The Stephen Lawrence Trust

The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust is delighted to be collaborating with Goldsmiths on the 2009 Race in the Modern World Conference. We want this to be an inclusive conference, one that articulates and develops cutting edge work in a field that crosses many subject disciplines, but at the same time takes debates about racial identities out from the academic world. 'Race and the Modern World', then, will involve young people, teachers, youth and community workers, as well as internationally known academics and experts. One key part of our ambition is to take contemporary race and modernity debates out to a wider community.

Between now and April, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, colleagues from the Windsor Fellowship and Goldsmiths will be working with young people from local schools and colleges on the development of their conference contributions. The aim is to produce a two way engagement — to expose participants to current debates but also to seek their thinking on such issues as what racial identity means for young people in contemporary London.

The Trust provides learning related to urban design and the built environment and we know that to make a real difference we need to ensure that more young people from our inner city communities can take their places among future thinkers, policy makers and strategists. We believe that the 2009 Race and the Modern World Conference with its innovative involvement of young people marks a new departure in our and Goldsmith's history of engagement with the very important issues we look forward to exploring with colleagues at this event.

More information about the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust is available at our website - www.stephenlawrence.org.uk