Community Conversations: Democracy festivals, Corona and the future of conversations
23 Jul 2020
All over Europe new working tools, ideas and support mechanisms of and for cultural initiatives have popped up during the past months. Some of them might be temporary, some might be here to stay. Some of them are developed by you, a lot of them by others. All of them try addressing our ‘new normal’. But how normal is this new situation? And how much of it is actually new?
Conversation festival LAMPA is a Latvian festival of democracy and conversations. For the organizers believe everything begins with a conversation. The ability to converse lies at the core of humanity, and is the first spark of development. Dialogue-ing, not monologue-ing lies at the heart of democracy, so LAMPA Festival claims. Established in 2015 the festival has grown into a recognizable and landmark event, and the last summer it was attended by over 20.000 visitors. LAMPA festival is also a co-founder and member of the Democracy Festivals Association – a body uniting nine democracy festivals in the Nordic-Baltic region.
This year the LAMPA festival has changed its format to online/offline, due to the Covid19 pandemic. What and how they did it? What does it mean for conversations and the sparks of development? With Latvia being one of the most digital countries in Europe, what could we learn?
