Over the past year, the Stuart Hall Foundation continued its crucial work addressing urgent questions of race and inequality in culture and society through talks and events, and building a growing network of Stuart Hall Foundation scholars, fellows and artists in residence.
Highlights from last year include welcoming audiences in person again for writer Arundhati Roy’s keynote at Conway Hall, commissioning artist Trevor Mathison’s soundscape at Highgate Cemetery and hosting a series of online conversations on climate crisis, the politics of care, memorials, black cultural institutions, solidarity and more. We welcomed 14 new members to our scholars and fellows network in 2022 and have been growing a connective space for them to explore the political and creative dimensions of their work, through sharing skills and knowledge, and initiating dialogue with our wider programme.
Our long term sustainability relies on regular donations and even a small monthly contribution will make a big difference. To help maintain our activity in years to come, we encourage you to become a Friend of the Stuart Hall Foundation.
As 2023 gets underway, we want to express a heartfelt thank you to all who have supported us – collaborators, participants, volunteers, partners, donors and funders – and we look to further developing our flourishing community and public programme in the year to come.
Our 2022 Highlights
Launch of Contextualising Climate Crisis Series
January 2022
Initiated in late 2021, our ‘Contextualising Climate Crisis‘ series sought to provide a counter-narrative to dominant mediations of environmental emergencies, complicating top-down approaches to circumventing climate change. Opposing the ideologies and analysis espoused by the political and business elite of the global north, the series instead pushed to contextualise the crisis within a history of colonisation, foreign policy, global economic disparities and racialised injustices. Bringing the series into 2022, filmmaker and writer Arwa Aburawa contributed an online article, while activists Abeer Butmeh, Dr Hamza Hamouchene and Sam Siva navigated the subject together in a discussion, tying in with our #ReconstructionWork online event series, ‘Frontlines: Land and the Climate Crisis’.
Read moreStuart Hall, a Peerless Mediator
January 2022
Lawrence and Wishart’s Soundings Journal published an edited and abridged version of a discussion we organised in partnership with Duke University Press in June 2021, celebrating the publication of ‘Stuart Hall: Selected Writing on Marxism’ edited by Gregor McLennan. Featuring contributions from Gregor McLennan, Bruce Robbins, Angela McRobbie, Brett St Louis and Catherine Hall, the discussion’s transcript was made available to read both in Soundings Volume 2021 Issue 79 and online on our website in the ‘Explore’ section.
Read more
Manufacturing Dissent: Moments of Solidarity (5th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, 3rd February 2022)
February 2022
For our 5th Annual Public Conversation, we welcomed artists, writers and cultural activists to reflect on the role of solidarity in building sustained political movements. In the spirit of exploring the relationship between political organising and alliance-building between different groups of people to develop and sustain collective struggles for a better world, we looked to combine disciplines and perspectives in an online event chaired by Gary Younge. Featuring introductions from Catherine Hall and Gilane Tawadros, poetry from Raymond Antrobus, a discussion with David Austin and reflections on solidarity from Farzana Khan, Liz Fekete, Sado Jirde, Fatima Rajina, Pragna Patel and Joshua Virasami, the event opened avenues and new areas of discourse around collective goals, cohesive organising and ways in which transformative politics may manifest.
Read moreAria S. Halliday wins 2021 SHF x Cultural Studies Award
February 2022
Assistant professor Aria S. Halliday was this year’s recipient of the SHF x Cultural Studies Award. Her winning essay, ‘Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body’, was published in Cultural Studies in January 2020. Praising Halliday’s essay, the awarding committee announced: “…this brilliant and elegantly crafted article celebrates Black girl pleasure in movement, dance, self-love, and freedom, and it invites readers to share in the same.”
Read moreStuart Hall Library Artist Resident Rohan Ayinde Opens New Exhibition
May 2022
Dancing In The Ellipsis // A Cartographer’s Black Hole showcased the work of Stuart Hall Library Artist Resident Rohan Ayinde. The exhibition explored the artist’s research conducted during the residency, and the multidisciplinary processes within his practice of drawing, poetry, sound, photography, performance, sculpture, and writing. In this exhibition, Ayinde developed his investigations into ideas around translation, abstraction as an expression of blackness, home and place. The exhibition, presented by iniva, was supported by the Stuart Hall Foundation and Freelands Foundation.
Read moreMaking Space: Decolonial Interventions in Contemporary Art
May 2022
Making Space: Decolonial Interventions in Contemporary Art was convened by Susuana Amoah, the 2022 Stuart Hall Fellow at Sussex University. The panel explored imaginative decolonial strategies used by artists, curators and activists in recent years to address cultural inequity in public art institutions, and examined how critical and creative interrogations of the past and present may lead towards more equitable futures. The event was organised by the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, in collaboration with The Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust and the Stuart Hall Foundation as part of Brighton Festival 2022.
Read moreThe Conversation Continues: We Are Still Listening
June 2022
In the summer, we presented a brand new artwork by Trevor Mathison that responds to Professor Stuart Hall’s chosen place of rest at Highgate Cemetery. The Conversation Continues: We Are Still Listening invites audiences to listen to a 40-minute immersive soundscape while wandering through Highgate Cemetery‘s beautifully conserved landscape of monuments, buildings, flora and fauna.
The soundscape was accompanied by a special evening preview event featuring Trevor Mathison and Aasiya Lodhi in conversation, as well as a midsummer event of live music, visuals and performance at LUX. The artwork was first presented as part of Highgate Festival and is available to listen to via our website. A video accompaniment to the commission made by Trevor Mathison was also released for a limited time.
Commissioned by Stuart Hall Foundation and supported by Arts Council England, Highgate Cemetery and LUX.
Read moreSHF’s Annual Autumn Keynote with Arundhati Roy
September 2022
We welcomed author Arundhati Roy for an evening presentation at Conway Hall. Roy presented her keynote, Things that Can and Cannot be Said: The dismantling of the world as we knew it, followed by a conversation with Farzana Khan, and a reading from The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Photos from the Conway Hall-supported event are available to view via our website and the full event recording is available to watch online for a small fee via the Conway Hall website here.
Read moreRacial Inequality in Times of Crises Conference 2022
October 2022
Racial Inequality in Times of Crises was a week-long conference exploring the impact of present-day crises on ethnic minority people in the UK, hosted in partnership with the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) and building on 2021’s Racial Inequality in a Time of Crisis conference. Researchers and practitioners working across the fields of sociology, art, media, activism, history, politics and healthcare were invited to take part in a series of live online presentations and discussions focusing on areas impacted by Covid-19 and ensuing crises. The sessions were held around themes of Education and Policing, Activism, Housing and Healthcare.
Read moreSHF welcomes new Trustees and Associates
November 2022
We were thrilled to welcome Farzana Khan and Nasar Meer to the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Board of Trustees, as well as new SHF Associates Sarah Kavanagh, Aasiya Lodhi, Ruth Ramsden-Karelse, and Derron Wallace, who joined our group of associates supporting Trustees in the development of our public programme and our growing network of scholars, fellows and artists.
Read moreScholars and Fellows Network
Throughout 2022
We were delighted to welcome over a dozen new members to the SHF Scholars and Fellows Network this year, including Emma Abboh, Susuana Amoah, Natalie Barnett, Meha Dedhia, Enzo Hamel, Marisa Henderson, Sylvia Ikomi, Balqis Mohammed, Mohamed Omar-Ejjbair, Fezile Sibanda, Shine Sibanda, Trishauna Stewart, Tamara Stuiver and Aruna Wittmann. We welcome the new scholars as a result of our fruitful partnerships with CHASE, University of Manchester, Queen Mary University London, University of Sussex, Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, and White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership (WRDTP).
Read more#ReconstructionWork
Throughout 2022
Our #ReconstructionWork series, launched in 2020, continued into this year, inviting invite writers, artists and activists to critically consider how we can build a more just society in the wake of the pandemic and protests for racial justice. The online conversations in 2022 included ‘Frontlines: Land and the Climate Crisis’, which was also part of our Contextualising Climate Crisis series, ;as well as ‘The Politics of Care’, ‘Whose Memorials?’ and ‘Building Black Cultural Institutions’.
Recordings are available to access on demand via our YouTube channel here.
Supported by Arts Council England and CoDE.
Read moreScholarship and Fellowship opportunities
Throughout 2022
Our academic partnerships aim to further Professor Stuart Hall’s life-long commitment to teaching by providing academic opportunities to students from non-traditional, disadvantaged or under-represented backgrounds.
This year we continued to support scholarship and fellowship opportunities with existing partners including:
- Two PhD studentship awards with White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership (WRDTP)
- Two Stuart Hall Foundation CHASE AHRC Studentships with Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE)
- The Stuart Hall PhD Scholarship with University of Manchester
- The Stuart Hall Fellowship with School of Media, Arts and Humanities (MAH) at the University of Sussex.
We are also excited to have formed new academic partnerships this year, offering additional opportunities including:
- Up to six Stuart Hall Fellowships with Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) and the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS)
- Up to two studentships with Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (M4C)
- The SHF-QMUL HSS Principal’s Studentship for PhD scholars at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Queen Mary University London.
Become a Friend
Your continued donations supports our long-term sustainability and gives you a lasting involvement with our work. By pledging a monthly gift for our work, you can help us produce a broader and more ambitious programme of events, conversations and artists’ commissions. Becoming a Friend of SHF starts at £10 per month and every donation really does make a difference. To become a Friend, please complete the donation form on our website.
Stay connected
Sign up to our newsletter for the latest news, events and opportunities:
Share this