An exhibition presented by students from the School of Architecture’s MA course in Development and Emergency Practice, together with students from across the University.

Who are you? How is your identity formed, and how are you treated because of it? What happens when a part of your identity is illegal or is used as grounds for persecution? Does your identity change if you’re forced to flee your home?

This exhibition is the centrepiece of the 16th annual Oxford Human Rights Festival and features work that explores themes of identity in terms of gender, sexuality, nationality, race, ability, class, wealth, religious beliefs, and look at how each of these facets of who we are have been, and are, used as reasons for persecution across the world and here in the UK.

Identity will be showcasing photography by Andrew McNeill, an artist who has focused on Homelessness. The images in the exhibition were taken only three years ago and show a sobering insight into the issues humanity faces on a global scale.

Andrew McNeill is a humanitarian photographer concentrating on the human condition. In 2014, he began work on a project entitled Under the Bridge, a digital documentary that explores the disenfranchised of the urban population of his hometown. Under the Bridge was sponsored by the Arts Council of Wales.
He has also worked alongside NGOs throughout Asia and in some of India's worst slums. 15 years ago, Andrew made what was to become countless trips to the Asian continent. Traveling light and with just a camera, he began to seek out the most interesting faces he could find.

For more information on Andrew please follow this link to his website:
http://www.andrewmcneillphotography.com/

Now its 16th year, the Human Rights Festival returns to Oxford Brookes in March. Running from 12-17th March, this year’s theme is identity, explored through issues including mental health, disability, race and poverty, as well as gender and conflict.
The festival will be kicked off by a performance from the band Delta Seven. All members of the band have learning disabilities and they use their music as a way to express this. To RSVP to this event please click here.

Fresh from a sell out tour of the UK, on 17th March we will have a live performance of the highly acclaimed Borderline. Described by Huffington Post as a “refugee spectacle” The cast is made up of 13 members, seven of whom are refugees and asylum seekers who met while in the Calais camps. The play is a satire about the Calais Jungle and gives the refugees and asylum seekers a way to express comedy as a way to contrast their tragedy.

This year we are also showcasing the vast range of work we are doing here at Oxford Brookes along the theme of identity in a series of lunchtime seminars. Dr. Mark Burgess, Reader in Psychology discusses Who are we? While Professor Peter Edge from the The Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice will talk about McConscience: can companies have religious human rights? And Rev. Kate Harford asks how the scriptures have been misinterpreted to justify gender and sexuality based discrimination.

The festival is organised by students from Oxford Brookes’ Development and Emergency Practice and Applied Architectural Design Masters programmes as well as students from other courses from the university. It will feature a selection of films, talks, workshops and plays.

The festival will take place at the University’s Headington Campus with the events being open to everyone. The majority of the events will be free however some booking may be required for some of the events.