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University art festival tackles increasing hate crime

  • Man Met to hold arts festival in aid of hate crime
  • The university urges students to talk about hate crime through creativity
  • Hopes for a more diverse and inclusive university

An art festival geared to tackle the issue of hate crimes and discrimination will be held at Man Met in October.

Arts Festival 2018 will be held at the students union and will feature films, poems, and any art created by students on the topic of hate crimes.

Research done for the Hate Crime Strategy for Manchester revealed that the city has seen a 41% rise in reported hate crimes since 2012.

Campaign co-ordinator Molly Maher believes inclusion to be key in a student’s university experience.

She said: “We are going to be hosting a weekend of arts and lots of it will be student submissions, we will also have some well-known films all around the theme of inclusion and community to promote the sense of community that you find in Manchester.

“I think that hate crime has come up especially in the last few years in the UK is a really big problem, and it’s something that there is a lot of stigma around still and there are low levels of reporting in hate crime.”

Louise Jones, strategic projects manager at Man Met, is helping organise the event: “We’re going to get students to start looking at hate crime and discrimination that they might have experienced or they might have seen in Manchester.

“What we want them to do is in a positive way, so we want them to think about an imagined future, and them to think about what they would really like to see in their communities.”

Universities UK revealed in a 2016 paper that students were not given the right support when dealing with sexual harassment, sexual violence, and hate crime.