Arcadia England

This fall semester, we have had some fantastic guests join us for our Talk of the Town series. We like to think of our TotT sessions as mini "Ted Talks" set up at the pub. The pub (or public house) is known in English culture to be a place to gather with friends, family and colleagues, so what better place to listen to thought-provoking discussions than the pub? Our past guests have come from all backgrounds, from journalists to actors to poets to authors, and this term's guests certainly haven't disappointed!

Our first guest came from the Refugee Support Network. Emily Bowerman has spent over a decade in the refugee sector. She currently manages the RSN's higher education programme and runs training with Higher Education institutions. She came by in September to define what it means to be a refugee/asylum seeker/migrant and went on to talk about how RSN provides educational support to young people who are currently seeking asylum in the UK. At the end of her talk, Emily provided our Arcadia students with her contact details for anyone interested in volunteering opportunities. Inspired by this TotT’s theme, our Student Life Team will be holding a Refugee Donation Drive next week at the London Center. Items of hygiene will be collected and sent to the organisation Help Refugees. 

Aida Silvestri captivated our second TotT audience when she came to discuss the practice of Female Genital Mutilation in the United Kingdom. Aida described how FGM has been rather taboo and secretive. Aida described how her own personal experience has shown positive steps in improvement to care and counselling in the National Health Service (NHS) and other UK clinics, but also feels that there is much more that needs to be done. This inspired her project, Unsterile Clinic. After interviewing East African women, she found that a common theme of their discovery of FGM was during their pregnancy or labour. Using leather pieces, beads and flowers, she recreated the different types of FGM to attach to the mouth area of her subjects’ silhouettes. Aida hopes that this artistic approach will bring FGM to the awareness of a wider audience.

Our third guest this month was Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. After experiencing sexism from in her workspace and in public, she was inspired to find a way to talk about sexism amongst other people. “The Everyday Sexism project aims to take a step towards gender equality, by proving wrong those who tell women that they can’t complain because we are equal. It is a place to record stories of sexism faced on a daily basis, by ordinary women, in ordinary places.” Her project has shared hundreds of thousands of stories and has been a catalyst for renewed interest in gender inequality in the UK. She has written three books: Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, and Misogynation. In 2015 she received a British Empire Medal for her services to gender equality.

Our final TotT will take place on the 3rd of December. Our guests will be Paula Varjack and Keith Jarrett (link). They will be performing slam poetry on subjects such as race, sexuality, belonging and nationhood. They are one of our regular guests as they have been such popular performers. We even expect our Arcadia President, Dr. Ajay Nair, to be one of the attendees! For more information about the time and location of this final event, please see our Facebook group.

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