Impassioned pleas and forceful arguments could soon have a new home in Lincoln if plans to set up an official Speaker’s Corner are approved. It would be a city version of the famous Hyde Park corner in London – where soapbox orators can wax lyrical on the topic of their choice.The idea has been put forward by members of the Speaker’s Corner Trust and Take Part programme at the University of Lincoln.

IN 1872, the first Speakers’ Corner was born in Hyde Park and has seen such famous figures as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell use it as a platform to share their ideas. Since then, other corners have sprung up in Lichfield and Nottingham – and the next could be in Walthamstow.

A bronze plaque marking the site of Lichfield’s very own Speakers’ Corner has been unveiled in the city centre.

The project launched at the start of last month and gives those with something to say the chance to do so.

“It’s brilliant to see the plaque in place by Minster Pool,” said Canon Pete Wilcox, chairman of Speakers’ Corner Lichfield.

Lichfield’s Speakers’ Corner has been officially launched.

BBC radio presenter Joanne Malin helped launch the city’s Speakers’ Corner, which is only the second outside London, at the event which saw a host of local dignitaries and ex-Coronation Street star Chris Walker.

The only other speakers’ corner outside London is Nottingham.

            
College has designs on Speakers’ Corner
A special exhibition will be unveiled in Lichfield to mark the launch of the city’s Speakers’ Corner. The platform for public debate will be situated in Dam Street, near Minster Pool, from May 2.
It will be only the second Speakers’ Corner to be launched outside of London. South Staffordshire College [...]

The first permanent Speakers’ Corner outside of London has been officially opened in Nottingham’s Old Market Square by Justice Secretary Jack Straw. Mr Straw said its spot next to the statue of Brian Clough was particularly appropriate given the former Forest manager’s reputation for being outspoken.

Speaking up for new forum for debates
THE COMMITTEE set to oversee the country’s second-only Speakers’ Corner project in Lichfield has been drawn up.
 
Canon Pete Wilcox has been elected the group’s first chairman while the head of Lichfield School of Art, Alison Churchill, has been named vice-chairman.
The rest of Lichfield Speakers’ Corner founding committee is taken [...]

 
Speaking up in support of a new public platform
STUDENTS, councillors and members of local organisations have pledged support for a new Speakers’ Corner project in Lichfield – only the second of its kind in the country.
Youngsters from The Friary School and Lichfield College, together with representatives from the police, Lichfield Festival, the city’s civic society, [...]

An ‘imaginative project’ to give Lichfeldians a public platform to discuss local issues is set to be drafted into the city.

Lichfield looks set to become the second city to be picked to develop a Speakers’ Corner, after the project was piloted in Nottingham earlier this year.

And it is hoped that the cathedral city will pave the way for other towns to adopt the scheme, designed to promote freedom of expression, platforms for public debate and stimulate and support active citizenship.

Freedom to stand up and speak one’s mind is safe guarded through Speakers’ Corners. Jonáš Jančařík speaks with Peter Bradley, director of the Speakers’ Corner Trust and explores the story behind this steadfast form of communication?

England moves to create more of the free-speech ‘corners’ – with a little less spectacle and a little more substance.

Speakers’ Corner Trust is a new UK-based charity promoting free speech, public debate and active citizenship as a means of reinvigorating civil society in the UK and supporting its development in emerging democracies. Peter Bradley explains why it’s so important to get people talking again.

Who’s to blame for the parlous state of debate in this country – the politicians whose parliamentary point-scoring sets such a poor standard, or the media for its obsession with trivia and conflict? And how much blame should we, as citizens, bear for our diminishing interest in our own rights.

Last month Peter Bradley, the deposed MP for The Wrekin, saw his dream come alive with the creation of a Speakers’ Corner in Nottingham. It’s the first to be formed since the one in Hyde Park in 1872, and is what Bradley hopes will be the start of a national network of public debating places.

It’s an age-old problem… what can politicians do about the democratic deficit and declining public participation in the running of councils and communities? But a former MP has a new and surprising solution – politicians shouldn’t blame themselves over the issue, but demand more debate from the population.

When people come together to pool their ideas, experience and energies in a common cause, there’s very little they can’t achieve. The Nottingham Speakers’ Corner which we launched just a few days ago in Old Market Square is testament to that.

Tony Benn once announced that he was leaving parliament “to devote more time to politics”, and now another parliamentarian is continuing in the same vein. Last Friday, Peter Bradley, the former Labour MP for The Wrekin, Shropshire, saw a similar dream come alive with the creation of a new speakers’ corner.

The capital of the east Midlands has been in the news for the wrong reason more often than the right one in the past couple of years. But Nottingham’s history is mightier than its more recent reputation as the heartland of youthful binge drinkers.

Comedian Eddie Izzard has praised plans for a nationwide network of Speakers’ Corner. The stand-up star, speaking on BBC One’s The Politics Show, welcomed Nottingham’s Speakers’ Corner – which will be launched on Friday – the first to be created in the UK since the Hyde Park original 150 years ago

Talking of debates, how wonderful to see Nottingham reviving the tradition of a speaker’s corner in the city centre. And how appropriate that it will be sited at the bottom of King Street and Queen Street alongside the promised statue of Brian Clough. Now he could talk.

Most agree that our civil society is not working as it should. But though it’s fashionable to blame politicians for the decline of trust and falling voter turn-out, it’s also glib.

In the 1960s grocers, former soldiers and miners would air their views to huddled crowds near the fountains in Old Market Square. Now a group is looking to set up a new ‘Speakers’ Corner’ – the first outside the capital.

The original Speakers’ Corner, in London’s Hyde Park, has long been a potent symbol of Britain’s tradition of free speech. More recently, Euan Edworthy, a young British businessman living in Prague, decided to contribute to the civil life of the newly democratic nation by replicating the concept in the Czech capital.

Two former Good Relations staffers are launching a new charity called Speakers’ Corner Trust in an attempt to encourage debate and free speech.

More than two years after London’s renowned Speakers’ Corner public speaking area was replicated outside the U.K., the ‘Czech Hyde Park’ site is now at the heart of a worldwide enterprise aimed at fostering freedom of speech.