Breaking the Dead Silence Book Launch at PRSC
Headfirst Editor's Pick

"Uncomfortable histories must be voiced in a city whose street names, paving stones and statues sing with the atrocities of imperialism. Taking a sledgehammer to white fragility, Richard White and Nils Agger discuss Breaking the Dead Silence, a new volume of revisionist heritage strategies tackling Bristol and Bath’s selective colonial amnesia."

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A event held at PRSC on Tuesday 15th April. The event starts at 18:30.


(Tickets are pay-what-you-can with a suggested minimum donation of £3.00 in order to help cover venue costs. There are some limited free tickets as well for people who will struggle to contribute this.)
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Come & join Richard White & Nils Agger in discussion about Breaking the Dead Silence book.

The murder of George Floyd in 2020, the renewed international take up of the cry Black Lives Matter and the subsequent toppling of a statue commemorating slave-merchant-turned-philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol provoked urgent questions on memorialisation, white privilege, social justice and repair. Debates on how legacies of colonialism and empire in Britain should be addressed spilled out of the scholarly world into the public discourse. In the immediate wake of the statue toppling this book offers a unique, distinctive and timely contribution to those debates: a series of voices and experiences are offered as critical commentaries and accounts of recent interventions on an official heritage narrative. It sets out to break the ‘dead silence’, by bringing together diverse perspectives from academics, artists, activists, heritage professionals and tourist guides. The book offers fresh insights, referencing work attending to the impacts and legacies of colonisation primarily in Bath and Bristol, augmented with comparative contributions from Lancaster and Mexico offering significant and pertinent resonances. A range of strategies are explored towards enabling silenced voices to be heard and engage in conversations about how the past is represented, including Co-Creation, new agonistic museum practices, innovative creative and somatic approaches.
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We run an annual festival of politics, arts and culture in May, and weekly events throughout the rest of the year. See all our events here: https://hdfst.uk/bristol-transformed

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Entry requirements: no age restrictions

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