19 Feb Essex Book Festival announces Peace Panels to mark the end of WW1
To mark the silencing of the guns nearly one hundred years ago, the 2018 Essex Book Festival is hosting a series of countywide special events and activities, including three Festival Peace Panels, throughout March.
Held in iconic venues, and featuring a plethora of eminent panellists, each panel will tackle the subject of War and Peace from a different perspective.
The first Peace Panel, titled ‘Figuring Peace’, takes place on Sunday 4th March at the Firstsite Gallery in Colchester. Chaired by the award-winning writer, performer and festival patron AL Kennedy, this event features contemporary painter/ sculptor Maggi Hambling, documentary photographer/photojournalist Giles Duley, and activist/writer/curator/artist, Hamja Ahsan.
The second Festival Peace Panel – ‘Picking Apart Propaganda’ – is taking place underground in Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker on Sunday 25th March.
The rural setting of the Kelvedon Hatch Secret Bunker stands in stark contrast to its intended purpose. Now a privately-owned museum, it was commissioned to act as the British Government’s refuge in the event of a nuclear strike and was in service throughout the ‘Cold War’ (1954-1991). It therefore provides a poignant setting for Picking Apart Propaganda, a panel discussion that will be looking at how and why propaganda is used to persuade the public.
The third and final event in the series – The Children’s Peace Panel – takes place at Jaywick Martello Tower, on Thursday 29th March. This will include the culmination of a letter-writing project, ‘Peace Matters’, between local school children living in the Clacton and Jaywick area, in conjunction with children living in Tendring’s twin cities, Valance (France), Bilberach (Germany) and Swidnica (Poland). The Essex youngsters will be asking their European counterparts What Does Peace Means to You? They will then read out both their own letters and the responses from their European peers to an audience of invited guests in the historic tower.
