… and some of the most inspiring things I heard that I couldn’t film were

Jude Kelly CBE (Theatre Director / WOW foundation) said: “When we are divided we rally around stories to explore and remind ourselves of who we are”

Sir Anthony Seldon stated: “If politicians hearts were more open; which culture helps with, we’d all be better off. Love, soul, culture when properly done puts us all in touch with ourselves.”

Caroline Norbury from Creative England expressed: “Culture is becoming much more of a battleground with winners and losers rather than a space for a conversation about what’s important”, but ultimately “we’re communicative and conversational creatures” and culture is vital to create that space for conversation.

Musician Imogen Heap talked about how the distancing of the last few years and technological changes lead to the challenge “How do you seek out your people?” in this new post pandemic world?

Annamarie Phelps said: “Those in leadership positions right now have excelled in the current system. Those we need in leadership positions to create a new system come from outside those leadership groups.”

Stephanie Brobbey of the amazing Good Ancestor Movement, is exploring George Monbiot’s suggestion to pursue “Private sufficiency and public luxury” because “we’re swimming upstream trying to redistribute wealth in a culture which not only assumes the opposite (accumulation) but incentivises that. Wealth concentration is a public health issue. Wealth needs to keep flowing”

My overriding takeaways were two things:

1: As momentum of actions and commitments for positive change build, frameworks and structures for making sure they actually happen become increasingly vital, and it’s great to see that starting to be realised.

2: We need to get better at voluntarily sharing power. The systems still bias towards those with the power setting the vision and the pace and that can be both effective and also limiting. How do we distribute power more broadly to speed up change?

Thanks to the amazing folks I met including Steve Cole, Jannine Barron FRSA and of course old friends Matt Hocking, Andy Middleton, Stuart Pickles, Charlotte Sewell and Helen Taylor and thanks to John O’Brien MBE ‘Anthropist’ and team for organising.