IDEAS TO SHAPE THE FUTURE

In our increasingly divided world, free expression must be guarded, and creativity treasured. As our digital lives become further dictated by algorithms and echo chambers, it is increasingly important to break out into the real world and build more spaces for discovery, discourse, and dreaming.

Writers and artists are central. The shared experience built between writer, reader, artist, and audience, allows a collective imagination to thrive and empathy to blossom. In our cultural world, generations blend, borders are crossed, and walls collapse, as we imagine possibilities outside our own experiences.

Our need for cultural spaces will only grow. Spaces where great minds won’t always think alike, where imaginations roam freely, and where solutions to the biggest issues of our times can be explored without prejudice.

And this is especially important for the next generation who enter a world so different to the one we did. The pace of change may be fast and our challenges greater often than we can imagine, but with a wealth of human creativity to explain, examine and debate our potential can be limitless.

It won’t always be easy. Over the past 36 years of The Hay Festival, we have seen how writers, thinkers, and artists have been attacked and punished for daring the edges of imagination. It is our duty to guard them, to welcome their challenge, and to continue dreaming of and working for a better world.

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