This week Tête à Tête was delighted to be involved in the United Nations HeforShe Arts Week – a global week of activities run by UN Women exploring gender equality around the world.
Working with the Knowledge Quarter and led by our friends at Poet in the City, the evening at UCL’s Bloomsbury Studio Theatre explored ideas of gender across science and the arts with speakers from The Alan Turing Institute, Francis Crick Institute and poet Belinda Zhawi.
When asked to contribute we knew Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival alumni CN Lester and Sarah Dacey were a perfect match. Closing the evening with a beautiful performance, accompanied by theorbo and harp, of music by the Italian 17th century singer and composer Barbara Strozzi, CN Lester’s preceding talk on their experiences of studying music, and the institutional and individual blocks to involving women composers’ work for study, resonated with the many scientists present.
This event took place on the same day as Tête à Tête Board member and artist Vera Chok published an article in The Guardian discussing stereotypes of race and gender around the now infamous live BBC News interview with Professor Robert Kelly where his two small children burst into the room while he was live on air and his Asian wife came in to usher them out. Her article “If you saw a nanny in this BBC interview what does that say about you” can be read HERE
You can read about CN’s work as a singer-songwriter, writer, classical musician and activist HERE.
You can watch actress Emma Watson’s speech to the UN from which HeforShe was born HERE