Migrant Institutions: The Impact of Postwar Newcomers on British Cultural Life

The Institute of English Studies invites proposals for a symposium exploring the impact of postwar migration on British cultural institutions. This one-day event will be held at Senate House, University of London on December 9th, 2024.

How did newcomers to the United Kingdom transform the organizations that support, shape, and channel the arts? How did those institutions develop through the decades of decolonization, altering the careers of artists and influencing the work they produced? How was diasporic identity forged and expressed through the efforts of background figures such as publishers, editors, producers, curators, and teachers? Building on the work of such cultural theorists as Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, and Susheila Nasta, ‘Migrant Institutions’ aims to draw an interdisciplinary group of scholars to Senate House to analyse this crucial and understudied dimension of the immigrant experience in the UK. 

Proposals for 20-minute papers are encouraged across a wide variety of fields and an equally wide variety of institutions. They can range in period from the immediate postwar years to the present day. Presenters may choose to discuss the migrant-led publishing houses, magazines, newspapers, and bookshops that reshaped the literary landscape; the galleries and groups that transformed the visual arts; the festivals, venues, and recording labels that remade music; the programmes that recast the broadcasting terrain of radio and television. Such cultural hubs encompassed New Beacon Books, the Blk Art Group, the Planetone record label, the Caribbean Voices programme, and so much more.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

·       the working relationships between artists and their publishing institutions

·       the impact of immigrant identities—spanning race, gender, and class—on institutional imperatives 

·       diasporic cultural initiatives such as the Caribbean Artists Movement and the British Black Arts Movement

·       the overlap between institutional histories and political developments, such as the changing British Nationality Act, the Notting Hill Riots, the rise of the neofascist National Front, and the Toxteth and Brixton uprisings  

·       the existing and missing archives of arts organizations

·       the role of cities in generating and sustaining artistic networks

·       contemporaneous and contemporary theories of migrant cultural production

·       the persistence of a metropole’s power through its cultural institutions and, conversely, the ways in which that power can be harnessed and redirected 

·       the intersections of cultural and institutional inquiry, postcolonial and decolonial theory, media and migration studies

‘Migrant Institutions’ will illuminate recent British and postcolonial history, foregrounding neglected stories and stimulating fresh conversations about the galvanizing impact of migration on artistic creativity. The event will be held in-person, though with the option to present remotely for those who cannot travel to London.

Please submit 250-word abstracts, short bios, and any inquiries to Ben Fried at [email protected]. The deadline for proposals is September 16th, 2024.