19 April to 30 May: Festival of Debate 2022

The Festival of Debate, coordinated by Opus Independents, is a non-partisan politics festival run in collaboration with over 50 organisations and featuring over 150 individual speakers. 

This year's Festival of Debate runs from 19 April to 30 May 2022. 

The Festival has 3 strands, exploring 3 core questions:

Climate - How can we respond to the climate crisis and biosphere collapse?

Inequality - How should our society overcome inequalities of race, gender, sexuality, income and disability?

Democracy - How can we reimagine our citizenship and our democracy?

The Festival of Debate Team write in their programme:

A better world is possible. But you don’t need us to tell you that.

You also know that doing something about the problems we all face is urgent; that something deep down is wrong with how we treat each other and the planet we all live on.

But what you don’t hear often enough is how powerful you are, where you are. That you don’t need to live in Westminster or be filthy rich to make change—in fact, that’s often not where real change starts. You don’t hear enough that, together, we are going to turn this ship around.

This festival is about the ship we all sail on. It’s about discovering and celebrating the differences between us. It’s about finding new perspectives, gifts and ideas that carry hope, that give us all a sense of possibility for change in time, and for the betterment of each other.

This festival is about sharing viewpoints and experiences. It's about hearing uncomfortable truths and finding new paths forward. It's about making connections, organising and working together to be the change we want to see, where we want to see it.

As you move through the Festival of Debate this year, whether in online or physical spaces, we hope you enjoy each other and the common ground you find. We hope you realise power together. We hope you name problems and revel in the solutions. We hope you are kind to one another.

We hope you act.

View the full programme (pdf) here.

Join in, online and in person - tickets for events during the Festival of Debate are available at: https://festivalofdebate.com

Find out more about Opus Independents and get involved at: https://weareopus.org