly from the Manchester Evenings News were very much concerned with the cultural aspect, it was rare that the closure and re-opening was looked at from a business perspective. Although the joint statement made from Afflecks’ was heavily repeated, I felt it was necessary in creating a brief bit of context. I also researched the Manchester Evenings News’ coverage, and used this as my basis for research for both articles.

To add interactivity to article 1, I included a “What do You Think?” section at the end, which included a poll created on www.twiigs.com that invited comments, rather than a list of pre-written choices. I was previously unaware this was possible, as I had not seen a “poll” like this on any other website, but because of the many strong opinions people hold on this topic, I felt it would be more beneficial to allow users to enter their own content rather than select “yes” or “no” from a list. Whilst at Afflecks Palace, I also asked some passers-by what they thought on the matter. Many of the opinions were the same so I chose the three comments that were strongest to create a reaction and to hopefully trigger response and debate, which could be taken full advantage of since the story was uploaded to Blogger.

For my second story, I felt it was interesting to look into why exactly the building was saved. A similar building, also in the Northern Quarter named The Coliseum was very similar to Afflecks, yet was knocked down in 2002. There was very little information about The Coliseum online – only that it was competition for Afflecks. I did find however, a Directory of the Tenants that occupied The Coliseum and it was interesting to see that a large number of them moved across the street to Afflecks proving that there really is only a small area for this type of business. I focused this second article on the reasons why many believed Afflecks should/should not be kept open.

Because of the huge interest in the topic, forums, and comment sections provided useful guidelines on different opinions.

For my multimedia piece, I originally decided that I would do a vox-pop on Afflecks Day using my Nokia 95 mobile phone, but very few people were comfortable being recorded. Instead, I decided on creating a slideshow, using images from Flickr using Creative commons, images from the Facebook group “Save Afflecks Palace” and from the M.E.N’s news page. To make sure the images weren’t standing alone, I included a voice-over which I recorded using my phone, and blue-toothed it to the computer. I was then able to incorporate the images and audio together on Windows Movie Maker. The video summarises how the building had been in the news over the past year – in effect, it is a timeline of news. I researched this through Metro News articles, Manchester Evenings News article and BBC articles.

Uploading the assignment to Blogger I felt was particularly helpful, as I was able to view what the stories would look like on the web, as well as add labels for others to search for tags. I felt that using Blogger through the module has helped my research for this assignment. Although previously, I had my own blog so was capable of managing entries, I had not considered blogs as a point for research. Forums and social networking sites were helpful for this story, and blogs even more so. Because of this interactivity available, hundreds of comments were made, allowing anyone to have your say. This enabled me to gather an incredibly broad range of opinions and information.

Overall, I am pleased with the end product, but I was disappointed that there was no-one available for comment in regards to The Coliseum for my second article. I felt, an interview with a representative or previous employee would really help in the comparison between why this shopping area was closed, and why Afflecks was not. I rang up a couple of the numbers from The Directory I found, but it would appear these numbers have now changed as they are quite dated.I am pleased with the slideshow I created and hoped to find the majority of images on Flickr, but they were incredibly difficult to find to fit with my audio. I would have liked to take pictures showing how empty the hallways of Afflecks now were, but because when I went, there were events in these spaces, this was unfortunately not possible.