Oluwale Partnership Symposium

Do you work with people in Leeds who are marginalised and excluded because of their homelessness, mental ill-health, destitution, alcohol problems? Or pushed aside because they are seeking asylum, been in prison, criminalised, or because they are people of colour? Or maybe you had these experiences yourself?

David Oluwale, found dead in the River Aire in 1969, endured all of these troubles for most of his twenty years in Leeds. Maybe you are campaigning, like the Remember Oluwale charity, to change Leeds into a city which includes everyone, whatever their position? If so, join us on 17th April.

Remember David Oluwale

A group of organisations are working together to create a Symposium with the aims of:

• raising the voices of those who are excluded
• improving existing partnerships and developing new ones
• forming the basis for unified campaigning against marginalisation and exclusion in the city of Leeds
• raising hope and promoting change
• improving research in these fields and developing effective policy and practice.

We are organising a gathering on ‘un-conferencing’ lines. This allows extended discussion with no long speeches. There will be brief remarks from Cllr Keith Wakefield (Leader, Leeds City Council) and Tom Riordan (CEO, Leeds council). Other artists are being approached. Maximum participation and discussion. Pop-up arts (including poets Ian Duhig, Seni Seniveratne, SaiMuRai and Michelle Scally-Clarke). Fully facilitated by Mike Love from Together for Peace to draw us together to make agreed plans for future action.

The planning gorup has now produced a list of trigger questions for the World Cafe discussions. These are located on a Wikispace Discussion Board which everyone who registers for the event now has access to. That way you can contribute to the decision on which are the key questions for the day.

The group recommends that the afternoon questions are about “what is to be done?” We want to test opinion on the need for an Advocacy Forum for Leeds, to provoke public discussion and progress in combating marginalisation, and promoting inclusion, of all those who endure today what we might call the “Oluwale issues”.

Thanks to generous support from the Centre for Applied Social Research at Leeds Beckett Uni (LBU), this event is free. You can bring your own refreshments or buy them at the excellent cafe on the ground floor of LBU’s Rose Bowl.

If you would like to be involved, sign up now. There are only 60 places available (though we are booking up to 80, since we anticipate some won’t be able to attend). If you’d like to join the planning group, let Max Farrar maximfarrar@gmail.com know immediately.

Planning group currently includes these partners: Remember Oluwale (DOMA), Centre for Applied Social Research at LBU, St George’s Crypt, Touchstone, LASSN, and Together for Peace.