The University of Leeds is delighted to be hosting this major Migrants Rights and Race Equality Summit ion 2nd, 3rd, and 4th September 2022, alongside the Runnymede Trust.
The aim is to bring together people working for racial justice, to share knowledge, to network, to celebrate, to strategise and to movement build. You can pre-register to attend here.
The event will bring together academics, politicians, journalists, students, campaigners and practitioners working in the field of race equality.
Themes that have already emerged include:
- Turning the tide on the ‘new’ (or newly legitimised) racism
- Responding to the Government’s legislative programme and its impacts on migrants rights, voting rights and civil rights (including the right to protest).
- Decolonising the academy (including support for early career academics from ethnic minority communities).
- Strategies for engaging with the narratives of ‘levelling up’ and ‘building back better’ post Covid
- Effective steps for movement building.
Other themes will be added through a process of dialogue with participants (you can suggest ideas in the sign up sheet).
While a summit of this type will inevitably explore the patterns of systemic disadvantage faced by communities across a comprehensive range of sectors (physical and mental health, education, employment, housing, criminal justice etc.) it will primarily be:
- action orientated,
- a celebration, and
- an opportunity to build and renew networks (what bell hooks would have referred to as our ‘communities of resistance’).
We also want it to be an ‘open door’ to large numbers of younger people, those who responded to the horrific death of George Floyd by creating the international wave of #BLM actions that have brought racism and the need to dismantle it back to the centre of public consciousness. This new generation are already showing that they will be the future of the movement, and we want their voices to be centred ‘in the room’.
To ensure we meet our objectives, this event will not have a wholly traditional conference format (where learned academics deliver papers) while that will definitely be one feature of the event, there will also be workshops, seminars and events using non-traditional formats such as ‘world café’ and ‘pecha kucha’ presentations as well as poster boards that create the space for a multitude of voices and indeed a variety of opinions. We will also create space for ‘fringe meetings’ and for the all-important informal discussions that are central to building the relationships that build movements.
Interested?
Sign up to our pre-registration page where you will be able to pre-register (and get notified of when registration opens), reserve a space on our ‘poster wall’, as well as suggest sessions that you, or your organisation may be able to convene or contribute to, and offer sponsorship.
If you want to know more about the plans for the event, then please read the ‘vision statement’.
