Last weekend I went camping at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire with 300 other interesting people. We were all there for the Uncivilisation festival which despite its name is a cheerful and extremely friendly festival of ideas and doing. What is different about this festival is that, while there is music and ale, people mostly came for the talking, story telling, listening and sharing. The overriding topic of the festival was our collective future and the potential scenarios we face with combined collapses (e.g. global financial crisis, changing middle east, climate change, peak oil etc.). Despite my initial reservations that it would be another rehash of dated deep green thinking (which was partly true) there were lots of interesting and inspiring sessions.

On reflection it was really a conference held outdoors but the vibrant mix of people and setting made for an enjoyable experience. It seemed perfectly comfortable moving from a panel debate on “collapsonomics” with people well versed in economic collapse into a workshop on homebrew held in a yurt. There was a pleasant randomness to the sessions and it was easy to pick and choose what sessions you went to. It was an open space format in the true sense.