Culture

The Natural History Museum's decision to accept the giant oil company Shell as a sponsor for the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” exhibition caused outrage recently, not least from the environmental campaigning group Rising Tide.

The NHM justified its position by claiming that Shell is taking steps to change its ways and address environmental issues.

When the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” exhibition came to Wales, it was hosted by Aberystwyth Arts…

Daisy, aged 15, is sent from New York to England to stay with her Aunt Penn and her cousins Edmund, Isaac, Osbert and Piper. Daisy starts to enjoy her stay although she is soon going to find out that this will last a lot longer than she expected.

A new war starts in Britain, Daisy and her cousins are cut off from Aunt Penn and Daisy's parents. Daisy is forced to grow up quickly and experiences terrible things, as well as new-found love for her cousins. When she is separated from…

Persepolis is an autobiography of Marjane Satrapi's childhood. Marjane Satrapi is telling her story in comic strips. Her childhood story is about growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution.

I think this is a very unique comic-strip book. I have never come across a comic strip about a Muslim girl who is so determined and strong-willed.

I think this book would attract young adults.

Once I picked up the book I couldn't put it down. I thought how the story…

Taken singly, each presentation at the Peace Festival in Caernarfon was very good. Taken together, they were truly remarkable.

Mabon Ap Gwynfor spoke from the heart, recalling a tradition of peace in Wales that has a real political and cultural impact and which we must remake everyday; invoking famous names like Henri Richard but also ordinary people and processes - “meetings, writing letters, conferences...”

Nicholas Wheeler from the David Davies Memorial Institute of…

Living in an area being ravaged by development in the name of the Olympics, in a London changing fast with the influx of foreign capital, I recognised a lot in this study of the experience of seeing much of the heart and soul removed from your community.

Written from within, and at the height of, “the siege”, this book reads as a call to action to those whose lives will be fundamentally affected to take control over the forces of change.

Solnit mixes anecdote, research and a…

If the phrase “war comics” conjures up for you images of magazines with names like “Warlord” and “Commando”, and simple-minded celebrations of militarism and empire, then, please, just ignore the title.

Indeed, the first two selections in this wonderful collection - Keiji Nakazawa's “I Saw It!” (precursor to his epic account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, Barefoot Gen) and Raymond Briggs' “The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman” - are as anti-war a pair of…

This summer, Edinburgh-based Protest in Harmony and Glasgow socialist women's choir Eurydice combined with other political choirs for the “Rise up Singing” Faslane 365 blockade.

One of Faslane 365's aims was to bring people together to impede the nuclear base where Britain's nuclear weapons are deployed. The choirs' blockade achieved this by assembling many singers who were new to the peace movement and witnessing nonviolent direct action for the first time.

They will be…

It's Sisyphean, this peace and justice task. No matter how many of us protest by every means possible, the British government just goes ahead and plunges us into war, just goes ahead and replaces Trident, just goes ahead... Hopeless.

Not according to Susie Ennals from Aberystwyth who decided to make her voice heard - in song. When the going gets tough, the tough get Gregorian! So last year Susie started Côr Gobaith (Choir of Hope). Within months the choir was…

On 22 September, from noon till midnight, the Galeri in Caernarfon hosts Gwyl Heddwch Cymr (the All Wales Peace Festival).

Nick Wheeler of the University of Wales Aberystwyth speaks on “Building Trust Between Enemies in a Nuclear Age”, Jo Berry and Patrick Magee talk about their own journey of reconciliation after the 1984 Brighton bombing, and Mabon ap Gwynfor address peace activism in Wales.

There are workshops on climate change, human trafficking, mediation, nuclear…

This National Eisteddfod of Wales took place in Flintshire from 4 to 11 August. As usual, among the hundreds of stands was Pabell Heddwch - the Peace Tent.

Inside were displays, information, petitions and workshops from CND Cymru, the Welsh Centre for International Affairs and others.

Cymdeithas y Cymod, the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales, launched its new website www.cymdeithasycymod.org.uk.

Hiroshima Day, which…

Braving adverse weather conditions, more than 370 Christians gathered in Swanwick, Derbyshire for the annual National Network of Justice and Peace conference, “Called to be Peacemakers - Who Me?”

For the first time the conference was organised ecumenically in partnership with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Pax Christi.

Young and old, newcomers and seasoned conference goers took part in a full programme that offered stimulating talks, workshops on peacemaking, liturgy…

I have been studying the prints of Paul Peter Piech as part of my art course at Yale College this year. This is an extract from an essay I wrote for the course. I hope it inspires you to visit a Piech exhibition or find out more about his work.

Paul Peter Piech was a printmaker of international note. His work deals with powerful political and human rights issues. Piech's prints are designed to grab your attention and make you think. Piech worked mainly in linocut and wood-cut prints…

On Saturday 23 June, more than forty people gathered to repent the use of Epynt Mountain as a military training ground prior to the Falklands war.

Arranged by the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales, the service took place in the ruins of the Babell Chapel. The Reverend Guto Prys ap Gwynfor said: “Every war is started with lies... the Falklands and the illegal Iraq war.” Tecwyn Ifan then sang a satirical farewell to Tony Blair. People who lost their homes on Epynt to the British…

A new exhibition by the Peace Museum in Bradford, which challenges existing thinking, has been opened in the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Entitled Farewell to Arms?, it is the result of the two museums working together. The Armouries - a national museum showing swords, guns and armour in history - wanted to go beyond the display of weapons of war. The Peace Museum in Bradford wanted to take the opportunity of challenging a wider audience on the place of such weapons in the world. The…

“... time was not a single river but something always branching into every possible outcome; time was a tree growing at infinite speed to produce infinite branches, so that there were many pasts and more presents and this very moment is begetting many futures.”
Rebecca Solnit, writing about the Merced River, Yosemite, USA

Place: London, Tate Britain and Parliament Square; Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran... centres of power and then where power acts; centres of resistance... Time:…