Politics and Art: The Role of the Arts in Promoting Human Rights and Exposing Injustices

Talk Wednesday 26 March 2014, 8:15 PM

This event is organised by Lacuna: A Writing Wrongs Project.

‘What I have most wanted to do . . . is to make political writing into an art.’ – George Orwell

Chaired by Maureen Freely, English Pen president, the panel will discuss the role of the arts in promoting human rights and social justice issues.

Freely joins Lacuna editor Andrew Williams, IceandFire artistic director Christine Bacon, Keats House poet Laila Sumpton and photographer and disability rights campaigner Lesley McIntyre in a discussion about creativity with a social and political purpose.

The event will be a celebration of the role of the arts in promoting human rights and exposing injustices and will feature a performance from IceandFire’s upcoming production, The Island Nation, on the Sri Lankan Civil War and a short film on Lesley Mcintyre’s work.

This event is organised by Lacuna: A Writing Wrongs Project. A new online, subscription-free magazine that aims to challenge indifference to the suffering of others and promote human rights through literature, art, photography and creative multimedia content.

Photograph Lesley McIntyre. A young woman’s hand is cut while she protests outside the Greenham Common military airbase, where America stored nuclear weapons from 1983 until 1991. An American soldier tries to free her hand where it is caught in the barbed wire perimeter fence.

www.lacuna.org.uk / @lacunamagazine

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