Talking Heads at HEART is a public discussion forum founded in 2016 which takes place at the Headingley Enterprise and Arts (HEART) Centre on the fourth Thursday of the month. They ask an expert in their field to talk about a topic for around 50 minutes, followed by discussion, and they cover a wide range of political, economic and social topics. I caught up with one of its co-founders, and former social work lecturer Alan Murphy, to find out more about it.
Q. ALAN, can you tell us how Talking Heads came about.
Talking Heads came about in response to disappointment at the lack of considered factual discussion of the potential impact of Brexit. The use of emotional and disingenuous language, to the point of lies about its benefits, e.g., the £35mil bus advert, was extremely frustrating.
Following the Referendum result, Helen Seymour, who worked in the cooperative movement, and the late Professor Mike Campbell, who sadly died in 2017, convened a meeting in October 2016 via the Headingley Development Trust newsletter, which I attended, and we agreed to launch an expert input discussion format to meet monthly at Heart Centre in Headingley – and Talking Heads was born and continued until the Covid pandemic.
When we restarted after lockdown in Autumn 2023, former HEART Manager Mike Bird joined me as co-organiser – with me organising the speakers, chairing the meetings and producing the flyers, while Mike manages the mailing list, room hire, finances and printing.
Q. How do you decide what to discuss?
The point of TH is to inform and stimulate critical thinking, hoping to leave people with an interest to explore the topic more. We welcome a broad range of topics and are open to considering any suggestions. Our starting point is topics concerning society, social policy, law, economics, international relations, climate emergency, ecology and Brexit.
We approach topics from the perspective of expert opinion based on analysis of factual evidence backed up by well-established academic research including up to date and current research, for example in the field of retrofitting insulation in homes and the published outcomes of national and international research informed bodies concerning climate change or from public enquiries such as in relation to Grenfell Tower.
I get most of our ideas of what to discuss looking through the University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett academic profiles. But we’ve also used experts from outside academia, such as the Chair of Leeds Climate Emergency Committee, local workers in addiction, homelessness and foodbanks as well as the Civic Trust. I also often pick people from local media and newspapers and follow them up.
Q. Have there been any particular stand-out talks?
All of the discussions without exception have been stimulating and interesting, but perhaps the most lively have been those on Brexit, Islamophobia, Grenfell Tower, North Korea, China and Europe, antibiotic resistance, censorship.
Q. As a fellow public discussion organiser I’m particularly interested to know how the discussion on censorship went and the conclusions people came to.
The basic conclusion was leaving people with more questions than answers. Recognition of its cultural and historical aspects which gave us some interesting context, for instance in the history and current place of the British Board of Film Censors, and the fresh challenges of censorship enforcement and positioning in the light of the international unregulated space of social media and the internet. The speaker was a PhD student writing his doctorate on this topic studying elsewhere but working in Heart café.
Q. What do you have planned for 2025?
- The next talk is on Thursday 23rd January looking at the issue of ‘Rewilding’ with Professor Steve Carver from the School of Geography, University of Leeds.
- Thursday 27th February we return to look at the Grenfell Tower tragedy post-the final inquiry report published last September, with Dr Stuart Hodkinson, Associate Professor in the School of Geography, University of Leeds, and journalist Peter Apps. This will take place earlier than normal, between 7pm to 8:30pm.
- Thursday 22nd May we have Emily Zobel Marshall, Professor in Postcolonial Literature, Leeds Beckett University, on ‘Decolonising the Outdoors: Hiking and Writing’.
Thank you Alan!
Talking Heads at HEART takes place on the fourth Thursday of the month (with breaks in July, August and December) between 7:30pm and 9pm at the Headingley Enterprise and Arts (HEART) Centre, Bennett Road, Headingley.
Join Talking Heads’ mailing list at: [email protected]
Paul Thomas is co-founder of The Leeds Salon public discussion forum.