Stir to Action Festival – A Playground for the New Economy

Join our playground for the new economy in a beautiful green field in Somerset!

The Stir to Action Festival will be a unique three days of inspiring conversations, participatory theatre, virtual reality experiences, live podcasts, interactive workshops, idea surgeries, live crowdfunding, sustainable food, craft beer, and, of course, live music!

Tickets

You can buy a 3-day festival ticket, or one day tickets for 16,17, or 18 July. We are also offering a limited number of glamping options.

What to Expect

• Making the Digital Economy our Own: Platform Co-ops with Co-ops UK’s James de le Vingne
• Where next for Community Wealth Building? with Democracy Collaborative’s Sarah McKinley
• How to thrive in a self-managed team with Loomio’s and the Hum’s Nati Lombardo
• Decolonising the New Economy with intersectional strategist Nonhlanhla Makuyana
• Worker leadership in community businesses with Principle Six’s Sion Whellens
• Stand up comedy and Festival Quiz with Heydon Prowse, from The Revolution Will Be Televised and The Town That Took on the Taxman
• Sustainable festival food from Feedback, the campaign charity that brought us Toast Ale, Feed the 5,000, and the Gleaning Network.
• People Get Ready! Preparing for a Corbyn government book launch with Joe Guinan
• Participatory Budgeting workshop with Independents for Frome’s Peter MacFadyen.
• Festival Soup: live crowdfunding event with the Bournemouth Soup’s Daisy Carr.
• What if? interactive storytelling session with Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the Transition Network.
• I’m a convert: employee to co-owner. A panel of co-owners from recent, high-profile employee-ownership conversions, including Aardman Studios, the creators of Wallace and Gromit, and veg box company Riverford Organics.
• Left Labour and the New Economy with New Statesman economic comentator Grace Blakeley.
• Green New Deal: Making Rapid Transition Happen with political economist Andrew Simms
• Community businesses, workers, and wildcat strikes: Lessons from The Ivy House pub, with Amardeep S Dhillon.
• Building inclusive spaces for social action, with community collective Our Space
• Looking after ourselves: Burnout to Resilience workshop, Peter Lefort, Eden Communities
• Collaborative Finance: The Funding Mix with Crowdfunder’s Abby Gordon-Farleigh
• Forum Theatre Bites: How power, burnout, and conflict influence the way we build communities, with Stephi Gamauf & Fausto Llopis
• Civic Plan for a Climate Emergency with Leeds University’s Paul Chatterton
• Just don’t call it conflict resolution workshop, with Kate Whittle, Cooperantics
• Introduction to Edventure: A School for Community Enterprise with cofounder Johannes Moeller
• Virtual and augmented reality experiences with immersive technology co-op, Animorph
• Framing the New Economy with Cohere’s Daniel Stanley
• Support & Solidarity Clinic: one-to-one dialogue with clinical and community psychologist Sally Zlotowitz.
• Ever heard of Hug Tag? Up for a game of Tug of War? Join Occupy Play’s Inez Aponte for a street games festival
• Vote Local, Get Trump? with Common Capital’s Dan Gregory
• Morning Alternative Magazine Review with Hazel Sheffield, journalist for Independent, Vice, Guardian & Times.
• People Get Ready! Preparing for a Corbyn Government book launch with Democracy Collaborative’s Joe Guinan
• Idea Surgery: Get support from business and crowdfunding coaches for your project idea, with Crowdfunder UK , Co-ops UK, Co-op and Community Finance, and others.
• Crowdsourced exhibition: the New Economy in 50 Objects. Apply to add an object.
• Live music, including the The Skalatans playing early 60s Jamaican dance tunes, from the era when 50s American R&B swung into Ska and Rock Steady, and ExBOSS, a riotous four-piece fusing live drum’n’bass and garage beats with punk and dub reggae.
• Local ale, cider, and even our own craft beer, a new collaboration with Totnes’ New Lion Brewery 

…and relax in our sauna, natural swimming lake, or at our late, late cinema!