Founded in 2015 by Opus Independents, the Festival of Debate creates opportunities to bring people together to share new ideas and lived experience that can help shape our understanding of the world.
The Festival of Debate seeks to create a place where we are connected to each other, to our communities, to the institutions and new ideas that shape our lives and to conversations that start change.
The Festival of Debate takes place every spring in South Yorkshire, but we also run events and projects outside of the core festival. Our programme includes discussions, debates, Q&As, artistic responses, keynote speeches, performances and plays that explore politics, economics and society. The project is funded by a mixture of grants, sponsorship, donations and ticket income.
Very interesting to bring lived experience into the subject of history. Helen's point about church doctrine (teachings not founded on original Greek, Hebrew & Aramaic text) having a profound affect and artworks reinforcing the doctrine - the evidence is still seen in people brought up with these thoughts in mind. They are powerful thoughts, and we shouldn't conclude everyone is now enlightened. I work in trauma and film or record people's experiences. There is a clear historical narrative that runs through a person's story. You can trace their trauma back to things that are very much a part of our recent history. So many things affect their life choices or apparent lack of choice. Learning about history can help us see what changes we need to make. We can certainly learn something about ourselves. Thanks for the production.
I like Nick's arguments against consumption rooms. Fixing the real problems is important. However I think they are important for changing perceptions in society and humanizing drug users.
Thanks so much for sharing this conversation. I would love to hear what the comments were in the chat around the blind spots from the British context? To offer some thoughts, I would say they include (and not limited to) the inability to name and talk about the atrocities of the British Empire (rooted in denial, guilt, shame, ignorance), the historical and ongoing race and class inequalities, the ongoing perpetuation and complicity/entitlement of modernity/coloniality. I hope that we cultivate the capacity for response/ability - to sit with the trouble - and that we learn how to grieve with, care for, make amends, grow up 🙏
Vanessa has done incredible work, it's impossible to overstate its importance and urgency. And humour! Many of my conversations link to her materials available online and I feel that they will connect more and more as we move forward as individuals, communities, societies and species.
I really appreciate hearing this talk. currently I'm in a book study group on "Hospicing Modernity" but I'm really struggling to read it (well it must be said it's not a book to be "read" it's more a deep medicine to be taken in and that is difficult work) Hearing her present the ideas is really helpful. I think even a couple minutes at a time is very rich.
Oh wow, such a wide-ranging, rich conversation. I appreciated the inclusion of the personal - the clear understanding Vanessa has of her own lineage, her position in that line of ancestors and the both the gifts and challenges it has brought her. I love the invitation to work on what we have inherited from our ancestors, discern what needs to be interrupted/worked through/composed, and what needs to be cherished/developed further and passed down to the future ones. The use of the verb 'hospicing' too. We're not here to add more violence to the world and 'kill off' modernity but hospice it so it has a 'good' death with integrity and we can learn the lessons from its life. And the need for generosity, patience and compassion in mixed group encounters...but not coddling of fragility. And, well, so much more. 🥰 What a delight. Thank you.
I have seen the video feature of Sara Hill's interview with Janis Vaurofakisi's, but not read the book. I think Janis in an excellent way illustrates the image of the book (short story form) and his own perception of our world today, from a historical perspective and what humanity needs to do to avoid the dysfunctional social development the world finds itself in with the current social model. The video strikes me in how similar I am in thoughts and conclusions to Janis Vaurofakisi's about current society and what needs to be done. I myself have written in newspaper articles and Twitter posts about similar needs for change in the last 5 years.
Cool! Very typically inbred academic, but still really interesting. Waiting to hear how someone can relate to/gain something from this if not invested in academic inbreeding. How do we let ✨modernity✨ die with grace? /genuine
Curious how you perceive this to be ‘typical academic inbreeding’ when it seems to me quite embodied and indigenous wisdom in a framework that the modern mind can understand. Perhaps we just have different perspectives but this doesn’t feel at all like overt academia.
It's so true, adoptees voices are never heard and no one seems to be interested in hearing our side of the adoption triangle or how adoption has impacted our lives, the good and the bad.
Some questions: 1. How can there be no inflation when the central bank constantly increases the quantity of money by paying UBI into a citizen's account each month with money created from thin air? 2. If you destroy the capital market, how will firms like car producers get capital for innovations? I know many of them don't innovate; I call these parasitic monopolies, but others do. 3. Why does UBI eliminate the labour market? It liberates it! Even under fully automatised production, somebody has to make economic decisions for the firm. That is labour. 4. Markets are male??? Really??? I never heard such a nonsense since the Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. In past centuries, economist had to ingratiate themselves to the rich and powerful. Today, the leftist economists have no friends but feminists - which leads to the abandonment of logical thinking.
The definition of word slave and the definition of the word terrorist. These are the kind of things people want to stay away from . People are not designed to live in a socialist environment. The idea that people used to worship trees and rivers are over. If I go out in the woods and build a house and plant corn on a 2 acre piece of property that no one owns That's the definition of ownership. Governments do not own property there is no backing to that. A human being has a right to life without permission. Human beings have a right to sell their work without permission. The environment is doing just fine dictators are an issue.
Bravo! So nice to hear someone else say “I don’t have hope, I have faith”. I have goosebumps. We are not masters of nature, she/they can sort themselves out. How that ending emerges and how much suffering arises from it is up to us.
Stephen has been one of the independently minded, sage advisers on the pandemic .. suggesting that if we act cohesively, and with more pragmatic public health messaging, even without a change in medical policy we could and should be in a much better place.
There is no scientific evidence of a global climate emergency. There has been a 10% decline in natural disasters since 2000 (CRED). Normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920. Climate change saved 555,103 lives in England and Wales between 2001 and 2020 (ONS, 2022). This sort of thing is based on nonsense.
He really puts himself out there in presenting a thought dialogue that can fuel socioeconomic enlightment. Few could list that many aspects that contradict for or against as clearly. Seems to me a great thought guide into what balances out things in society economics.
Wow! I really needed to hear this now, it's so relevant to what I'm doing at the moment. Peer support. Empowerment, inclusion and utilising the skills and knowledge of the group to learn and grow and heal together.
How does imperialistic thinking affect the imperialists? The foot soldiers have to be dumb enough to be used as pawns. What do we hear about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations? The Invisible Hand has us all by the throat. But Smith actually wrote 'education' EIGHTY TIMES and 'Invisible Hand' only once. Wealth of Nations is in Project Gutenberg now, you can download it and search it for yourself. The imperialists are lying to us and their own lower classes. In 1776 50% of Brits were illiterate but Adam Smith wrote "read, write and account" multiple times. Notice the "and account" that is never mentioned. Double entry accounting was 300 years old when Smith wrote Wealth of Nations. The United States could have made accounting/finance mandatory in the schools since Sputnik. Has any Western nation done that? But now we have a world of planned obsolescence and consumer technologies that Smith and Marx never imagined. The imperialists say nothing about the depreciation of all of this consumer trash. How much CO2 in atmosphere is the result of unnecessary manufacturing due to planned obsolescence?
It scares me that people don't think a woman sitting on a man's penis until he ejaculates even though he says no, this action is not classed as rape. What a crazy world we live in.
When we don't talk to each other it's because we don't want to know, we want to be comfortable with our beliefs that benefit ourselves and disadvantage others.
When Yanis talks of exchange value and real value. he is describing the situation that has existed since the late 1970's in banks such as Citibank that introduced the concept of transactional banking into their operation worldwide and took away at a stroke the notion of real value. And here we are having ended Bretton Woods and Clinton ending Glass - Steagall resulting in open slather globally, no real value in reality and socialism for the biggest banks worldwide and their mates the oligarchs and elites in mega corporations. The next step sometime in the next 10 to 15 years is the serious shortage of food and clean water in the global north accompanied by rioting, violence, breakdown in societies, rape and death. And this is only the Global North. As for the poor and vulnerable of this planet... What are we?
Autism,asbergers,early onset dimentia ,alzheimers were extremely rare diseases,now it is rampant. The big elephant on the table isn't even whispered by people. Why,and what are the true factors driving thease epidemics. I beleive that answer is really quite simple and quite obvious. I'll give u a hint why don't u ask monsanto,bayer,Monsanto,, chemical big pharma union carbide which are all petrochemical companies and then ask yourself another question, where have the for profit medical insurance companies, and labs that cover eachothers backs in the name of profits.ill tell u where they are at raking money in hand over fist and telling you the causes as with cancer are unjnown!
