PODCAST Levity, trees and the shape of the festival. A conversation with Pippa Evans
The Realisation Festival is five years old, so how is it shaping up? What ways best describe the gathering? And also, what of its distinctive coupling of music and improvisation with ideas and the challenges of today?
Read moreIntroducing the Realisation Podcast
The new Realisation Festival Podcast has been launched!
Read moreThe festival and activist pressure. Tell me more.
Activist groups are attempting to establish a connection between the festival and the ecological plight of Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland. The festival organising team recognises the value of activism when it is grounded in sound understanding and intentionality. However, on reflection, this current campaign is based on a misunderstanding of the festival, a misrepresentation of the predicament of the lough, and it reduces a complex multidimensional predicament to simplistic solutions in a way that risks compounding the problem.
Read moreWhy do we have small groups at Realisation?
Small groups are the beating heart of the Realisation Festival. Â When designing the festival, thinking about how we might help people un-imagine and re-learn, we wanted to create spaces for listening, reflecting and discussing. Â The talks and workshops provide varied and stimulating content, there is plenty of unscheduled time for reflection, it is the daily small group meeting that creates the chance to integrate, discuss and play with the ideas that germinate during the festival.
Read moreYou Can’t Be Serious!? by Pippa Evans
The Realisation Festival is something quite special. 150 people, all gathered together to reflect on where we are in the world, personally, collectively, politically and so on and so forth. And it is a deep and reflective time and gosh are we going to end up being all earnest all weekend, wringing our hands and self-flagellating?
Read moreMark Vernon on the Soul
This year, 2024, the Realisation Festival is focused on the soul. Most will have an intuition that soulfulness matters. Many will go a step further and actively seek ways of attending to the soul. But what might be meant by this simultaneously crucial but elusive aspect of ourselves and life in all its fullness?
Read moreMore Thoughts on Difference, by Mark Vernon
The overarching theme for Realisation 2023 is Unlearning and Reimagining Difference. So here are a few ideas on types of difference that might seed your thoughts, or prompt an awareness of more types overlooked below.
Read morePippa Evans on Improvising Difference
The scene opened and two improvisers began the show. They hadn’t looked at each other when the lights had come up, and when they did to their horror, one of them was putting X-rays on a Lightbox and the other was frying something in a pan.
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