“A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom”
The 2020 Peter Dormer Lecture, hosted by the Royal College of Art
Grayson Perry, Coming Out Dress (detail of the dress which was featured in our ‘A Sense of Occasion’ exhibition, 2000). Photo: Rob Weiss
Monday 25th January 2021, 7pm
Free
Online, via Zoom
The 2020 Annual Peter Dormer Lecture has been slightly delayed but we’re really excited that the guest speaker for first digital version of the lecture will be our Director, Deirdre Figueiredo.
“A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom” Claudia Jones
Civil rights activist Claudia Jones used this as the slogan for the first Notting Hill Carnival, which she organised in 1959, as an act of radical solidarity against racist violence. It harnessed the politics of community lived experience and focused it into a joyful celebration and expression of what it meant to be Black in 1950’s Britain.
This lecture will reflect on this slogan 60 years later in the midst of a global pandemic and racial injustice highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Taking this idea as a principle and truth that underpins the work of Craftspace, it will demonstrate that creativity through making, no matter how loud or quiet, how individual or collective, is a vital act of resistance and claiming identity.
The Peter Dormer Lecture
Deirdre joins a list of diverse and high profile speakers including Grayson Perry, Richard Wentworth, Martina Margetts and Edmund de Waal. Watch and download summaries of previous lectures on the RCA website.
The Peter Dormer Lecture is the UK’s major annual applied arts lecture, held in memory of Peter Dormer, the writer and critic who died in 1996. Organised by a committee of his friends and colleagues and hosted by the Royal College of Art, the lecture aims to continue the debate about applied art and society that was central to Dormer’s concerns. Peter Dormer’s writings embraced art, architecture, design, technology and education; and his critical and curatorial work helped to promote the crafts into the freeflowing currents of postmodern visual culture. This connectivity is something these lectures celebrate and promote.
