New Culture Forum - New Festival!

Welcome to a new literary festival bringing authors, ideas and audiences together. Uncensored. Uncancelled.

It started in my kitchen. Or did it? Maybe it began in some small way when my other half and I no longer felt welcome at the infamous Hay Festival - an event we had attended many, many times. Or maybe it began its gestation as the New Culture Forum’s Locals membership scheme got off the ground. For information, the New Culture Forum began as a London based think tank in 2006 and went onto develop its popular YouTube channel. More recently, it has instigated its Locals groups where people all over the country can join for friendship, culture and campaigning, without fear of cancel culture. For me, it was not long after joining when the ideas began to flow. How do we engage with culture now that the usual outlets and events were closing to more small c conservative types?

As it happens, our house and garden are strewn with mementos from our Hay days. There are the ubiquitous books of course, then there are those books where we took a punt on a talk that ‘sounded interesting’ and got a signed book after meeting the author. We have a hand carved wooden head hanging in the hallway (which nobody ever seems to notice) that we bought from a local sculptor. We have some ceramics made by local artists, prints, paintings, and even plant pots we got from the local pottery in Hay. Our poppies that flower every year were gifts from our guest house family nearby in south Wales. We enjoyed local walks as well as browsing books. There were chats with locals, including artists, makers, and assorted British eccentrics. Now, at home, all around us are reminders of a bygone time. We know, without any formal announcement, that much of this world is now closed to us because we are, shall we say, not in the ‘woke’ club.

So, when my husband and I were riffing in the kitchen about ideas for the New Culture Forum’s ‘Locals’ initiative, the idea of a literary festival was for us, the most pertinent and something really needed in the current climate. And at the festival, it was immensely gratifying to hear speaker after speaker make the same point at many of the events. Such a festival brings together authors, ideas and audiences in discussion; it offers a chance to meet authors, engage and get signed copies of their books. It is set in a celebratory context, one of enjoyment as well as thought.

I muse about the kitchen context as I recall the oft-cited legend of the Hay festival was that it started in the Florence family kitchen in the 1990s, Peter Florence being its long-time director. The coincidence is richly satisfying. What better way to move on from the grief of losing a treasured high spot in the British cultural calendar than to begin a new, more open, organically diverse and welcome version. (The irony of that last sentence is not lost on the reader, I am sure).

Perhaps the festival began at an event to which the Locals organisers had been invited, where I had been chatting to Peter Whittle, the director of the New Culture Forum. I was curious to learn about his own ideas for developing the cultural aspects of the Locals movement. However, it turns out that he was curious about my ideas. To his credit, Peter spotted the potential immediately. Within two days of our follow up lunchtime meeting, he had set the wheels in motion. Fast forward seven or eight months, and we found ourselves at a sellout event in the heart of London with fabulous guests, speakers and a wonderful audience. It was finally happening.

As I sipped wine at the festival reception, it occurred to me that one of the powerful aspects of the Locals initiative was the capillary action that is possible. All over the country, amazing talent and energy lies waiting to be harnessed. The Locals idea is just the vehicle to tap into it. This was just one idea to come to fruition. Other organisers and group members have taken up their own initiatives to develop all kinds of ideas and campaigns. If you are based in Britain, and you feel this is something you might be interested to join, do check out the New Culture Forum website for further details.

For about seven months, I assisted festival director Philip Kiszely in the planning and organising, along with fellow organiser, Bruce Goodwin of the Beaconsfield group and Policy Platform Director for the Great British PAC. We were supported by the NCF team, and of course, Peter Whittle himself. I am so pleased that the festival was such a success, that people enjoyed it, and a new avenue for discussion and thought has opened up for those of us who loathe ‘woke’ cancel culture and want to celebrate human thought and creativity regardless of the colour of a person’s skin, age or sex. The cultural fightback is underway with a positive retort to the destructive and childish woke world in which we have been miserably engulfed. This is not the first, and it will not be the last reinvention of one of those institutions that have been marched through and trodden into irrelevance. We are surely witnessing a cultural renaissance. Regardless of when it began, it has begun. Do join us next time!

(Photos by Stuart Mitchell)

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