Freedom and Culture
February 2008
A Day of Culture: Our students get together with Baroness Young at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
In November Performing Arts students and tutors were invited by Baroness Lola Young to attend the Freedom and Culture Creative Forum held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) on London’s South Bank.
The full-day event featured artists, thinkers and cultural commentators, who gathered to celebrate and share their vision of the significance of the bicentenary parliamentary abolition of the slave trade. Baroness Young and Professor Stuart Hall provided the opening address. This was followed by contributions from Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, filmmaker John Akomfrah and author Andrea Levy, composers Philip Herbert and Shirley J. Thompson. Spoken word artist, writer and broadcaster Lemn Sissay joined forces with Byron Wallen to round off the proceedings.
The event included the unveiling of a specially commissioned site-specific piece by visual artist Mary Evans which will remain as a lasting contemporary legacy to the abolition. During an audience participation session, Lambeth College student Habibat Ajayi garnered a welcome round of applause when she challenged the speakers with a question on the ‘…responsibility of the media and living legacies of events such as these’.
Creative License: John Akomfrahe (centre) gives some advice to students at the Freedom and Culture Creative Forum in February.
The students were amazed by the event and said afterwards:
Lateef Bell ‘This has to be one of the most amazing days of my life. To see Wole Soyinka in the flesh was heavy’.
Victoria Santos-Albert: ‘Andrea Levy is a heroine of mine. To actually meet her and talk about how she writes her novels was a dream come true. And she was so down to earth. I loved it!’
Alexandra Mckell: ‘ To be given the opportunity to go to the Royal Festival Hall, meet some of the most influential people in the media was really good. But for me, listening to The Philharmonia Orchestra playing was the highlight of the whole event’.
