Sedbergh Festival of Ideas 2007

Sedbergh's first Festival of Ideas was held during the weekend of 20 to 22 July 2007. There were 30 speakers presenting a range of challenging opinions and experiences. Subject areas included philosophy, politics, history, religion, social development and walking. The presentations all had a respectable number of participants in their audience and included dialogue and feedback from those present.

What is a Festival of Ideas?

Sedbergh is not the first place to host a Festival of Ideas. Brisbane in Australia held its seventh in 2007, Adelaide its fifth; there have been three in Bristol, and in November 2006 BBC Radio 3 broadcast a Festival of Ideas from a number of locations in Liverpool.

The idea of a Festival of Ideas in Sedbergh is that experts and those of strong views in their particular fields are given the opportunity to present these views to an uninvited audience, an audience which anyone who chooses may be part of, and can then engage in dialogue with members of that audience in order to stimulate thinking and discussion on all sides.

Why Sedbergh?

Sedbergh is England’s Book Town and it follows that Sedbergh will include a fair number of people who read and have opinions. But it is not just that. As the Festival of Ideas demonstrated most vividly, Sedbergh includes a sizeable number of people for whom a Festival of Ideas was a most welcome event; people of wide-ranging views and opinions who were keen to hear the views and opinions of others and to use these views as a springboard to discussion later.

Those who chaired the presentations were as one in estimating that about half the people in their audiences were from Sedbergh and locality.

And what next?

Sedbergh’s next Festival of Ideas takes place from 17th to 20th July 2008. Why not sign up to our mailing list now and we'll send you further news about Sedbergh and it's Festivals as it becomes available.

The talks

Each of the 25 presentations in the 2007 Sedbergh Festival of Ideas is described briefly below, by someone who was present at it.

Philosophy

“Philosophy in the Modern Word” – Sir Anthony Kenny

Sir Anthony Kenny has recently published the fourth and last in a series of books on the history of philosophy. He discussed who were his favourite philosophers and why and wondered where philosophy might be heading, given that he could not really pick a philosopher of stature from those of recent times. Questions from the audience asked what made a philosopher stand out and where this genius might have come from.

David Collier

“Widening the Audience for Philosophy” – George MacDonald Ross

George MacDonald Ross has been a lecturer of philosophy at Leeds University for over 30 years and has witnessed the important swing away from the obsession with linguistics in British twentieth-century philosophy towards more classically orientated concerns with genuine philosophical problems, especially in the field of ethics. As a teacher and philosopher George is more concerned with the process of doing philosophy than producing abstruse and opaque academic papers, read only by a very small number of like-minded academics. His approach is one of encouragement for the public at large, and especially children in schools, to engage with the process of philosophical discussion and enquiry, and he starts from a deep conviction that that is not only where the roots of philosophy began (in ancient Greece) but where its future lies. True to his convictions the second half of George’s session was given over to questions and debate.

David Smith

“The Future of Humanity” – Nick Bostram

Unfortunately for the many who were hoping to attend, Nick Bostram’s presentation could not take place as he was travelling from Oxford by train and on this particular weekend severe flooding had closed the railway line.

“The Philosophy of R G Collingwood” – James Connelly

James Connolly, recently appointed Professor of Politics at Hull, gave a fascinating lecture on our “local“ philosopher, R.G.Collingwood of Coniston, whose father was a friend of John Ruskin. They lived near to Brantwood, where the young Robin Collingwood claimed to have been influenced by “the old man along the road”. Described as “one of the leading minds of the twentieth century”, Collingwood was specially interested in the link between philosophy and history. He was also a well-known archaeologist of Roman Britain. One of his big questions concerned what it is to understand something historically, to get into the mind of the historian – or indeed of the scientist or aesthete. Collingwood stressed the need to ask the precise question if you want the right answer and the fact that all thought is for the sake of action. He also urged that we need to properly understand the past in order to understand the present, including our role within it. Collingwood did not have a long life but, as Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, made a considerable contribution to twentieth century thinking.

George Handley

“The Meaning of Life” – John Cottingham

It was gratifying to hear that there is more to the meaning of life than the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s answer of 42! John Cottingham, professor of philosophy at Reading University, engaged an appreciative audience with his threefold path to happiness and fulfilment. John’s contention is that to be happy one needs to develop one’s talents in order to gain a real sense of achievement; to develop one’s moral character and aspire to a life of virtue; and to develop a sense of personal meaning through experience of the transcendent. John drew on a number of philosophers’ teachings to illustrate his thesis, and his lecture was both appropriately challenging and engaging.

David Smith

“A Journey with William Hazlitt” – Jonathan Rée

Report awaited.

Politics

“Personal History and Politics” – David Craig and Colin Barnett

Report awaited.

“Blair: the Record; Brown: the Prospects” – Panel discussion

Professor Sir Bernard Crick, Emeritus Professor at Birkbeck College, Ruth Dudley Edwards, writer, John Harris, journalist and Greg Rosen, Fabian Society each gave their assessment of Blair’s record. There was general agreement that the positive achievements of his period in office, which included the minimum wage, increased investment in schools and the health service and the resolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland, should not be undervalued simply because of the antagonism felt by many towards Blair as a result of the Iraq War. Some feelings of optimism were expressed about a future with Brown as Prime Minister, following some of his initial pronouncements, but the jury was very much out. Ruth Dudley Edwards was more cynical in her view, which extended to all politicians. She considered them to be predominantly lawyers and others, who had never had what she defined as a ‘proper job’ and therefore were incompetent to run anything. A lively discussion prompted by audience questions and comments followed until time called a halt.

Hilary Hodge

History

“Old Technology” – David Edgerton

Professor David Edgerton put forward the proposition from a historical perspective that much of what we read about as new technology and globalisation is hype. Much is not new at all; much of it fails and is of no long-term significance; many aspects of business have been global for decades if not centuries; and many of the changes that have made a big difference to the way society has developed are based upon unglamorous-sounding machines that have been developed over a long timeframe. The audience asked about service industry and systems and one member of the audience suggested that the office computer is really just an implementation of eighteenth-century bureaucracy.

David Collier

“Brainwash” – Dominic Streatfield

Dominic Streatfield told the fascinating story of the connection between psychology and espionage: plans to use hypnotism to program agents to execute orders without being aware they were doing so; the development of ‘truth drugs’ to get enemies to divulge their secrets; and the cold-war scare about ‘brainwashing’. All of them turned out to be profoundly flawed, but that did little to blunt the enthusiasm of the spymasters.

Jonathan Rée

“The Culture of the Viennese Coffee House” – Tag Gronberg

Report awaited.

Religion

“The Church in Question” – Giles Fraser

Giles Fraser is Rector of St Mary’s Parish Church in Putney at one of the major crossroads of the contemporary world and of English ecclesiastical history. Dr Fraser is in a long tradition of ‘turbulent priests’ stretching back to the ‘Putney Debates’ of the English Civil War. He is a distinguished academic, prolific writer and broadcaster and a liberal theologian who refuses to shy away from addressing the perplexing issues of modern life. His talk in Sedbergh focused on some of the major challenges facing the Church today. He discussed the tension that now exists between the Church of England, rooted in concepts of tolerance and inclusion, and of the Worldwide Anglican Communion, sharply divided by doctrinaire views. This phenomenon of the ‘Empire fighting back’ was he suggested, not altogether desirable.

Michael Leigh

“The Jewish Idea of the Good Life” – Lionel Blue

Rabbi Lionel Blue is always good to listen to. His entertaining style, packed with anecdotes, is familiar to so many, and people crowded into the marquee for his lecture. The Rabbi began with the statement that Rabbinic Judaism is in a mess. He then took us back to the small college in Jerusalem founded in 70 A.D. where a lot of thinking went on about the “good life”. Jews were urged to find a life that would be endurable under the worst imaginable conditions, something which was to prove essential to them as history unfurled. We have to learn to express things in comedy because the world itself is so full of tragedy, to use humour to compensate for the gloom that surrounds us in life. HUMOUR is an essential ingredient of the good life. And so is WORK. This he described as a “panacea against tragedy”, the great therapy for depression and anxiety. A huge time-leap brought us to the French Revolution which emancipated the Jews, enabling them to re-join society and to produce a golden age of Jewish intellect with such figures as Kafka, Proust, Einstein and Marx. It now became a question for the Jewish people of coming to terms with tolerance and acceptance – until, of course, the horrors of the Holocaust, when the prayers of the Jewish people in the cattle-trucks on the way to the concentration camps did not bring the reprieve they prayed for. Prayers are not always answered in the way we would wish, but fundamental to the Jewish idea of the good life is the notion of turning each problem into a plus. That way, as Lionel Blue at the age of 77 reminded us, life can continue to get better and better.

George Handley

“The Gaia Thesis” – Stephen Harding

Report awaited.

“Faith in a World of Post-Secularism” – Panel discussion

Giles Fraser, Lionel Blue, Stephen Bates, Richard Holloway – Report awaited.

Social Development

“From BBC to a Bakery in the Hills” – Andrew Whitley

Andrew Whitley told of his life as a Russian specialist at the BBC World Service who had an interest in producing his own food and decided to move from London to Cumbria in order to set up a bakery using high-quality local ingredients; the Village Bakery at Melmerby. He told of the struggle to get this established and his journey to Russia to get a recipe and starter for sourdough. Andrew now works with the Soil Association to improve the quality of British bread.

David Collier

“The Return of the Favourite Yorkshire Dales Schoolteacher” – Gervase Phinn

Report awaited.

“The Role of Conversation in the Public Realm” – Sam Jones

Sam Jones works for the think tank Demos, where he specialises in cultural studies. He has become increasingly concerned with the impact of technologies and the shifts in social mores on the place of conversation, particularly in the public realm. Sam’s contention is that we are unwittingly drifting towards a politics in which a real meeting of minds is being undermined for the quick sound-bite and facile comment arising, in part, from the declining quality of conversations in the private realm, driven by the ubiquity of email, text messaging and the isolated world of MP3 man. Sam’s lecture quickly gave rise to a lively conversation, not only between Sam and his audience but also between members of the audience, which did not detract from his position but rather stimulated the audience to aspire to the depth of conversation he proposes.

David Smith

“Justice and Jail: The Reprieve Organisation” – Nick Yarris

Report awaited.

“England in Particular” – Sue Clifford

Report awaited.

“Carbon Cycle Talk” – Kate Rawles

Report awaited.

Walking

“The Kinder Scout Trespass” – Roly Smith

Roly Smith described the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932 and the reasoning of the young men who undertook it, who in addition to wanting to provide access to open spaces in Britain that was equivalent to that enjoyed by people in other European countries, were poor and politically motivated. They were given excessive punishments for their trespass by a tribunal dominated by landowners and it is likely that this, while unpleasant for them, produced a cause célèbre that hastened the opening up of footpaths and eventually moorland to all. The audience raised issues of where we go from here in access to the countryside.

David Collier

“Travelling Gaze: Ruskin and Landscape” – Keith Hanley

Report awaited.

“Medieval Pilgrimage” – Sir John Ure

Sir John Ure was a distinguished career diplomat. He held a series of ambassadorial appointments in sensitive places at difficult times. When he retired he began writing books, which have been published to critical acclaim. They are mainly on travel themes, and the latest of them, ‘Medieval Pilgrimages’, was the subject of his talk in Sedbergh. Sir John discussed the variety of motives of pilgrims, the changing popularity of the great destinations, and the peculiarities of pilgrim behaviour en-route. His talk reflected his written style, which is elegant, precise, thorough and well researched. He managed to weave together into a colourful cavalcade the shades of spirituality, adventure, secular politics and mysticism that characterised medieval pilgrimages.

Michael Leigh

“The Wordsworths and Walking” – Simon Bainbridge

Report awaited.