Occupying the Pedestal: Cultural Heritage, Protest, and the Law

Contributor(s): Councillor Asher Craig, Dr Tatiana Flessas, Jonathan Jones, Dr Sarah Keenan, Dr Luke McDonagh | This event explores the controversies around removing statues, constructing and reconstructing ‘heritage’, and protesting received ways of deciding what is commemorated, and what is not.
The speakers will examine the conflicts around the intellectual and cultural rethinking of public spaces and statues in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, the re-sacralization of Hagia Sofia/Aya Sofra, ongoing discussions about the ‘Fourth Plinth’ in Trafalgar Square, the caves at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia, and other examples. The event will involve a discussion of what it means to decide what, or whom, gets placed on a pedestal in a landscape in which heritage, and the investments in heritage, are shifting.
Asher Craig (@CllrAsherCraig) has over 30 years’ experience as a community activist, leader, management consultant and now politician. She has championed the needs of the v