FROM PRISON TO PODIUM

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Community and tagged achievement, Community, conference, creative writing, criminology, david breakspear, education, event, experience, expression, featured, growth, HMP Norwich, norfolk, norwich, personal, prison, progress, reform, speaker, UEA, War of Words, writing.

by David Breakspear

Saturday the 10th Feb 2018, a day that I will always remember. I had been invited to speak in relation to prison education and the arts. I was speaking to an audience alongside Jacob Huntley, a lecturer in English literature and creative writing from the UEA. I met Jacob whilst I was a serving prisoner at HMP Norwich. One of my roles at HMP Norwich was as an education mentor and I was told that there would be a new creative writing course starting, which would be facilitated by Jacob. I have always found that penning emotions onto a piece of paper allowed me to free my mind.Continue Reading

WE CAN’T JUST WAIT FOR FREE EDUCATION – NCAFC WINTER CONFERENCE

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #FreeEdNOW, bigotry, boycott, conference, Cut the Rent, democratic education, demonstration, direct action, education workers, fascism, Free Education, free speech, GE17, HE policy, higher education, history, jeremy corbyn, KEF, Labour, Labour manifesto, left wing, living grants, local campaigns, marketisation, NCAFC, no platforming, nss, NSS Boycott, NUS, Picturehouse, Picturehouse strike, progressive taxation, protest, REF, Research and HE Bill, solidarity, strike action, student activism, student media, student movement, students, students' unions, tef, terfs, trans liberation, tuition fees, UCL, universities.

by Lewis Jarrad

On the 9th-10th December, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) put on its 2017 Winter Conference in Liverpool. Taking place less than a month after their national demonstration, which advocated for free education and universal living grants funded by taxing the rich, the conference was a chance for student activists across the UK to strategise and discuss where we can go next in the fight for a free and democratic education system. Campuses represented included Liverpool, Manchester, UCL, UAL, KCL, Warwick, Sheffield, Abertay, Oxford and Cambridge. As a first year UCL student who was involved in the national demo, I went along to learn more about NCAFC and how I could get more involved in the campaign.

PARTY CONFERENCE SEASON RECAP

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Amber Rudd, Boris Johnson, Brighton, conference, economics, general election, grant shapps, Green, Iain Duncan, jacob rees-mogg, jeremy corbyn, Labour, neil kinnock, party, Plaid Cymru, policy, politics, pundit, Sirte, snp, speech, theresa may, Tory, uk, UKIP, vince cable.

by Chris Jarvis

Political punditry’s busiest time of the year has come to a close, as most of Britain’s political parties have wrapped up their annual festivals of spin, spectacle and speculation – only Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Greens remain un-conferenced. What a season it has been.

Typically speaking, party conferences go mostly unnoticed, change little in the political landscape, and are quickly forgotten as the cogs of history whirr on unshaken. 2017 will be more than an aberration to that pattern. True, the ‘smaller’ parties failed to make a mark this time round too. Little of note came out of the SNP or Green Party of England and Wales conferences. The sole memorable moment of the Liberal Democrat soiree was the laughable assertions trotted out to the press time and again, that Vince Cable could soon be the next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. UKIP’s will only be recalled as the final subdued howl of Little England defiance as it casts itself into electoral and political irrelevance. That notwithstanding, this year was a bumper crop.Continue Reading

NUS WOMEN’S CONFERENCE, STUDENT DEPORTATION AND MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged abortion, abuse, BME, chartered flight, chennan fei, conference, deportation, disabled students campaigns, gendered islamaphobia, ghana, Hareem Ghani, kelechi, LGSM, malia bouattia, marginalisation, MFJ, migrant rights, Movement for Justice, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, NUS, nus black students, nus womens conference, organise, prevent, prevent strategy, racism, reproductive justice, self organisation, solidarity, stanstead, student, student movement, women, xenophobia, yarls wood detention centre.

by Cherry Somersby

Content warning: article mentions physical and emotional abuse, abortion, xenophobia, gendered Islamophobia, deportation

Last week, over a hundred women+ students travelled from student unions all over the country to NUS Women’s Conference to elect a new NUS Women’s Officer, and set the direction for the NUS Women’s Campaign for the incoming year. I attended conference as a delegate from UEASU, and sat down with NUS President Malia Bouattia, and NUS Women’s Officer Hareem Ghani after having won her re-election.

This article provides an account of key events at Women’s conference, including motions passed and issues raised at plenaries and workshops throughout conference. I have also published comments given by both Malia and Hareem in response to the questions I asked about NUS, Women’s Conference, and the Women’s Campaign in the context of student deportations and migrants’ rights campaigns.Continue Reading

THE NORWICH RADICAL YEAR IN REVIEW 2016

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Community, Inter|national, Perspectives, Student and tagged #noDAPL, #readwomen, #shakespeare400, #standwithJNU, 2016, academies, Amelia Womack, articles, arts, Australia, BDS, Beyonce, biomass, black lives matter, BLM, Brazil, Brexit, canada, caroline lucas, Chris Jarvis, Colombia, comics, Community, conference, cricket, cuba, david bowie, divestment, easter rising, editorial, education, empire, Ende Gelände, energy, erik petersen, EU ref, feminism, football, fossil free, France, gender, Green Party, hate crime, HE, Heathtrow 13, housing, India, international, iraq, israel, Italy, IWD, JNU, Jonathan Bartley, journalism, Leave, LEMONADE, LGBTQIA+, malia bouattia, Marina Prentoulis, meantal health, media, mental health, migration, mischief brew, music, national, Nigeria, norfolk, Norway, norwich, Norwich Radical, NUS, owl sanctuary, Panama Papers, people and planet, Perspectives, Peter Tatchell, poetry, PokemonGO, politics, punk, queer, racism, radical, reclaim the power, refuge, refugee, refugees, Remain, representation, resist, review, round up, SAAC, sadiq khan, school, sexuality, Standing Rock, student, student movement, Syria, the gambia, the Philippines, trans, translation, UEA, UEA SU, uk, university, US, US presidential election, violence, visibility, War of Words, whitewashing, wrestlemania, writing, year in review, Zambia.

by The Norwich Radical

2016 was a bleak year for many. Across the world, the forces of liberty, of social progress, and of environmental justice lost time and again in the face of rising fascism, increased alienation, and intensifying conflict. That notwithstanding, there have been moments of light. In the Austrian Presidential election, the electorate confirmed the independently Green candidate Alexander van der Bellen; the #noDAPL water protectors gained a soft victory in early December; in fact, there is a full list of positives from the past year, if you want cheering up.

2016 saw our team expand to more than 25 writers, editors, and artists as well as host our first ever progressive media conference, War of Words. Our readership has grown from 5,000 per month to more than 6,500 per month. In total, nearly 80,000 people have read content on The Norwich Radical website this year.

In 2017, The Norwich Radical will turn three years old, with plans to grow our team and publication more than ever before. We’ll also be returning to Norwich to bring debate and discussion on the future of the media, with War of Words back for a second year. Continue Reading

COMICS, A PROGRESSIVE MEDIUM

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged Adrian Alphona, Angoulême, BGN, comic book, comics, comix, conference, DC, DiDio, Disney, Donald Trump, feminism, GLAAD, graphic novel, ideology, IDW, Ike Perlmutter, image, Kelly Sue DeConnick, LDC, LGBT+, LGBTQIA+, Marvel, Mary Sue, media, MSM, politics, progressive, Sana Amanat, Stephenson, Transformers, War of Words, WicDiv, Windblade, WWAC.

by Alex Valente

Repeat after me: comics is a medium, not a genre. Good? Good. Let’s start from there. Comics is (yes, plural noun, singular verb) a medium. As such, it has the power to channel ideologies, reflect society, provoke ripples in current trends, generate new ones, validate certain opinions, undermine others, and most of all — it influences a gigantic audience, it creates a dialogue between readers and authors.

Sometimes that dialogue is out of sync. Sometimes a side shouts louder than others. Sometimes it falls short of everyone’s expectations and hopes. And sometimes, really good things happen, and excellent conversations take place.Continue Reading

WITH LABOUR IN OPEN REVOLT AGAINST CORBYN, I’M STICKING WITH THE GREENS

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged british politics, caroline lucas, conference, corbyn, fossil fuel, Green, Green Party, jeremy corbyn, Labour, labour party, natalie bennett, PLP, radical, representation, social justice, socialism.

By Josiah Mortimer

It’s now three months since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. For Greens, it’s posed some interesting questions.

For a start, Greens didn’t really know how to respond to the new political context. The party positioned itself as the left party for so long (and rightly), but few had thought about what might happen if the Labour Party actually turned left. Suddenly, the political space for the Greens appeared to shrink dramatically. And for a while, there was silence.Continue Reading

THE PLACE FOR POETRY: VISUAL CULTURE

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged 4chan, art, comics, conference, creative writing, goldsmiths, illustration, image, internet memes, meme, poet, poetry, publication, review, Venus, william blake, women, women writers.

by Carmina Masoliver

‘The Place for Poetry’ conference at Goldsmiths took place from the 7-8^th May, and I attended it with She Grrrowls, as well as within my poetry collective, Kid Glove.

The end of the first panel I’d attended discussed the importance of white space and the ole of images as part of the process, and linked nicely to the next panel about the relationship between visual art and poetry, which I was interested in due to my own project Poetry&Paint. Sophie Collins spoke of Mary Richardson’s defacement of Venus to highlight the hypocrisy of such an outcry, and she also touched on the Guerrilla Girls, leading to new kinds of art by women largely disregarded within ekphrastic poetry, and highlighting a collection entitled ‘In the Frame: Women’s Ekphrastic Poetry’, published in 2009.

The focus was a discussion of Rachael Allen’s 4chan poems. I hadn’t heard of the website ‘4chan’ before, but it seemed a unique concept to create poems from the basis of an image-based bulletin board, which — being the internet — provided useful commentary on the role of gender, acting as a platform for feminist art work.Continue Reading

MODEL UNITED NATIONS

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged conference, international, politics, society, student, UEA, UN, united nations, university.

by George Appleyard and Louise Wiggins

The second in our series of articles from progressive and campaigning societies at UEA.

The UEA Model United Nation society was set up in 2012 and has been enabling students to engage in lively debates and negotiations over exciting world issues ever since. Members can debate matters on the UN agenda, allowing them to improve their communication and negotiation skills while engaging in current affairs. Members will also have the opportunity to analyse the way the UN works and develop their own opinions and ideas for solutions to the world’s biggest problems.

In the first year of its inception the society took a delegation of students, which had been fully trained and prepared, to the world famous London International Model United Nations Conference. Students had the opportunity to meet like-minded delegates from around the globe and contest the most important issues surrounding the notorious Millenium Development Goals. It was a great mix of serious debate and some incredible social activities.

conference

FROM PRISON TO PODIUM

WE CAN’T JUST WAIT FOR FREE EDUCATION – NCAFC WINTER CONFERENCE

PARTY CONFERENCE SEASON RECAP

NUS WOMEN’S CONFERENCE, STUDENT DEPORTATION AND MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS

THE NORWICH RADICAL YEAR IN REVIEW 2016

COMICS, A PROGRESSIVE MEDIUM

THE PLACE FOR POETRY: VISUAL CULTURE

MODEL UNITED NATIONS

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