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Songs of Solidarity Writers' Room

Venue
St Hilda's College
Date
to
Research project

Songs of Solidarity is a bold interdisciplinary performance project that reimagines ancient epics through the voices of migrant communities today. Following on from the APGRD's highly successful Cultural Programme-funded workshop in December 2024, Fiona Macintosh (Emeritus Professor of Classical Reception and Senior Research Fellow, St Hilda’s) and Tom Nelson (Career Development Fellow in Ancient Greek, St Hilda’s) have received further funding from the University’s Cultural Programme to continue their collaboration and to support the development of a new epic narrative through devised performance, drawing on Gilgamesh, Iliad, Kalevala, and Ramayana

Led by Dash Arts and PROJEKT EUROPA, in partnership with APGRD, this phase will involve a Writers’ Room with a number of emergent and seasoned writers, together with academics from Classics, Ancient and Near Eastern Studies, and the University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Hosted at St Hilda’s from Monday 15 to Wednesday 17 December, the Writers’ Room will lay the foundation for a full-scale production in 2027.

On Wednesday 17 December at 5pm, there will be a public discussion about the project. For further information, email fiona.macintosh@classics.ox.ac.uk

Programme

Monday 15 December, JdP
-10am Welcome and coffee

Morning Session: What is an epic?
-10.30-12pm Led by Tom Nelson and Oliver Taplin
-Lunch 12-1pm 

Afternoon session: What can epics do?
-1-2pm Led by Margaret Kean - The politics of epic: Armando Iannucci’s Pandemonian/ Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust
-2-3pm Led by Katherine Harloe - Epic and power
-3-3.30pm tea
-3.30-4.30pm Justine McConnell - A Saint Lucian epic (online from Washington)
-4.30pm-5pm break
-5-6pm Georgina Paul - epic from an East German perspective: Barbara Koehler’s Niemands Frau

______________
Tuesday 16 December, JdP

-10:00 Welcome Josephine Burton & Maria Åberg with Fiona Macintosh and Dan Byam-Shaw

Morning Session: The Contemporary Landscape of Migration
-10.30-12.30pm
Maggie Neil (Centre for Refugee Studies, Oxford)
Viki Zaphiriou-Zarifi (SOAS)
Sam Ritholz (All Souls) 
-12–1pm Lunch 

Afternoon Session 1:  Story, Identity & Representation: Ethics and Embodiment in Migration Storytelling
-1-2.30pm
Rose Campion (Oxford) - media, narrative, and representation of migrants (online) 
Delphine Boagey (Oxford) - cross-cultural dialogue and communication) 
Sonita Alizada (Oxford) - artist
-2.30-3pm Break

Afternoon Session 2: From Lived Experience to Epic Form
-3-4.30pm Led by Josephine Burton & Maria Åberg 
______________
Wednesday 17 December, JdP

-5pm Public sharing/discussion about the project followed by drinks.