Simon Faulkner, Reversing the Flow of Time

Shan McAnena, Too Big to Fail: Remembering the Titanic in Belfast 

T. Shanaathanan, Architecture of Memory/ Memory of Architecture: Art, Memory and Conflict in Sri Lanka

Rita Duffy, Remember Who You Are

Rafal Betlejewski, "I Miss You, Jew!" Re-writing Polish Identity: Including Jedwabne into the Collective Narrative

Peju Layiwola, Making Meaning of a Fragmented Past: 1897 and the Creative Process

Heather Kemarre Shearer, Troubled Traces: Painting and Displaying Intercultural Traumas of Aboriginality

The project is designed to initiate new relationships and exchanges among the academic, policy, curating and artistic communities. Supported by the European Science Foundation (Humanities in the European Research Area, HERA). Traumatic pasts have complex and often dramatic influences on the present. The conference will explore creative engagements with controversial pasts in art practice, curating and museums, establishing a dialogue among diverse participants. Read more about our theme and aims on the project website www.open.ac.uk/Arts/disturbing-pasts/.

A Symposium Exploring The Work Of John Akomfrah, The Black Audio Collective And Other Visual Artists Inspired By The Work Of Stuart Hall 

Key note speakers include: EKOW ESHUN: Writer, cultural commentator and award-winning broadcaster. JOHN AKOMFRAH: Artist, film director, screenwriter and founding member of Black Audio Film Collective. KODWO ESHUN: Co-founding member of the Otolith Group, writer, theorist, film-maker, and curator of the exhibition The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of the Black Audio Film Collective (2007).

On 5-6 February 2013, the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (KIT, Royal Tropical Institute) hosted the project conference ‘Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean’. This is part of a two-year international research project led by Dr Leon Wainwright (The Open University, UK), with Co-Investigator Professor Dr Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University), funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK).