On 12th May 2010 more than 800 people piled into St John’s Smith Square, London, to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu, founding patron of The Forgiveness Project, deliver our inaugural annual lecture – ‘Is Violence Ever Justified?’  Touching briefly on the Church’s view of a just war and challenging the audience to consider ‘what would you do if you discovered your daughter being raped?’, he then asked permission to talk more generally about things that he feels passionate about – for instance the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the transformative nature of forgiveness, and the uniquely African concept of Ubuntu – ‘I am me, because you are you’.  Archbishop Tutu was joined on stage by Mary Blewitt who lost 50 members of her family in the Rwandan genocide; Jo Berry whose father was killed in the 1984 Brighton bombing; and Patrick Magee, the former IRA activist who planted the bomb. The event was chaired by BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton, and sponsored by Anglo American, with The Independent newspaper as our media sponsor. Read more about the event at The Huffington Post.

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In October 2009, on the 25^th anniversary of the Brighton Bomb,  we collaborated with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues (http://www.conflictissues.org.uk/) and invited Pat Magee (the former IRA activist responsible for planting the bomb) to speak alongside Jo Berry, the daughter of Sir Anthony Berry who was killed in the attack.  The event was chaired by Lib Dem MP, Simon Hughes.  Read more about this event and issue in an article in The Times by The Forgiveness Project director, Marina Cantacuzino  “Norman Tebbit’s Cruscade against me is Understandable”. (http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6868340.ece)j

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In 2005 The Forgiveness Project undertook a period of research in HMPs Brixton and Holloway in partnership with Synergy Theatre Project (http://www.synergytheatreproject.co.uk/) and Olivier Award-winning playwright Shelagh Stephenson.  This collaboration was successfully brought to fruition through a theatre production of the resulting commissioned play, The Long Road which opened at London’s Soho Theatre in May 2008 to much critical acclaim. Through the production and activities accompanying it, including workshop productions performed in prisons and The Criminal Justice System in Crisis programme of talks, we were able to place issues of forgiveness, reparation and restorative justice once again in the public arena.

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