The Conway Collective, Conway Hall’s resident artist creators and curators, have installed an interactive performance artwork that focuses a beam of light on the incarceration of prisoners of conscience. In 1819, Richard Carlile was imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol for publishing Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. The desk he had with him in prison now lives in the Conway Hall library and is a centrepiece of this event. Carlile is the first of a celebrated roll call of prisoners of conscience associated with Conway Hall.
Light Behind Bars not only remembers these prisoners, but, with the collaboration of Index On Censorship, throws light on those many prisoners around the world who are locked up today because of their thoughts, writings, art, and politics.
The event runs from 12 noon and culminates with a keynote speech and audience activity at 5pm. No booking required.
