2008 news
Celebration
December 2008
Our culture is at
the heart of regeneration and sustainability
October 2008
the great sustainable
energy debate
October 2008
Summer art school in South Durham
September 2008
Students
in Newcastle discuss ESD July 2008
Developing world challenges
debated March 2008
Celebration
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We are delighted to announce the birth of baby Eloise Hewett
at 9.10am on 20th December 2008, daughter of our
steering group member, Caspar Hewett.
Mother and baby are well.
RCE North East sends hearty congratulations to mother, Philippa,
father, Caspar, and big
brother, Daniel. Here's to the future!
December 2008
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Our culture is at the heart of regeneration and sustainability
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Dancing at the RCE event held as part of
Tyneside Irish Festival 2008
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This year our 22nd annual
Tyneside Irish Festival took
on another dimension by commencing a new activity called
‘
Sustaining
Migrant Communities’, under the banner of
Newcastle and United Nations Universities’
RCE North East.
The programme celebrates ways in which culture shapes
the progress of our region. The vision of RCE North East
is to create a region which is progressive, prosperous
and at one with itself. This will attract investment,
protect and conserve our environment, and contribute to
the world community.
Our region has been a major centre of migration for
over two centuries. Since the early 1800s people came
here from Scotland and Ireland (and have continued to
do so since).
Tyneside
Irish Centre is working in partnership with
Comhaltas
Ceoltóirí Éireann and
RCE North East to
develop the concept of
‘music for sustainability’ to celebrate the fact that our
canny region has a history of welcoming newcomers, and it
is constantly enriched by their significant involvement to
its world view. We also think that the Irish people of the
region continue to make a massive contribution to the social,
educational and cultural fabric of the region.
We extend a warm welcome to all our region’s migrant
communities. The programme was launched during the
festival with lectures, talks and book launches by
leading academics in the fields of regionalism, radical
politics and Diaspora studies. In the true festive spirit
of RCE North East, and of course the Tyneside Irish Centre,
these all took place accompanied my music and dance.
We were delighted to bring young Indian and Pakistani
dancers to join us with ‘Bollywood’ style dancing to
Irish music – the start of something exciting we hope.
October 2008
A full programme of research in migration studies is
currently in preparation. For further details please contact
aidan.doyle @ ncl.ac.uk
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The Great Debate in association with
North East Forum for Climate Change Research,
Durham University, Northumbria University,
Newcastle University,
one north east and Newcastle City Council
In the context of both mounting anxiety over climate change
and predictions that the worldwide peak of hydrocarbon
production will occur before 2021, the North East is
striving to become a global leader in the shift to a
low-carbon energy economy. Such transitions typically
span decades - energy infrastructure takes years to develop
and new energy technologies are likely to take time to mature.
So, what are the prospects of seeing a widespread transition
to a sustainable energy economy? What are the barriers?
What will be the main drivers of change? How might the UK’s
energy mix evolve over the next 40 years? And what of demand
management? What obligations do we have as citizen-consumers?
On Tuesday, 7th October 2008 a public debate was held at
Northumbria University to interrogate these questions. On
the panel were
Jim Skea, Research Director,
UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC),
Dermot Roddy, Director,
Sir Joseph Swan Institute for Energy Research and
Kate Theobald, Reader, Sustainable Cities Research Institute.
Click here for full
write up.
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Students in the carving workshop
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The Hartlepool Art Summer School in County Durham,
North East UK is an annual event which ordinarily involves
all Hartlepool secondary schools.
This year, in partnership
with RCE North East, it expanded to include a further ten
Catholic Partnership schools in South Durham, with 120
year ten students of mixed abilities (see
Textures
and Growth project.) Art teachers from all
sixteen schools taught at the event, and three professional
artists joined the programme.
Work began with a study day, and the students were
brought to two seashore locations with a broad brief to
investigate lichens, rust and other textures and growth
forms visually. Students then convened at English Martyrs
School and Sixth Form College, where they worked in six
workshops: painting, ceramics, sculpture, photography,
textiles and mixed media. Scientists from Newcastle
University joined the study, and introduced the students to
the effects of pollution on plant life, and the study of
organisms composed through the association of microscopic
algae with filamentous fungi.
The final work will contribute to their examination coursework
and will be exhibited publicly at the community art
gallery in Hartlepool from 16 September for three weeks.
All of the participating schools will bring other students
and their local communities to see the work. The work will
then be displayed at Newcastle University Botanic Gardens,
and will be celebrated in the usual RCE North East style
with a schools’ music event. Both exhibitions will serve as
the platform for further project development.
September 2008
For more information see
Textures
and Growth project page or contact Mike Brogan,
Arts College Director, English Martyrs School,
mbrogan @ ems.hartlepool.sch.uk
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An interactive session at the conference
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Students from Newcastle, UK, had the opportunity to
discuss various aspects of sustainable development pertaining
to their lives at a
conference
co-organised by RCE North
East on 26 June 2008. Education for Sustainable Development
was one of the several topics on which workshops
were organised. At the workshop, Dr. Aidan Doyle from
RCE North East helped participants explore the rift between
prevalent ‘Cultures of Consumption’ and “environmental
self-righteousness.”
The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, the organiser
of the conference, is the lead body in England supporting
school improvement through a programme of curriculum
specialisms. SSAT in the North East of England has a
membership that includes all secondary school and a
significant number of special and primary schools.
July 2008
For more information see
North
East Student Conference on 'Sustainability’ project page
or contact Colm Doyle,
Colm.Doyle @ ssatrust.org.uk
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Is overseas development oppressive? If you thought overseas aid
and charitable work were good for people in developing countries,
prepare to question your assumptions. Two short films asking Africans what
they think were the basis of a day of public debate held at
Newcastle University as part of the 2008
ESRC Festival of Social Science.
The event was an opportunity for members of the public
to argue with academics and activists about the basic morality
behind most current efforts to ‘help’ the poor in developing
countries. There was also a film-making workshop.
The event was one of a series of events organised by
The Great Debate,
a group based in Newcastle that has been running this type
of event for 10 years. “We want to get the public involved
in grappling with the tough issues surrounding sustainable
development,” says organiser Caspar Hewett.
The Great Debate: Developing World Challenges
took place on Saturday 15 March 2008 and was held as part of
The Great Debate’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations. It was based
around two half hour films, made in Ghana by the education
charity
WORLDwrite.
The first part of the day was spent with the film production crew,
learning the tricks of broadcast-quality documentary making
on a tight budget. Then there were two debating sessions,
one for each film.
The two films are called
I'm a Subsistence Farmer ... Get
Me Out of Here! and
Keeping Africa Small.
They carry a strong message: overseas development projects
do not help poor people. They are not wanted, because they
seek to retain people in poor farming communities with low
aspirations, dissuading them from advancing economically and
looking for a better life. The message is spoken by Africans,
both poor and wealthy, who feel patronised and insulted by the
development NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) that are now
so prominent in Africa. As Ghanaian television journalist
David Ampofo says, in one of the films: “It is a sad
reflection of mankind that when there are rockets going
to the moon, they are busy preparing a rope pump for people
to fetch water.”
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Each debate lasted one hour. Film director Ceri Dingle,
and producer Viv Regan, were on the debating panels. They were
joined by Barry Gills, Professor of Global Politics at
Newcastle University, Kim Tan, Campaigns Officer for Oxfam
on the Make Trade Fair and Millennium Development Goals campaigns,
John Gowing, a Newcastle academic with ample experience of
sustainable agriculture projects in Africa, Hilaire Agnama,
Development Education Worker and Bill Colwell,
an environmentalist from the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
The discussions were lively and good natured, although the range
of views differed greatly across the panels. “This is precisely what
The Great Debate is all about - giving our audience
the opportunity to hear a range of views, join in the arguments,
and ultimately to make up their own minds about the issues,” says
The Great Debate chair Caspar Hewett.
March 2008
Edited videos of the debates can be viewed by clicking the links below:
Keeping Africa Small
I'm a Subsistence Farmer ... Get Me Out of Here!
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