Mike Mason, In Memoriam

Written by Tony Richards

On Tuesday 14 May 2024, we in LSFMJ, as well as the larger University, lost an important and valued ex-colleague to his brave battle with cancer.

Many will remember Mike as an important, impactful and yet never an imposing figure who had worked within various incarnations of the department, and of the larger University, even prior to its move across from Hull in 1998. In the period of the University of Humberside becoming the University of Lincoln in 2001, under the then Dean Phil Cosker, Mike slowly and surely progressed from a full-time Senior Lecturer role in Media Theory to becoming acting joint head of department (alongside David Sleight) and then as deputy head under Sarah Barrow, with whom he enjoyed a strong mutual respect. Mike remained at Lincoln until 2013 when he retired. Throughout he continued to teach and inspire, and teaching was at his core, both for himself, and as support to other staff, such as to Nigel Morris, who grew close to Mike as a fellow traveler, and thus an important collaborative sounding board, who was able to pay his respects at Mike’s funeral.

Mike was very much a part of the spirit of the then Department of Media, and his own teaching was what might, somewhat awkwardly, be termed a “practitioner-theoretician.” Whilst some, quite mistakenly, feel there to be a boundary or a division, or a right-of-way worth policing, it was very very clear to all who knew Mike that here was a very strong “theorist” who was himself thoroughly marinated within craft-thinking, and so understood, and thought deeply on, how he could help to foster this same blending and this same ethos within others. Mike was thus always a very strong referee in any disagreements that might take place from time to time. Indeed, many of us continued to be helped through the many gift-like encounters with Mike, even long after we thought that we had arrived, or might wish to pretend to ourselves that we had arrived. A short conversation with Mike would remind us that this was always a journey of becoming, and never one of final arrival.

As part of passing along his own creative and practical hunger, Mike had returned to education relatively late and had lived quite a lot of his earlier working life in Amsterdam as a jewellery designer and as a scenic painter, as well as a musician. He was part of Amsterdam’s bustling bohemian artistic scene, but after this stretch of intense informal cultural education, Mike decided to make the move back to the UK and to re-enter formal education. Al Elias, a relation of Mike’s, would also start the same course, helping to convince Mike of making the move to Humberside Polytechnic, as it then was.

Being lucky enough to meet Mike as a fellow student on the Documentary Communication course in 1990, I must admit to always really looking up to Mike, and it was as a student that Mike introduced me to a number of influences including Tarkovsky, whom Mike was a very big fan of, but I had never heard of him at the time. We watched Stalker together in the University library at Queen’s Gardens, and I was just as educated by this co-student that was Mike, as we both were more formally educated by tutors of the time such as Phil Cosker, Ron Cowdery, Jacqui Gabb, John Marshall, Roz Garland, Mike Harper and Dave Sample.

After graduation in 1993 Mike soon started an MA in film studies at Sheffield Hallam, as well as starting to teach part time on the Humberside media courses (DocCom and EAVP), and Mike very quickly gained a following amongst students, some of whom have contributed touching memories. From teaching part time, Mike quickly moved to becoming a full-time member of staff, moving across the Humber Bridge to Lincoln, alongside his wife Tracey and young daughter Annie. One ex-student has reflected on how Mike would use examples from his daughter Annie’s growth to help illustrate semiology and socialisation, and of all those ways that we subtly soak up signs and comportments, and become beings-in-the-social-world.

Mike was an inspirational and a highly personable teacher, and continued to inspire students and colleagues, helping many of the latter to navigate their way through and, indeed, many have passed on touching messages of rekindled memories of their time working alongside the very singular Mike. As a practitioner-theoretician Mike’s PowerPoints were truly a thing to behold and illustrating composition within Orson Welles’ The Trial is one of my own personal favourite memories of those inspirational and carefully curated teaching materials. His eye for design, that can very clearly be evidenced within the photographs below (and the link) really perfectly illustrate Mike’s craft and compositional care. Again, one always felt safe in Mike’s stewardship and guidance when recognising the place for theory on a practice course, and Mike was always so very adept at navigating resistances, so that these mistaken resistances would then transform into gratitude. Mike Mason never had to say or imply “I told you so,” even though he almost always easily could.

As we make way for a life sadly now without the very singular Mike Mason, we will still easily feel the strong echoes of his presence and of his infectious laugh and, remind ourselves that, since his retirement, Mike always kept a place in his heart for the University of Lincoln and the department that he sat aboard for so long and helped to steer. In retirement Mike took many walks with his immediate family in his beloved Derbyshire countryside, and one only has to look at his Flickr page to see how much his eye continued to find beautiful, but never sugary, angles on the things he found and captured within his Visions of Light (a cinematography documentary Mike was fond of).

Mike leaves behind his beloved wife Tracey and his daughter Annie. They feel the deep pain that none of us can, but we leave this as a marker of Mike’s Lincoln imprint so that we can help them to see the importance to us that Mike Mason was, and will remain.

Many more of Mike’s photographs can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikmas101/with/49644498667\

For those who would like to leave messages of their memories of Mike, you can do so here:

https://mike-mason.muchloved.com