Whilst new public and private investment nature restoration is welcome it risks sparking a new gold rush. Private and corporate interests are buying up land for rewilding and reforestation projects with little consideration for the impacts on local communities or wider issues like rising land prices and the loss of high quality farmland to low quality woodland planting. This panel discussion chaired by Mark Walton from Shared Assets will explore the risks and opportunities this flood of new investment in nature presents in the struggle for a more just land system.

Big tech monopolies continue to increase their influence over our lives. Join us to find out about the community based alternative – Community Tech – where community businesses are driving innovation by creating and owning their own tech solutions to meet their specific needs, the need of their community and peers, and which aligns with their values.

This session will introduce Community Tech, the early adopters, what’s next, and encourage a discussion to consider how we can tap into more community innovation around technology.

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Fergus is the Digital Innovation Manager at Power to Change, a charitable trust that backs community businesses. Fergus has been with Power to Change for 6 years and is currently leading on Community Tech and Digital Transformation. Outside of work, Fergus is helping to build community resilience in his local area.

Councillor Asima Shaikh is the Executive Member for Inclusive Economy and Jobs at Islington Council.

Polly Robbins is a member of Outlandish, a London-based worker cooperative that builds websites and data tools for social impact. Outlandish reinvests all surplus into supporting radical technology and developing the co-operative economy. For the last 5 years Polly has been running SPACE4 - a workspace that supports these endeavours and boosts tech skills. SPACE4 has been spearheading Cooperate Islington, currently one of the UKs biggest projects to support the co-op economy and Community Wealth Building. Polly will be talking about how this project has developed and what it might mean for the new economy in coming years.

Communities across the country are finding new uses for empty historic buildings in their town centres. Hear about how the Architectural Heritage Fund is helping groups take ownership of heritage assets to create new community space and reinvigorate high streets. Two urban projects will share their experience of acquiring old buildings, and the process of bringing them back to life – the House of Annetta project at 25 Princelet Street, London, led by Assemble Studio, restoring a vacant 18th century townhouse to create a new social centre to support those working for housing justice and land reform; and a project led by Cliftonville Cultural Space, formed to save and convert a former synagogue in Margate into a cross-cultural multi-arts hub.

Panel discussion, introduced and led by Laura Williams, Programme Officer, Architectural Heritage Fund.

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Portrait photographer Pete Millson will be shooting this year's festival and then hosting a live projected exhibition on Thursday in the barn stage.

Pete has six of his portraits in the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection and is always on the look out for significant visual moments that confer dignity on the people in his photographs.

Our personal and collective experiences are inextricably linked to wider social and economic structures. Join a brief and confidential one-to-one personal support and solidarity session, available to anyone who may be currently experiencing poorer mental health or wellbeing.

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Note: These sessions do not provide emergency/crisis services or ongoing therapy.

Sally Zlotowitz is a Community & Clinical Psychologist and is currently the CEO of Art Against Knives and the Co-founder of Psychologists for Social Change.

Put on a state-of-the-art mixed reality headset and experience a simulation that integrates into your surroundings and helps alleviate pain. Expanding perception and playfully hijacking attention, Easel helps users transgress pain. Easel has been developed for Varjo XR-3, the most advanced Mixed Reality headset the current market offers, featuring a human-eye resolution display, with unparalleled hand and eye tracking.

At Animorph's monthly 'Research Lake' sessions, workers investigate medical applications of Mixed Reality. We found that immersive and contextual experiences are well-documented in helping people who suffer from chronic pain.

Find us during the festival to try Easel, and experience the future of Mixed Reality.

An interactive rap workshop where you'll write and perform your own verses within groups.
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Learn transferable lyric writing skills and embrace your inner rapper. We'll also be giving some lucky individuals/groups the opportunity to perform on Wednesday evening of the festival!

How can community organisations lead the just transition? There is huge commitment from communities across the country to step up climate action. But it is not always clear what this means in practice and how climate focused activities can be resourced. Join Locality and friends to hear different ways community organisations are putting the climate crisis at the centre of their missions and how to overcome obstacles to becoming community climate leaders.

The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, reflecting on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, saw the historical period of the 1990s as inaugurating "the End of History" - an epoch in which all major political questions were thought to be solved, and politics was essentially a process of "good governance" rather than changing society. In recent years, though, we have seen this settled state of affairs overturned across the world, not least by Brexit and Trump in 2016, and then by the global Covid shutdowns, and the prospect of global conflict in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If the End of History was about boring politics, this certainly isn't the case any more. How should we understand the ways politics in the UK and beyond has changed in recent years - and why did this happen? In this session, we look to provide an account of how we exited this "End of History" period and what that means for democracy, the Left, and class at the post-2016 period we can call "the End of the End of History".

Medium-intensity cardio workout to a punk and ska playlist.

The Black & Green Ambassadors Programme exists to connect, empower and celebrate diverse leadership and community action on environmental issues in Bristol and beyond.

Join this year’s Ambassadors Ella, Miss Divine, Rosina and Ruth to learn more about the programme and join the conversation on challenging perceptions, creating new opportunities and working towards ensuring the environmental movement is inclusive and representative of all communities.

This session, by Jessica Prendergrast, one of the co-directors of Onion Collective CIC will explore the reality of building a new economic model in Watchet, Somerset, following the launch in September 2021 of their flagship East Quay project.

Framed within their work on Attachment Economics, which examines three forms of connection that flow from community - attachments to place, people and through time - the session will unpick the experience, ambitions, and obstacles of community enterprise over more than a decade of practice.

We all breathe over 20,000 times a day, but when was the last time you paid attention to a single breath?

Changing the way you breathe can change the way you think and feel. The session by Sara from Breathways provides an opportunity to find your balance through your breath. Relax and destress in the moment and learn valuable tools to support your wellbeing, both in the workplace and at home, supporting you to be happy, healthy, and resilient. Breathwork is a highly effective tool to proactively manage stress and reduce anxiety, as scientific studies have shown that it can reduce cortisol, the stress hormone, by up to 20% after just one session and by up to 50% when repeated regularly. The techniques that Sara teaches are simple and simply transformational.

Come along and give it a go and do bring something to sit on.

The Roundabout Swing Band bring the classic sounds of 30s and 40s Paris into the modern era. Led by accordion and violin, the band cook up a sizzling selection of the finest manouche swing, hot club jazz, musette waltz and gypsy bossa. Backed by a super-tight rhythm section of guitar and double bass, the band will have you swinging along in a flash!

Part hip hop production team / part live band / part ever growing collective of musicians and vocalists based in Manchester, UK – The Mouse Outfit continue to bring their brand of jazz influenced boom bap to the masses. In the past decade, they have worked with over 85 musicians, producers and vocalists in the studio and on the stage under The Mouse Outfit banner. To this day, they have remained independent and retained their DIY hip hop sensibilities, self releasing three studio albums and an album of remixes over the last five years. A prolific music video production team – The Mouse Outfit  has garnered over 15 million views on their Youtube channel and the live show has performed in 15 countries across the globe. The funk fuelled 8-piece live band currently features 3 vocalists: Superlative, Karis Jade &, OneDa, alongside Luke Flowers (Cinematic Orchestra), one of the best drummers in the UK.

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Saunas originated in Finland many centuries ago and are commonly found in houses across Scandinavia and Northern Europe. Now you can have the Finnish sauna experience in the UK with Saunair’s traditional barrel sauna.

Sauna, meaning ‘bath’ or ‘bathhouse’, provides a way to cleanse your body through perspiration as a result of the Löyly – the heat and steam that surrounds you in the sauna as water is poured on the hot rocks.

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