For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent curator and political educator, Prof. Françoise Vergès as the keynote speaker. Taking place on Saturday 17th May at Conway Hall in London and online via livestream broadcast, the event inaugurated our 2025 programme, In Search of Common Ground.

Vergès’ keynote, titled ‘There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present’, considered how we might think across difference to construct a life-affirming politics in times of poly-crisis. The writer and activist posited that building common ground is building transnational solidarity, and urged against despair: “Let us think defeat as a chapter in the long fight for liberation and freedom.”

The keynote was preceded by a video excerpt from Stuart Hall’s Race, The Floating Signifier (1997) and an introductory address from SHF Executive Director Orsod Malik. After the keynote, Vergès was joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, Director of the Decolonial Centre, for a discussion and audience Q&A which further considered how we might understand Hall’s thinking on “a politics without guarantees”. A video recording of the keynote, discussion and audience Q&A will be published in the coming weeks.

The event also featured the premiere screening of ‘The Audacity of Our Skin’. Featuring poet and essayist Selina Nwulu reading her newly revisited version of the titular work to camera, the filmed performance was shot and edited by videographer Alice Kanako and commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation supported by Comic Relief.

Following the event, attendees were invited to congregate at an informal reception, where they discussed ideas with programme contributors and with each other. Plant-based South Asian food catered by Goodness Gracious Feast and drinks from the bar were made available, while Newham Bookshop held a stall with titles related to the programme on offer.

Skin Deep hosted a pop-up library at the back of the hall, continuing their efforts to make space for creative thinking in service of and beyond racial justice. The library of liberatory texts offered attendees the opportunity to relax and flip through back prints of the Skin Deep magazine, pick up their latest issue and delve into their sources of inspiration.

Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Conway Hall, Words of Colour and Pluto Press.

For the 7th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed acclaimed filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien. The event took place on Saturday 23rd March 2024 at Conway Hall, London, inaugurating our Catastrophe and Emergence programme.

Isaac’s keynote presentation explored the connection between image-making and political allegory. He drew upon his conversations with Stuart Hall over the years to reflect on how ideas, language and narratives can transform within a visual frame, presenting new modes of the imaginary. “Stuart’s double position,” Isaac reflected, “eagerly greeting this new wave of left-wing thought but subjecting it to rigorous critique, was instrumental in helping me form my own path through the stories that my research turned up.”

The event also included a new, two-screen presentation of Isaac Julien’s immersive installation, Once Again… (Statues Never Die). Tapping into his extensive research in the archives of the Barnes Foundation, Isaac’s film considers the reciprocal impact of Alain Locke’s political philosophy and cultural organising activities, and Albert C. Barnes’ pioneering art collecting and democratic, inclusive educational enterprise. This was the first time the piece was shown in this format in the UK. Following the screening, Isaac was joined in conversation with Gilane Tawadros, Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation and Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. An audience Q&A also took place, and Newham Bookshop provided a stall for attendees to browse from.

Additionally, the inaugural Stuart Hall Essay Prize was awarded to its first winner, Hashem Abushama, for the essay “a map without guarantees: Stuart Hall and Palestinian geographies”. Trustee and judging panel member Catherine Hall presented the award to Hashem, whose acceptance speech provided additional valuable context to the essay’s creation and content.

In partnership with Conway Hall supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor-advised fund held at The London Community Foundation.

5th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation – ‘Manufacturing Dissent: Moments of Solidarity’ took place on 3rd February 2022, with speakers Raymond Antrobus, David Austin, Liz Fekete, Catherine Hall, Sado Jirde, Farzana Khan, Pragna Patel, Fatima Rajina, Gilane Tawadros and Joshua Virasami. Chaired by Gary Younge.

A year on from the global political protests for racial equality, and through a period marked by growing inequality, intolerance and authoritarianism in Britain and across the globe, we invited speakers to respond to these questions: Is there a discourse capable of speaking to a wide range of people from different backgrounds? What social, cultural, political, and economic differences can coalitions transcend? How can difference be expressed within a collective whilst maintaining cohesion? How can we move from forming coalitions/alliances towards a more unified and transformative politics fit for our times?

Our Public Conversation event has been our yearly moment to pause and reflect, inviting an audience to engage with the work of artists and thinkers on a chosen theme that responds to recent political, cultural and social changes. Previous years have pursued themes through multiple lenses, providing a chance for questions and discussion, and punctuated with interventions by poets, artists and musicians that open up a different space for thinking.

“How can we organise these huge, randomly varied, and diverse things we call human subjects into positions where they can recognise one another for long enough to act together, and thus to take up a position that one of these days might live out and act through as an identity? Identity is at the end, not the beginning, of the paradigm. Identity is what is at stake in political organisation. It isn’t that subjects are there and we just can’t get to them. It is that they don’t know yet that they are subjects of a possible discourse. And that always in every political struggle, since every political struggle is always open, is possible either to win their identification or lose it.” – Stuart Hall, ‘Subjects in History: Making Diasporic Identities’ (1998) from ‘Selected Writings on Race and Difference’ published by Duke University Press, 2021.

Supported by Arts Council England.