Can the Arts Save Human Rights? – Launch event

You are invited to the launch of a 3-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), titled: “Can the Arts Save Human Rights: Human Rights Truth-Claims in a Post Truth Era”.

The project will address questions such as:

• If established approaches to human rights are under siege in a post-truth world, what new approaches are struggling to be born?
• How do we understand, and seek to overcome, denial in various forms in this context?
• What frames and narratives will facilitate re-engagement with audiences?
• Is collaboration between artists and activists one entry-point to innovation?

These questions will be addressed in case studies that are both global and country-based, engage with the past, present and future, and explore the intersections between human rights, international development, climate change, and COVID-19.

The event will feature the following speakers:

Paul Gready, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, will introduce the project:

“Can the Arts Save Human Rights?”

Alejandro Castillejo-Cuéllar, Commissioner for the Truth, Coexistence and Non-Recurrence Commission in Colombia, will draw on his innovative methodology ‘territories of listening’ which he developed at the Commission: “Ritual Readings: Sound, Affect and Testimony in Colombia´s Truth Commission”

Wanda Nanibush, an Anishinaabe curator, artist and educator based in Toronto, and the Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario: In conversation about “Testimony, Narrative and Commemoration in Contemporary Indigenous Art and Decolonising the Museum”

Please ensure that you are seated in the Bowland Theatre by 4pm. Refreshments will be served at the end of the event.

Instructions on how to get to the venue can be found on the university website.