Leicester's First Intercultural Conference

Background

Culture East Midlands called it: "A groundbreaking conference on community bridge building". Held at Vaughan College, University of Leicester on Friday, February 15, 2008, the conference explored how community bridge building and intercultural engagement can contribute to community cohesion and to reducing racism and extremism. A question and answer session at the end discussed lessons learned from a wide range of experiences, including those from Leicester.

The conference followed on from a series of workshops and events held in Leicester which looked in depth at how practitioners from different fields contribute, if at all, to building community bridges.

The conference aims were to bring together practitioners, academics and policy makers to look at practical ways of developing community bridges to create community cohesion and reduce racism and extremism and according to all who attended it did that and far more.

Picture: Mark Thompson, Pro Vice- Chancellor, University of Leicester, introduces the conference:

Comedian John Ryan talked about using comedy to develop intercultural community bridges.