Panel Discussion:
Finding Community in Trying Times

This session will be broadcast live at 4:30pm on Sunday 29 Novemeber. Watch the broadcast on this page, on Solas Festival Facebook or on Youtube.

Panelists Simon Gall, layla-roxanne hill and Arek Dakessian will discuss and reflect on what this year has signified in terms of finding and maintaining community, how this can interact with the arts, and what some potential pathways forward might be as we collectively emerge. Chaired by Laura Waddell.

SIMON GALL
Simon has worked for the last 16 years developing and delivering cultural programmes in community settings. He has worked with a wide range of groups and organisations in the third and public sector. He has worked as a funding assessor and panellist with Councils and funding bodies and now works at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen as lead Public and Community Engagement Officer. He has a specific interest in Cultural Democracy and everyday cultural expressions.

LAYLA-ROXANNE HILL
layla-roxanne hill is a writer/curator-artist/organiser and shares her knowledges and time with a variety of people, projects and institutions, both near and far, on and offline. She advocates for non-commodifiable collective liberation and is also active within the trade union movement, holding positions within the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) National and Scottish Executive Council(s).

AREK DAKESSIAN
Arek Dakessian is a research fellow at Queen Margaret University. His research interests include cultural production, material culture, historical sociology and political alterity. Arek is also a founding member of LIVED, an Edinburgh-based charity (www.livedprojects.org).

LAURA WADDELL
Laura Waddell is the author of Exit, short essays on exits in culture, art, and everyday life. By day she is UK Publishing Director at Tramp Press, teaches publishing at City University of London, and is a columnist for the Scotsman newspaper.