Against All Odds: Class and Resistance in the Arts
For the second time, PRAN is partnering on Against All Odds with Writing on the Wall (WoW, a Liverpool-based organisation that champions creative writing, social justice, and community empowerment through literature, festivals, and arts projects. This event will be part of WoWFEST, Liverpool’s annual literary festival, taking place in May.
Against All Odds is a dynamic and thought-provoking event that delves into the intersections of class, creativity, and resilience within the arts. Bringing together a powerhouse panel of artists and writers – Joelle Taylor, Oliver James Lomax, and Bea Freeman with Roger Hill (host) – this discussion highlights the struggles and triumphs of working-class creatives who have fought to make their voices heard in an often exclusive cultural landscape.
Joelle Taylor is a T.S Eliot Prize 2022 Prize winner for C+NTO & Othered Poems, Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry and a novel. C+NTO was adapted for theatre. A former UK SLAM Champion she founded the national youth poetry slams SLAMbassadors through the Poetry Society in 2001, remaining its Artistic Director until 2018. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live, resident at the Southbank Centre, and an editor at Out-Spoken Press. Joelle is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year.
Oliver James Lomax is a poet, educator, and trustee of the Working-Class Movement Library in Salford. His work champions cultural equality and amplifies working-class voices. A visiting poet with The Poetry Society and a Poetry By Heart Ambassador and Judge, he has written for film and TV and published four collections. In 2025 he won the Los Angeles International Poetry Film Prize and has been nominated for the Pushcart and Forward Prizes. His recent projects include Arts Council–funded poetry films on working-class history in Bolton, focused on raising class consciousness.
Bea Freeman is an award-winning Liverpool-based filmmaker, producer, and community organiser, whose documentaries including They Haven’t Done Nothing (1985) and Daughters of the Windrush highlight underrepresented voices and racial injustice. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2022 Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Awards and is an Honorary Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University.
Host: Roger Hill is a freelance director, with over 50 years’ experience in performance, writing, broadcasting, and arts in education. He is best known for presenting BBC Radio Merseyside’s long-running alternative music programme and for his influential work in youth theatre. He began his career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre before moving into Live Art performance, and community arts. He has also taught widely in higher education and continues to create new work, including films, storytelling projects, and autobiographical performances. He currently specializes in work with people with dementia and babies.
FAO Artists: we have a limited number of free tickets for artists living and working in the Liverpool City Region. If you are interested in applying for one of these tickets please email info@writingonthewall.org.uk.
We want to express our deepest gratitude to the Social Policy Association (SPA) for supporting this event.
Register here.
