Cultural eXchanges festival launch event

At the Leicester Creative Business Depot, Rutland Street, early evening for the Cultural eXchanges festival launch event, hosted by Dean of Humanities at DMU, Prof. Heidi Macpherson and Festival Patron Lars Tharp (that's him addressing attendees in the photo above).

Of the festival events, I have tickets for Alexei Sayle (Monday afternoon), Ken Loach (Thursday evening) and Prof. John Williams' "Football Nation" (Friday afternoon). I was told I'm lucky to have got places for the first two of these, as both of them sold out quickly.

Interesting chats with Tony Graves (Festival Director); Kathleen Bell (Programme Leader for Creative Writing at DMU) who was also promoting "States of Independence" an independent publishers' day at the university on Saturday 20 March; and Rakesh Parmer (Head of Marketing at Phoenix Square Digital Film and Media Centre and follower of this blog). Phoenix Square is showing "Flying Sikhs" next Sunday - a short documenatary which provides an intimate portrait of the Sikh pilots who valiantly contributed to British success in both world wars. He talked with me about some interesting and unusual challenges he's faced when promoting this film within Leicester's Sikh community.

Find out more about Cultural eXchanges 2010:
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/humanities/cultural-exchanges/

Find out more about Lars Tharp:
http://www.tharp.co.uk/