4th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation - Movement and Stillness: Art in a Time of Crisis and Upheaval

Linton Kwesi Johnson is a UK-based Jamaican-British dub poet. Born in Chapelton, a small town in the parish of Clarendon, Jamaica, he came to England in 1963. In the mid-seventies he gained a sociology degree from Goldsmiths College, London, and had poems published in the journal Race Today. Whilst still at school he joined the Black Panthers, helped to organise a poetry workshop within the movement and developed his work with Rasta Love, a group of poets and drummers. In 1977 he was awarded a C. Day Lewis Fellowship and was writer-in-residence for London Borough of Lambeth that year. He went on to work as the Library Resources and Education Officer at the Keskidee Centre. In 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including numerous honorary and associate fellowships, and most recently was awarded the 2020 PEN Pinter Prize.

Jay Bernard is a writer, their practice is interdisciplinary and much of what they do is rooted in archives and social history. Their debut collection Surge won the Ted Hughes Award 2017 and they were named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2020. Surge was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award; T.S. Eliot Prize; Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Dylan Thomas Prize; RSL Ondaatje Prize; John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. Surge is based on the archives at the George Padmore Institute relating to the 1981 New Cross Fire

Roger Robinson is a writer who has performed worldwide. He is the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2020, shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2020 and shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize, The Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His latest collection ‘A Portable Paradise’ was a New Statesman book of the year. He was chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the black-British writing canon. He is an alumnus of The Complete Works and he has toured extensively with the British Council.

Gilane Tawadros is the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. She is a curator and writer and was the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) which Stuart Hall chaired for over a decade. She is currently working on an anthology of Stuart Hall’s writings on the visual arts and culture. She was previously the Chief Executive of DACS, a not-for-profit visual artists rights management organisation.