The Frontline Club

The new leader of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, pledged continuity after his accession to the throne following the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah. But with a growing youth population, faint calls for reforms, an unstable oil market and the Islamic State (IS) on its doorstep, will he be able to deliver his pledge?

The House of Saud has survived the events of the Arab Spring intact, but with a changing Middle East and the establishment of IS with strong ties to Saudi Arabia, is the kingdom in peril?

With a panel of experts we will be looking at the situation within Saudi Arabia and the changes we might see under the new king, as well as discussing its influence and actions in the region and relations with the West.

Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries. He is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain.

The panel:

Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi freelance journalist. She has spent the last three years covertly filming Saudi’s Secret Uprising. Her 2012 film Al Qaeda in Yemen was a finalist for the Sony Impact Award 2012 and nominated for the News and Documentary Emmy Award. Her essay Wishful Thinking on the Arab uprisings and Saudi Arabia was published in the English Pen Award-winning anthology Writing Revolutions.

Sir William Patey served as UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2007 – 10. Previous appointments in the diplomatic service include ambassador to Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now government and international affairs adviser at Control Risks, a director at WCP Consultants and a non-executive director of HSBC Middle East and HBME.

Robert Lacey is a historian and author of numerous books including The Kingdom and Inside the Kingdom. In 1979, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia for eighteen months to research The Kingdom. He returned in 2005 and spent three years based in Jeddah and Riyadh, gathering material for the sequel, Inside the Kingdom, on the Saudi role in the post 9/11 years. Both books have been banned in Saudi Arabia.

Carool Kersten is a senior lecturer in the study of Islam & the Muslim world at King’s College London. Trained as an Arabist in the Netherlands, he lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for ten years, before returning to academia, obtaining a PhD from SOAS and taking his present position at King’s. His latest publication, a three-volume anthology entitled The Caliphate and Islamic Statehood, was released last week.

The new leader of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, pledged continuity after his accession to the throne following the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah. But with a growing youth population, faint calls for reforms, an unstable oil market and the Islamic State (IS) on its doorstep, will he be able to deliver his pledge?

The House of Saud has survived the events of the Arab Spring intact, but with a changing Middle East and the establishment of IS with strong ties to Saudi Arabia, is the kingdom in peril?

With a panel of experts we will be looking at the situation within Saudi Arabia and the changes we might see under the new king, as well as discussing its influence and actions in the region and relations with the West.

Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries. He is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain.

The panel:

Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi freelance journalist. She has spent the last three years covertly filming Saudi’s Secret Uprising. Her 2012 film Al Qaeda in Yemen was a finalist for the Sony Impact Award 2012 and nominated for the News and Documentary Emmy Award. Her essay Wishful Thinking on the Arab uprisings and Saudi Arabia was published in the English Pen Award-winning anthology Writing Revolutions.

Sir William Patey served as UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2007 – 10. Previous appointments in the diplomatic service include ambassador to Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now government and international affairs adviser at Control Risks, a director at WCP Consultants and a non-executive director of HSBC Middle East and HBME.

Robert Lacey is a historian and author of numerous books including The Kingdom and Inside the Kingdom. In 1979, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia for eighteen months to research The Kingdom. He returned in 2005 and spent three years based in Jeddah and Riyadh, gathering material for the sequel, Inside the Kingdom, on the Saudi role in the post 9/11 years. Both books have been banned in Saudi Arabia.

Carool Kersten is a senior lecturer in the study of Islam & the Muslim world at King’s College London. Trained as an Arabist in the Netherlands, he lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for ten years, before returning to academia, obtaining a PhD from SOAS and taking his present position at King’s. His latest publication, a three-volume anthology entitled The Caliphate and Islamic Statehood, was released last week.

There are 12 billion bullets produced every year – almost two bullets for every person on the planet. Guns kill as many as 500,000 people every year. Tearing lives apart, they impact not only the dead, the wounded, the suicidal and the mourning, but have far-reaching effects on society and communities.

In a hard-hitting exploration, award-winning investigative journalist Iain Overton journeyed to over 25 countries, from South Africa to Iceland, Honduras to Cambodia, to try and understand the true impact of gun crime.

From porn starlets who appear as snipers in XXX films, Zionist anti-terror gun trainers, El Salvadoran gangland killers and South African doctors soaked in the blood of gunshot victims, Overton tells the harrowing and sobering stories of lives directly affected by guns.

Iain Overton will be joining us in conversation with writer and author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, Andrew Feinstein, to discuss what he has learnt about the impact of gun crime, the relationships we have with guns and the place they occupy in every day life.

Iain Overton is Director of Investigations at the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence and an investigative journalist who has worked in over eighty countries around the world. Reporting from the killing zones of Colombia, Iraq and Somalia, he has made films for the BBC, ITN and Al Jazeera, as well as working with The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times. He was founding editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and is author of Gun Baby Gun.

There are 12 billion bullets produced every year – almost two bullets for every person on the planet. Guns kill as many as 500,000 people every year. Tearing lives apart, they impact not only the dead, the wounded, the suicidal and the mourning, but have far-reaching effects on society and communities.

In a hard-hitting exploration, award-winning investigative journalist Iain Overton journeyed to over 25 countries, from South Africa to Iceland, Honduras to Cambodia, to try and understand the true impact of gun crime.

From porn starlets who appear as snipers in XXX films, Zionist anti-terror gun trainers, El Salvadoran gangland killers and South African doctors soaked in the blood of gunshot victims, Overton tells the harrowing and sobering stories of lives directly affected by guns.

Iain Overton will be joining us in conversation with writer and author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, Andrew Feinstein, to discuss what he has learnt about the impact of gun crime, the relationships we have with guns and the place they occupy in every day life.

Iain Overton is Director of Investigations at the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence and an investigative journalist who has worked in over eighty countries around the world. Reporting from the killing zones of Colombia, Iraq and Somalia, he has made films for the BBC, ITN and Al Jazeera, as well as working with The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times. He was founding editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and is author of Gun Baby Gun.

There are 12 billion bullets produced every year – almost two bullets for every person on the planet. Guns kill as many as 500,000 people every year. Tearing lives apart, they impact not only the dead, the wounded, the suicidal and the mourning, but have far-reaching effects on society and communities.

In a hard-hitting exploration, award-winning investigative journalist Iain Overton journeyed to over 25 countries, from South Africa to Iceland, Honduras to Cambodia, to try and understand the true impact of gun crime.

From porn starlets who appear as snipers in XXX films, Zionist anti-terror gun trainers, El Salvadoran gangland killers and South African doctors soaked in the blood of gunshot victims, Overton tells the harrowing and sobering stories of lives directly affected by guns.

Iain Overton will be joining us in conversation with writer and author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, Andrew Feinstein, to discuss what he has learnt about the impact of gun crime, the relationships we have with guns and the place they occupy in every day life.

Iain Overton is Director of Investigations at the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence and an investigative journalist who has worked in over eighty countries around the world. Reporting from the killing zones of Colombia, Iraq and Somalia, he has made films for the BBC, ITN and Al Jazeera, as well as working with The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times. He was founding editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and is author of Gun Baby Gun.

Sao Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world, may run out of water in the next few months leaving 20 million people high and dry. Who is to blame? Incompetent politicians, unpredictable weather patterns or the wholesale destruction of Amazonia’s rainforests?

How does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource?

Join us for the second in a series of events held in partnership with The Scientific Exploration Society, as we bring together explorers, scientists and journalists to examine the water shortage in Brazil and debate the wider questions about global water security.

Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.

The panel:

Peter Bunyard is an author, journalist and founder of The Ecologist. He spent many years exploring and lecturing on the subject of indigenous responsibilities in the Colombian Amazon. More recently, having been alerted to the Biotic Pump theory, he carried out studies in Costa Rica and back home in Cornwall to test the physics of the theory, amassing evidence to challenge current climate modelling on the impact of deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

Sue Cunningham is a photographer, author and trustee of Tribes Alive/Indigenous People’s Cultural Support Trust. She and her husband Patrick Cunningham were awarded the Neville Shulman prize by the Royal Geographical Society for their Heart of Brazil Expedition travelling on the Xingu river by boat, visiting 48 tribal villages and documenting the affects of climate change and man’s dramatic impact on the rain forest.

Rogerio Simoes is a Brazilian journalist based in London. He is a former head of the BBC’s Brazilian Service and has written about Brazil for the CNN website. He was also executive-editor at Brazilian weekly news magazine Epoca and opinion editor and London correspondent at Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

Nixiwaka Yawanawa, represents the 900 strong Yawanawa tribe, the ‘People of the Wild Boar’ of Acre within the western Amazon rainforest of Brazil, an area recently decimated by terrible flooding. He is currently working for Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights.

Dr Friederike Otto is a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, leading the distributed volunteer computing project climateprediction.net. Her main research interest is the attribution of extreme weather events to external climate drivers. A major focus of this work is to explore the propagation of uncertainty from external drivers to actual impacts of climate change and assess associated risks.

Sao Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world, may run out of water in the next few months leaving 20 million people high and dry. Who is to blame? Incompetent politicians, unpredictable weather patterns or the wholesale destruction of Amazonia’s rainforests?

How does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource?

Join us for the second in a series of events held in partnership with The Scientific Exploration Society, as we bring together explorers, scientists and journalists to examine the water shortage in Brazil and debate the wider questions about global water security.

Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.

The panel:

Peter Bunyard is an author, journalist and founder of The Ecologist. He spent many years exploring and lecturing on the subject of indigenous responsibilities in the Colombian Amazon. More recently, having been alerted to the Biotic Pump theory, he carried out studies in Costa Rica and back home in Cornwall to test the physics of the theory, amassing evidence to challenge current climate modelling on the impact of deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

Sue Cunningham is a photographer, author and trustee of Tribes Alive/Indigenous People’s Cultural Support Trust. She and her husband Patrick Cunningham were awarded the Neville Shulman prize by the Royal Geographical Society for their Heart of Brazil Expedition travelling on the Xingu river by boat, visiting 48 tribal villages and documenting the affects of climate change and man’s dramatic impact on the rain forest.

Rogerio Simoes is a Brazilian journalist based in London. He is a former head of the BBC’s Brazilian Service and has written about Brazil for the CNN website. He was also executive-editor at Brazilian weekly news magazine Epoca and opinion editor and London correspondent at Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

Nixiwaka Yawanawa, represents the 900 strong Yawanawa tribe, the ‘People of the Wild Boar’ of Acre within the western Amazon rainforest of Brazil, an area recently decimated by terrible flooding. He is currently working for Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights.

Dr Friederike Otto is a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, leading the distributed volunteer computing project climateprediction.net. Her main research interest is the attribution of extreme weather events to external climate drivers. A major focus of this work is to explore the propagation of uncertainty from external drivers to actual impacts of climate change and assess associated risks.

Sao Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world, may run out of water in the next few months leaving 20 million people high and dry. Who is to blame? Incompetent politicians, unpredictable weather patterns or the wholesale destruction of Amazonia’s rainforests?

How does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource?

Join us for the second in a series of events held in partnership with The Scientific Exploration Society, as we bring together explorers, scientists and journalists to examine the water shortage in Brazil and debate the wider questions about global water security.

Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.

The panel:

Peter Bunyard is an author, journalist and founder of The Ecologist. He spent many years exploring and lecturing on the subject of indigenous responsibilities in the Colombian Amazon. More recently, having been alerted to the Biotic Pump theory, he carried out studies in Costa Rica and back home in Cornwall to test the physics of the theory, amassing evidence to challenge current climate modelling on the impact of deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

Sue Cunningham is a photographer, author and trustee of Tribes Alive/Indigenous People’s Cultural Support Trust. She and her husband Patrick Cunningham were awarded the Neville Shulman prize by the Royal Geographical Society for their Heart of Brazil Expedition travelling on the Xingu river by boat, visiting 48 tribal villages and documenting the affects of climate change and man’s dramatic impact on the rain forest.

Rogerio Simoes is a Brazilian journalist based in London. He is a former head of the BBC’s Brazilian Service and has written about Brazil for the CNN website. He was also executive-editor at Brazilian weekly news magazine Epoca and opinion editor and London correspondent at Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

Nixiwaka Yawanawa, represents the 900 strong Yawanawa tribe, the ‘People of the Wild Boar’ of Acre within the western Amazon rainforest of Brazil, an area recently decimated by terrible flooding. He is currently working for Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights.

Dr Friederike Otto is a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, leading the distributed volunteer computing project climateprediction.net. Her main research interest is the attribution of extreme weather events to external climate drivers. A major focus of this work is to explore the propagation of uncertainty from external drivers to actual impacts of climate change and assess associated risks.

The Tim Hetherington Trust invites you to celebrate the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros with a review of new work by friends, colleagues and others who are continuing the mission to share important stories powerfully told.

April 20th marks the fourth anniversary of the mortar attack that took Tim and Chris’ lives. Tonight’s program will demonstrate their living legacy with an array of new work that will stimulate and provoke in the style we came to expect from them. Starting with Tim’s earliest experiments in multimedia the evening will unfold to show projects recently completed and work still in progress by recognised names and emerging talent, accompanied by discussion of how to harness the media for more effective communication.

Topaz Adizes, filmmaker, will talk about some astonishing film projects that he was developing with Tim in 2011 and how his creative work has since evolved.

Paul Halliday, friend and collaborator with Tim during his time with The Big Issue and now a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, will introduce the forthcoming “Urban Encounters” festival at Tate Britain and how Tim’s work will find a place nearly 20 years on.

Geoff Johnson, artist, curator and studio partner with Tim in the 90’s will talk about “Manorism” a current exhibition of international graffiti art and will describe the discussions behind Tim’s Liberian war graffiti and its continuing relevance.

Eline Jongsma & Kel O’Neill, winners of the inaugural Visionary Award from the Tim Hetherington Trust, will talk about their practice that is evolving to include filmmaking, interactive media and virtual reality media.

Guy Martin, photographer, friend and thinker will show some current work and discuss it in the context of contemporary documentary practice. How has Tim’s thinking influenced the picture and how is it developing?

Daniel Meadows, Tim’s teacher at the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University will recount his last phone conversation with Tim which re-inspired his commitment to training and the importance of basic principles even as the industry changes.

We expect a provocative evening of images, ideas and words so please come to listen and share as we look back a their lives and forwards to what’s coming next.

The Tim Hetherington Trust invites you to celebrate the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros with a review of new work by friends, colleagues and others who are continuing the mission to share important stories powerfully told.

April 20th marks the fourth anniversary of the mortar attack that took Tim and Chris’ lives. Tonight’s program will demonstrate their living legacy with an array of new work that will stimulate and provoke in the style we came to expect from them. Starting with Tim’s earliest experiments in multimedia the evening will unfold to show projects recently completed and work still in progress by recognised names and emerging talent, accompanied by discussion of how to harness the media for more effective communication.

Topaz Adizes, filmmaker, will talk about some astonishing film projects that he was developing with Tim in 2011 and how his creative work has since evolved.

Paul Halliday, friend and collaborator with Tim during his time with The Big Issue and now a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, will introduce the forthcoming “Urban Encounters” festival at Tate Britain and how Tim’s work will find a place nearly 20 years on.

Geoff Johnson, artist, curator and studio partner with Tim in the 90’s will talk about “Manorism” a current exhibition of international graffiti art and will describe the discussions behind Tim’s Liberian war graffiti and its continuing relevance.

Eline Jongsma & Kel O’Neill, winners of the inaugural Visionary Award from the Tim Hetherington Trust, will talk about their practice that is evolving to include filmmaking, interactive media and virtual reality media.

Guy Martin, photographer, friend and thinker will show some current work and discuss it in the context of contemporary documentary practice. How has Tim’s thinking influenced the picture and how is it developing?

Daniel Meadows, Tim’s teacher at the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University will recount his last phone conversation with Tim which re-inspired his commitment to training and the importance of basic principles even as the industry changes.

We expect a provocative evening of images, ideas and words so please come to listen and share as we look back a their lives and forwards to what’s coming next.