Listen to the audio recording of The Second Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, held at Conway Hall on 2nd February 2019. The event gathered our growing community of artists, students, academics, cultural activists and engaged citizens to consider how to reimagine and reclaim public space in the context of our present social and political upheavals.

Pursuing this question through multiple lenses, the afternoon centred on two sets of conversations. The first, between artist Willie Doherty and curator Elvira Dyangani Ose, addressed the question of ‘how to share a place’ through Doherty’s longstanding engagement with the Ireland/Northern Ireland border. The second conversation featured a panel including Guardian columnist John Harris; sociologist Michael Rustin; and senior editor, Novara Media, Ash Sarkar. Titled ‘Meeting the Crisis: Trump, Brexit, and the Left’, it asked ‘what is to be done’. These two discussions were punctuated with interventions and perspectives from a new generation of artists, scholars and cultural activists.

Programme:

14.00: Welcome note Hammad Nasar, Stuart Hall Foundation Executive Director

14.10: Black Cultural Activism Map Presentation Farzana Khan

14.15: My time as a Stuart Hall Scholar Ruth Ramsden-Karelse

14.20: How to share a place Willie Doherty in conversation with Elvira Dyangani Ose

15.10: Joining the Stuart Hall Foundation’s work Rebecca Hall and Hammad Nasar

15.20: Tea & coffee break

15.50: Meeting the Crisis: Trump, Brexit, and the Left John Harris, Michael Rustin and Ash Sarkar, chaired by Claire Alexander

17.05: Closing remarks Gilane Tawadros, Stuart Hall Foundation Vice-Chair

17.10: Musical improvisation * Elaine Mitchener, Mark Sanders and Neil Charles * Acoustic performance—not recorded.

17.30: Event finishes

Image: Willie Doherty, At the Border IV (The Invisible Line), 1995. Image courtesy the artist and Kerlin Gallery.

“We are living through a period of profound political instability, in which old paradigms are crumbling, and new ones struggling to be born. At this moment of both possibility and danger, what does ‘resistance’ look like to those seeking it on the ground, and what exactly are the forces ranged against them?”  – Jack Shenker.

The 3^rd Stuart Hall Public Conversation pursued the theme of Resistance through multiple lenses, providing a chance for questions and discussion, and punctuated with interventions and perspectives from a new generation of artists, scholars and cultural activists.

The event was introduced by the Stuart Hall Foundation’s new Executive Director Ruth Borthwick, who welcomed multidisciplinary artist and designer Bahia Shehab to deliver the opening presentation.

Journalist and author Jack Shenker took to the stage for a keynote speech. Drawing on his deep reporting on grassroots movements in different parts of the world over recent years, Jack told the story of two young people several thousand miles apart – one in Manchester, England, another in Cairo, Egypt – to explore how the children of the financial crisis are fighting to widen their political imaginations, and often paying a heavy price in return.

The Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed cultural theorist, poet and teacher of performance studies, Fred Moten, as keynote speaker for the 9th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation. The event took place on Saturday 23rd May at Conway Hall in London and online via livestream broadcast as the first 2026 event in our In Search of Common Ground programme.

Moten’s keynote, drafted under the title ‘The Physics of Political Economy’ and delivered as ‘(Notes on Genocide:) Violence and the Physics of Political Economy’, used Stuart Hall’s critical engagement with Karl Marx as a point of departure to speak to the realities of practising the rejection of individuation.

The keynote was preceded by an address by Catherine Hall on the achievements of the Stuart Hall Essay Prize, and followed by a discussion between Moten and Angela McRobbie and an audience Q&A.

Following the event, attendees were invited to congregate in the hall for an informal reception with food catered by Goodness Gracious Feast and a DJ set from Anu Ambasna.

Skin Deep’s pop-up library of liberatory texts was set up in the hall throughout the day, offering attendees the opportunity to relax and flip through their back prints, works from collaborators and inspirations for their latest editions. Newham Bookshop hosted a stall with titles related to the programme available on sale throughout the event.

Supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Hollick Family Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Power of Pop Fund, in collaboration with Conway Hall.