William Thompson Weekend in Cork (2-4 May) will focus on 'Culture, creativity and resistance'

The annual Wiiliam Thompson Weekend, held in Cork every May bank holiday weekend, will focus this year on the the theme of culture and resistance. The opening Friday night speaker will be Galway-based Iraqi anti-war activist Nuria Mustafa. Also of interest to indymedia.ie supporters will be a panel discussion on the emergence of indymedia in Ireland, addressed by a member of the indymedia collective. Other speakers include activists from Reclaim the Streets, participants in this years World Social Forum, and the maker of 'Chavez: Inside the Coup'. It promises to be an interesting weekend of debate and discussion.

The Fourth
William Thompson Weekend

Firkin Crane Centre, Cork,
2-4 May 2003

Culture, creativity and resistance

Friday 2 May

7.00pm
Opening reception and registration

8.00pm
Resisting war and imperialism: an Iraqi perspective
Nuria Mustafa

Saturday 3 May

10.00am -1.00pm

William Godwin on Ireland
W.J. McCormack

Looking for Máire Wollstonecraft: women, politics and writing in Ireland, 1789-1806
Cliona Ó Gallchóir

Shelley and revolutionary Ireland
Paul O’Brien

LUNCH

2.30pm - 4.30pm

“I am who I say I am”: murals and political identity in the North of Ireland
Bill Rolston

Green memories: exploring the roots of contemporary ecological culture
Andrew Jamison

Sunday 4 May
Contemporary expressions of cultural resistance

11.00am – 12.15pm

Screening of the acclaimed documentary The revolution will not be televised (the full-length version of Chavez: Inside the Coup, shown recently on RTE)

1.00pm - 2.30pm

The making of Indymedia
A member of the Irish Indymedia Collective

Taking back public space - Reclaim the Streets in Ireland
Jenny McGowan

Building temporary autonomous zones
Paul Ryan

LUNCH

3.15pm – 5.00pm

The challenge to neo-liberalism
Donncha Ó Briain

Reinventing the public sphere? Some impressions from Porte Alegre
Rosie Meade

Open forum

ADDITIONAL EVENTS

Thurs 1 May 8pm
Cork Council of Trade Unions Annual May Day Lecture
Fintan Lane, ‘The Gangs of Old Cork: working class bands and violence, 1879-82’
O’Donoghue’s, Drawbridge St.

Sun 4 May 8.30pm
Cork Singers’ Club, ‘Songs of Resistance’
An Spalpín Fánach, South Main St.

SPEAKERS

Nuria Mustafa is an Iraqi exile living in Galway. In recent months she has become prominent as an eloquent advocate of Iraqi rights and an articulate opponent of the US war, and the broader imperialist agenda of the Washington regime.

W.J. McCormack is former professor of literary history at the University of London. He is the author of numerous books, including From Burke to Beckett and biographies of J.M. Synge and Sheridan Le Fanu. His most recent book is Roger Casement in Death, and he is currently completing a study of the politics of W.B. Yeats. He has also writes poetry under the name of Hugh Maxton.

Paul O’Brien is a socialist activist and literary critic. His book, Shelley and Revolutionary Ireland (2002) is the first detailed study of the radical poet’s engagement with Ireland.

Cliona Ó Gallchóir lectures in English at University College Cork. She has published on various aspects of Irish women’s writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her book, Gender and National Culture in the Work of Maria Edgeworth is forthcoming from Cork University Press.

Andrew Jamison is professor of technology and society at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the author, with Ron Eyerman, of Social Movements, Seeds of the Sixties and Music and Social Movements. His most recent book is The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation (2001).

Bill Rolston is professor of sociology at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. He has published widely on the mass media, popular political culture in Northern Ireland, and issues of truth and justice in transitional societies.

Rosie Meade lectures in the department of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork. Her main research interests are in social movments and non-formal political activity. She is active in a number of community-based and campaigning groups and recently participated in the World Social Forum in Porte Alegre.

Jenny McGowan is an active member of the Irish Reclaim the Streets collective. She lives in Dublin.

Paul Ryan is an independent film-maker and founding member of Indymedia. He lives in County Clare.

Donncha Ó Briain is the maker of The revolution will not be televised (the full-length version of Chavez: Inside the Coup, shown recently on RTE), the acclaimed documentary on the CIA-backed coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuala. He is Irish co-ordinator of the Tobin Tax Initiative.

Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

CULTURE, CREATIVITY AND RESISTANCE

The William Thompson Weekend takes its name from the Cork-born radical philosopher and moral economist who was a pioneer of socialism, co-operativism and feminism. Each May Day weekend since 2000, ‘Thompson’ has provided a lively and inclusive forum for talks, discussion and debate on a range of themes and topics of historical and contemporary relevance.

This year, under the title ‘Culture, creativity and resistance’, issues as diverse and connected as resistance to neo-liberalism and US imperialism; the political engagement with Ireland of leading creative writers from the age of Thompson; the making of ‘green knowledge’; Northern Irish street murals; reclaiming the media and public space from corporate and private interests, and much more, will be addressed.

The opening talk relates to a highly topical theme: the new era in international relations heralded by the US/UK invasion of Iraq. Nuria Mustafa will give a radical Iraqi perspective on the war, the destruction, occupation and expropriation of her country, and the lessons for the future.

Other contributors include leading scholars such as W.J. McCormack and Andrew Jamison, radical film-makers like Donncha O Briain and Paul Ryan, and activists from a range of creative democratic projects of cultural resistance such as Indymedia, Reclaim the Streets and the Tobin Tax Iniative. There will also be screenings, songs, music and poetry.

All in all, a lively and provocative mix in the spirit of Thompson, and of the William Thompson Weekend. Please join us.

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories . . . Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Arundhati Roy at the World Social Forum, Porte Alegre, 2003

WEEKEND FEE: E25/E12 unwaged
DAY: E15/E6
SESSION: E7.50/E3

More info:
Tel: 021-4902991 or 4903048
e-mail: thompsonschool@hotmail.com