FlipSide Festival 2022
Saturday 17th September 2022
Covid-19 briefly pressed pause on travel, but the world has never been in greater motion than it is now.
From trade to tourism, bird migration, the perennial nature of pilgrimage, and mass movement due to conflict, climate collapse or economic need, movement is central to human and non-human life on earth.
In an intimate converted barn, in a beautiful Suffolk setting, it promises to be a day of informing, inspiring and illuminating encounters.
With limited attendance to enhance the experience, book your tickets
On the evening before the Saturday festival, musicroom will present German experimental musician, composer and improviser Hannes Buder at Yew Tree Farm as part of his European Tour. Find out more and book tickets
Full Schedule
10.20am Welcome and introduction from Gareth Evans
10.30am To Be a Pilgrim with Justin Butcher and Victoria Preston
Walking towards an understanding, acceptance or a resolution: Pilgrimage has been central to faith, culture and civilisation for millennia. Ranging across time and place, Victoria Preston's We Are Pilgrims investigates this crucial human pursuit while writer, actor and activist Justin Butcher relates the timely and transformative journey he made on foot from London to Jersualem in support of Palestinian rights and justice for all across the Middle East.
11.30am Exile with Will Atkins and Julia Blackburn
No person is an island but sometimes they are exiled to one: Exiles, William Atkins' astute study of the forced removal of political undesirables tracks three radical and remarkable lives. Meanwhile, the lasting effects of displacement are tracked across the Karoo Region of South Africa in Julia Blackburn's exploration of the lands, lives, language and losses of the /Xam.
12.30pm Refugee Tales with David Herd, Pious Keku and Chris Maloney
Everyone seeking refuge has a story to tell, including as part of their asylum claim, where it gets a range of responses from interest, empathy, and concern to outright disbelief. Through reflections on therapeutic practice, activism, and lived experience, we will consider the importance of sharing, hearing and understanding the realities of displacement, and think about the importance of story in campaigns for change in public attitudes, policy and law.
Lunch
2.40pm Migration Paths with Helen MacDonald
Poet and writer Helen Macdonald is renowned for her astute and intensely personal writing (in H is for Hawk and Vesper Flights) on birds' behaviour and how we ascribe meaning to our avian cohabitants. Now she considers the nature and mysteries of bird migration, alongside the challenges posed by human activity to this far from fully understood, yet remarkable undertaking.
3.40pm Routes and Roots with Xiaolu Guo and Vron Ware
Sometimes the journeys we make lead us somewhere new, or to a revisioned sense of where we are. In Once Upon a Time in the East, writer and film-maker Xiaolu Guo tracks her life-changing odyssey from 1970s village China to 21st Century London while writer and photographer Vron Ware leaves that latter metropolis to reimagine the English 'rural' in Return of a Native: Learning from the Land.
4.40pm Life Journeys with Hugh Brody and Gareth Evans
If we know how to look, the so-called 'edges' can teach us a lot about what is central to experience and the meaning of a life. In Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood to the Arctic, anthropologist, writer and film-maker Hugh Brody considers the lessons of place and what is not, what cannot be said, in a memory mapping of his years in England, Israel, Africa and the Canadian North.
6pm Drinks
Flipside 2022 is programmed by Gareth Evans and Chris Maloney