Festival to discuss refugees, civil rights, post-Brexit UK and decriminalisation of drugs
8TH LEICESTER
A FREE festival, featuring dance performance premieres and poetry begins this week in the city.
Now in its eighth consecutive year, the Leicester Human Rights Arts and Film Festival starts on Saturday and runs until December 10 and will have presentations and discussions on a range of human rights issues.
Festival co-organiser, Ambrose Musiyiwa said: “The festival aims to explore human rights issues through film and the arts and to give a platform through which people can engage with human rights issues at home and abroad.
“The festival also aims to draw attention to International Human Rights Day which is celebrated annually, across the world on December 10.
“This year, for Human Rights Day, we are asking the question, should Britain legalise cannabis?”
The festival starts at 6pm online on Saturday, with Poetry and Settled Status For All: Readings and Conversation, an evening of poetry exploring themes that include: migrant, undocumented migrant and refugee experiences; the hostile environment; and how, around the world people are calling on governments to give Settled Status, Indefinite Leave to Remain or citizenship to all who need it.
The event is a preview of the anthology, Poetry and Settled Status For All, which is coming out from CivicLeicester shortly.
On Sunday, December 5, from 6pm till 7.30pm online, Journey to Justice volunteers Carrie Supple and Tania Aubeelack will give a presentation on Journey to Justice’s travelling and interactive Civil Rights exhibition.
The exhibition, now housed at the University of Leicester, tells littleknown stories of successful journeys to justice by individuals in the USA and the UK, as well as stories local to wherever the exhibition is based.
Out of this exhibition came the Economic (In)Justice Project, which aims to help equip people take action for change using the Journey to Justice approach to human rights education.
As part of the event, volunteer Dr Abi Rhodes will introduce the project and a mini documentary exploring how class and education play a role in creating economically unjust societies and what needs to be done to create more just ones.
On Monday, December 6, from 6pm till 7.30pm online, Stephanie Orisakwe, from the Centre for International Education at the University of Sussex; Julie
Walters Nisbett, the second Black President of the Leicester branch of the National Education Union, and Councillor Vandeviji Pandya, councillor for North Evington and a member of Leicester City Council’s Children, Young People and Education Scrutiny Commission will be discussing what the Sewell Report (the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities) says about education and training and its implications for places like Leicester.
On Tuesday, December 7, from 6pm till 7.30pm online, Brexit and its after effects will be the focus of a panel discussion featuring Tom Pratt, a campaign coordinator at The 3 Million who will give The 3 Million view on Brexit; Ramisha Rafique, a postgraduate researcher at Nottingham Trent University who will speak on the rise of Islamophobia post-Brexit; and Josh Blamire and Katharine Tayler, researchers from the University of Exeter who will speak on findings from Leicester and other parts of the UK from the research project, “Identity, Belonging and the Role of the Media in Brexit (and Covid-19) Britain”.
PREMIERE PERFORMANCES
On Wednesday, from 7pm till 8pm in Room CC2.13/14 in the De Montfort University Campus Centre, Moving Together, a community dance company that provides engagement opportunities for people of all ages and abilities, will premiere two new dance performances and a short film exploring women’s rights, refugee rights, and the impact of Leicester’s lockdown (England’s longest local lockdown).
On Thursday, December 9, from 6pm to 7.30pm online, Patricia Francis, a filmmaker and doctoral researcher at Nottingham Trent University; Dr Paula McCloskey, an artist and researcher at the University of Derby; and Dr Ruth Pearce, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow will discuss how artists can engage with issues like the environmental crisis, inequality, anti-trans discrimination and racism.
The festival will culminate in a panel discussion taking place online from 6pm to 7.30pm on Human Rights Day, December 10 on the question, Should Britain Legalise Cannabis?
HUMAN RIGHTS ARTS AND FILM
Speaking at the event are Dr Jamie Banks, a Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Leicester, whose research focuses on the colonial and postcolonial histories of drugs and their consumers; Nick Glynn, a senior programme officer at Open Society Foundations and a former police officer who works on police accountability in several European countries, with a particular focus on police powers, use of force and racial disparity; Professor Rob Canton, a Professor in
Community and Criminal Justice at De Montfort University, who mainly researches into the practices and ethics of punishment, and Ina Roll Spinnangr and Dagfinn Hessen Paust, from Foreningen Tryggere Ruspolitikk, a Norwegian organisation that is calling for the decriminalisation of drug purchase, possession and use and for a shift in Norwegian drug policy towards injury prevention and information.
To register for any of the events: