The project
Tell me about Europe is presented by the Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Foreign Office during the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union from July until December 2020.
As part of the project, citizens of twelve different cities have come together for discussions over the last few months. The topic - the constitution of Europe, about its past, present and future. The discussions are based on interviews with well-known Europeans, which are collected in the
European Archive of Voices. In these interviews, contemporary witnesses who were born before 1945, tell young people about their lives and touch on topics such as wars and conflicts, the gap between town and country, gender (in)justice, freedom of religion or the return of nationalism.
We will end the series with an evening in the United Kingdom, shortly before the end of its European exit transition phase. Five citizens of this country will share their very personal thoughts on Europe with us. For a brief moment they will look at the continent and reflect what they are feeling during this time, especially in the midst of the Covid 19 crisis which makes us feel boundaries and distances more acutely again. The discussion will be moderated by journalist Rosie Goldsmith.
Register via Eventbrite for this online event
Panellists
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Rosie Goldsmith is a British journalist with specialist knowledge of arts and international affairs. She has worked across the world on some of BBC Radio’s flagship programmes, speaks several languages and chairs and presents public events. She is founder and director of the European Literature Network, Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter magazine and on the board of several European cultural festivals. She is a proud champion of international literature, translation and language learning.
©Robin Niedojadlo
A.L. Kennedy was born in Dundee. She lived for almost 30 years in Glasgow and now stays in North Essex. She has won a variety of UK and international book awards, including a Lannan Award, the Costa Prize, the Heinrich Heine Preis, the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rees Prize. She has twice been included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has written 9 novels, 6 short story collections, 3 books of non fiction and 3 books for children. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Akademie der Kunst. She also writes for the stage, screen, TV and has created an extensive body of radio work including documentaries, monologues, dramas and essays. She also performs occasionally in one person shows and as a stand up comic.
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Edmund de Waal is an internationally acclaimed artist and writer, best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. His interventions have been made for diverse spaces and museums worldwide, including The British Museum, London; The Frick Collection, New York; Ateneo Veneto, Venice; Schindler House, Los Angeles; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and V&A Museum, London. De Waal is also renowned for his bestselling family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), and The White Road (2015). He was made an OBE for his services to art in 2011 and awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction by Yale University in 2015.
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Baroness Mary Goudie is a senior member of the British House of Lords and a global advocate for the rights of women and children. In the UK she is a founding member of The 30% Club which aims to influence chairman to bring more women onto corporate boards. She is an emeritus of the Board of Directors of Vital Voices Global Partnership. Goudie is a trustee of the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation, based in the US, whose aims are to foster interfaith dialogue to establish solutions to global challenges affecting mankind. She is a member of the UK Board of Directors for the Center for Talent Innovation, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on challenges and issues pertaining to the workplace. Goudie is an ambassador for ICRW, and a board member the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security. She is also a member of the board for the Center of Women, Peace and Security at the LSE.
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Niloo Sharifi is a multidisciplinary artist from Liverpool, making collaborative works that facilitate polyphony. Her most recent work is the-magic-tree.co.uk, a digital piece that transforms by merging with pictures uploaded by visitors. The idea is to see what emerges when you let everyone speak; the same ethos informed the curation of the Liverpool chapter of the Goethe-Institut’s Arrival City.
©Suki Dhanda
Sharmaine Lovegrove is the Publisher of Dialogue Books, an inclusive imprint, part of Little, Brown Book Group and Hachette UK. Dialogue Books is a home for a variety of stories from illuminating voices often missing from the mainstream. Sharmaine was the recipient of the Future Book Publishing Person of the Year 2018 and is inspired by innovative storytelling, and has worked in public relations, bookselling, events management and TV scouting. She was the literary editor of ELLE and set up her own bookshop and creative agency when living in Berlin. Sharmaine serves on the boards of The Black Cultural Archives, The Watershed and is a founding organiser of The Black Writers Guild. Home is London, she lives in Berlin and her roots are Jamaican - Sharmaine is proud to be part of the African diaspora and books make her feel part of the world.
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