KISMIF 2024 Conference, July 2024, University of Porto Report
Matt Grimes KISMIF Conference 2024, July 2024, University of Porto, Portugal
In July I attended KISMIF 2024 (Keep It Simple Make It Fast) the international bi-annual subcultures conference, hosted by the University of Porto, Portugal. The conference runs over 4 days and has over 250 papers presented, plus workshops and live music events and is attended by over 500 people. I have presented my research at this conference on a number of past occasions ( I think this year was my 5th time), and have always found it a welcoming and supportive environment for established and emerging researchers. The quality and variety of papers and subcultural disciplines covered is excellent. I presented two papers this year; the first was with my colleague from BCMCR Dr Asya Draganova with a paper titled Andragogy/Pedagogy, ‘zines and democratising the learning experience through creative production. The paper discussed a ‘fanzine making workshop that Asya and I ran in July 2023 for a group of young black female identifying and non-binary musicians/and performers, through our relationship with Birmingham based CIC Girl Grind. The paper highlighted how the participants of the workshop took ownership over producing the content of the zine based on their own experiences of being black female/non-binary musicians and performers. This self-directed learning experience was then matched against the theoretical and educational concepts and principles of andragogy, as posited by American educationalist Malcolm Knowles in 1968 and through to the 1980s.
The second paper I presented was based on my ongoing research into ageing punks, memory and nostalgia. The paper was titled : ‘Nostalgia for an Age yet to come’ Researching Memory and Nostalgia within punk studies. Problematic methodological and analytical encounters. The paper discussed some of the issues I faced in my research when analysing people’s narratives of their past engagement with punk rock in their adolescence , and how they recount notions of subcultural identity from the past in the present. It discussed the role and impact that memory and nostalgia have on those recounted narratives, and how memory and nostalgia is conceptualised and how you try to make those amorphous acts (remembering) and feelings (nostalgia) quantifiable enough to create and develop a conceptual framework for analysis. Whilst the paper’s outcome didn’t offer any solutions to those issues, it presented a ‘road map’ as to how one might think about and conceptualise research into memory and nostalgia within cultural and sociological studies.