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Queen's Park Book Festival: Talking Freedom with Francesca and Raoul Martinez at Queen's Park Community Tent

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Time 19:30
Date 30/06/19
Price Free

Celebrated local siblings Raoul and Francesca Martinez discuss their work, their lives and what freedom means to them, with journalist Marina Cantacuzino.

Francesca Martinez is a wobbly* comedian, writer and speaker who has toured internationally with sell-out runs at The Melbourne Comedy Festival, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.

Since appearing in five series of BBC’s Grange Hill, Francesca has starred in BBC2’s Extras opposite Kate Winslet, BBC3’s Russell Howard’s Good News, and headlined ITV’s The Jonathan Ross Show. Other credits include ITV’s The Frank Skinner Show, Lorraine, Loose Women and This Morning, Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, two series of Channel 4’s Very British Problems, and three consecutive series of RTE’s The Saturday Night Show. She opened Series 11 of BBC2’s Live At The Apollo, guested on Sky One’s The Russell Howard Hour and BBC1’s Celebrity Pointless twice, and wrote and performed in verse for BBC 3’s Shakespeare Centenary and The Verb. Last year she starred with Kevin Hely in her BBC Radio 4 play How We’re Loved, and is finishing a commissioned play for The National Theatre. She co-hosts BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends with Clive Anderson.

*Oh yeah, she has mild cerebral palsy but much prefers the word ‘wobbly’.

Raoul Martinez is a philosopher, award-winning filmmaker and artist. His first documentary The Lottery of Birth (2012) won the Spirit Award for Best Film at Hollywood’s Artivist Film Festival 2012 and spent five months in the number one slot on Amazon.com. His first book Creating Freedom (2016) was informed by over a decade of research, and has met with international critical acclaim and has been translated into several major languages.

Raoul lives and works in London, where his portrait paintings have been selected for multiple exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery: www.raoulmartinez.com

Marina Cantacuzino is an award-winning journalist who in 2003 began to collect and share humanising stories from around the world, to provide an antidote to the increasingly prevalent narratives of hate.

As a result Marina founded, The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based not-for- profit that uses the real stories of victims and perpetrators to explore how ideas around forgiveness, reconciliation and restorative justice can be used to impact positively on people’s lives.The Forgiveness Project has no religious or political associations.

In 2012 Marina spoke at the UN before Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about her work and is a contributor in the film documentary Beyond Right and Wrong directed by Roger Spotiswoode. She also teaches about the Trauma Cycle, Restorative Circles and runs workshops exploring concepts of forgiveness and restorative storytelling.

In 2015 Marina’s book The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) was published in the US and UK. In 2018, Forgiveness is Really Strange, was published by Singing Dragon, co-authored by Marina and Dr Masi Noor, and illustrated by Sophie Standing.

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