Daniel Chandler and Meic Llewellyn of the Department of Education at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, nearly achieved the impossible in their construction of the Identities in Action conference. By allowing for the free interweaving of several identity discourses over a tantalisingly brief weekend, they provided a practical forum for the sympathetic mutual understanding of the studies of cultural- and self-identities, marginalised communities, minority languages, and gender and queer studies. Each block of time was organised into four different ‘strands’ which then culminated in workshops and discussion sessions: Music and Identities, Cyberspace and Identities, Organisational Identities; Identities and Place, Gender Identities, Political Action and Identities; Queer Theory and Gay Identities, Museum of the Future, Children's Identities and the Media; Language and Identities, Personal Identities, Representations and Identities. The unfortunate fact of such an undertaking is the time restriction imposed upon it. Had the conference lasted even a full five days, we may have seen not only the formation of imagined communities, but intriguing societal developments between them.