Feature: Event - Doreen Massey: World City in a World Setting, Festival Club @ October Gallery - July 9
Published: 08 July 2010
LONDONERS have a responsibility to consider the effect our city has on the rest of the world – and buy fair trade goods and campaign for tax justice to help places which have been ravaged by the worst effects of neo-liberalism. This theme is the subject of a talk tomorrow (Friday) by Doreen Massey, professor of geography at the Open University, as part of a free festival celebrating London’s position as a global city. Professor Massey, who lives in West Hampstead, believes London’s reliance on the finance industry means we need to look at the effects this has in a global context.
“A lot of people come here because it is a great place to live,” she says. “But some come because they cannot get jobs elsewhere. They have been forced to because of neo-liberalist globalism – which London’s Square Mile and Canary Wharf is a world centre for. Yet London is a progressive city; we need to take responsibility for the effects of our citydom on the rest of the planet.”
• Doreen Massey: World City in a World Setting, Festival Club @ October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, WC1 (Holborn Tube), on Friday July 9, 12-2pm, free
• The festival includes a free world music concert this weekend in Hyde Park. See www.culturalco-operation.org