Festival 2023 - Changing Times: FlipSide @ 10
Saturday 23rd September 2023
Yes, the times they certainly are a-changin’, and everywhere we can see it, but maybe the old questions are just dressing in new clothes: what really matters, what does justice look like, and equality and value? Where is home, and belonging? How do we live in balance with each other and the planet? Can art and culture help us in our search?
From poetry to painting, from the hearth to health, and from energy to emigration, this year’s Flipside Festival checks its own pulse as it enters double figures and asks you to join us in its investigations with significant anniversaries from the last 75 years as its prompts, and a constellation of energising guests from across the arts, literature, medicine and social action.
Hosted in a strikingly converted barn, in a beautiful Suffolk setting, it promises to be a day of informing, inspiring and illuminating encounters. With an intimate salon environment to enhance the experience, please do book your tickets at your earliest convenience. Tickets are £80 + booking fee.
On the evening before the Saturday festival, musicroom will present violinist and composer Ruby Colley.
Full Schedule
10.10am Welcome and introduction; 10 years of FlipSIde, from Gareth Evans and Genevieve Christie.
10.30am Pablo Neruda, Allende and Chile, with Adam Feinstein and Diana Quick
50 years to the day since the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet died, we revisit Pablo Neruda’s remarkable legacy in life and letters with his English language biographer Adam Feinstein. One of the 20th century’s most important and internationalist writers, Neruda’s life cannot be separated from the fate of his nation, which saw the elected progressive leader Salvador Allende deposed and killed just 11 days earlier in a coup that heralded the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Acclaimed actor Diana Quick will read from Neruda’s poems.
11.30am You’ve Got a Green New Deal, with Ann Pettifor
50 years on from the publication of the hugely influential Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered by German-born British economist E.F. Schumacher, it’s clear we again need fresh thinking about the relationship between people, production and profits. Economist, campaigner and author Ann Pettifor is one of the most important thinkers on the urgent necessity to forge a new economic relationship with the earth. Her most recent book, The Case for the Green New Deal, offers a ‘greenprint’ for a more sustainable future.
12.30pm We’ve Got the Power! with Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell
They’ve re-established a vodka empire, created an Olympic pop-up book production line, literally exploded neighbourhood debt and are now turning their North London street into a solar power station. With Ann Pettifor as one of their presiding informants, film-maker Dan Edelstyn and artist Hilary Powell will reveal how it is possible to take back control in the most life-affirming, inclusive and democratic way possible, all while sleeping in a double-bed on your own roof.
Lunch
2.40pm Fifty Years after Picasso, with John-Paul Stonard
The artist who became his surname, and shorthand for art itself; the artist of his century; Picasso has become a historic monument, part of the landscape of art history. But what of Picasso now? What has been the legacy of his life and work, fifty years after his death? Is he still relevant? What does his art say to us now? John-Paul Stonard, art historian and author of the epic Creation: Art since the Beginning, will deliver one of his renowned illustrated presentations, giving a personal view of Picasso and his legacy.
3.40pm Just Say Yes to the NHS, with Penny Campling and Gabriel Weston
75 years since it was born, the NHS is not in great health. It’s not just about its age; it is threatened on all sides by larger forces. Its continued survival is as much about the state of the body politic as it is about wards and medicine. Hear honest prognoses for the NHS’s prospects from two practitioners who know it from the inside out: author (Don't Turn Away, stories of troubled minds in fractured times), psychiatrist and psychotherapist Penny Campling; and author (Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story), surgeon and television presenter Gabriel Weston.
4.40pm I Could Read the Sky, with Timothy O’Grady
25 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, the relationship between Ireland and the UK remains as complex as ever. Centuries of cultural and social proximity are, nowhere more poignantly exemplified than in Irish migration to Britain. Often ignored, despite their huge contribution to their new country, the migrant is both a mythical and marginalised figure. Acclaimed Irish-American writer Timothy O’Grady’s now classic book beautifully realises the interior life of such figures and is reissued this year in a new expanded edition.
5.30pm Closing Discussion
6pm Drinks
Gareth Evans and Chris Maloney programmed this year’s edition, alongside the Flipside Festival Trustees. Chris Maloney and Monica Petzal host the event, and Gareth Evans hosts the day. John Christie designed the 2023 identity. Matt Roberts is Technical Director. Robbie Maloney is the Communications Manager.