The Commonwealth Conversation

On the afternoon of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Port of Spain, over fifty academics, civil society representatives and policy makers gathered at the University of the West Indies for a conference on the contemporary Commonwealth.

On Sunday 29 November, Zoë Ware, RCS Commonwealth Affairs Manager, spoke about the Commonwealth Conversation at an event at the University of the West Indies on gay rights across the Commonwealth.

On Thursday 26th November Peter Kellner, Chairman of the RCS, spoke at a breakfast event for delegates at the Commonwealth Business Forum on the Serenade of the Seas Cruise Ship in Port of Spain harbour.

On Thursday 26th November, the day that the emerging findings of the Commonwealth Conversation, Common What?, were published, representatives from the RCS presented the report to delegates at the Commonwealth Youth Forum.

The first public launch of the emerging findings of the Commonwealth Conversation – Common What? – took place during the Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF) in Port of Spain in the week before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

On Saturday 21st November the RCS Commonwealth Conversation team took part in a pre-CHOGM discussion about the Commonwealth at the University of the West Indies.

India is under pressure to deliver a world-class Commonwealth Games in 2010. Some commentators feel it is a waste of money.

I think of the modern Commonwealth as a happy accident. If it did not exist it would neither be necessary nor perhaps possible to invent it.

“Does the Commonwealth Have a Future? The Commonwealth as seen through the 2009 conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in September 2009 in Tanzania.”

Martin Mulloy is the English-Speaking Union’s Director of Education. The English-Speaking Union is an international charity founded in 1918 to promote international understanding and friendship through the use of the English language.