Imagine! Belfast Festival of Politics and Ideas (20-26 March 2017) #imaginebelfast

The Imagine! Belfast Festival of Politics and Ideas is back for its third year. “It’s going to be great. The best festival ever!” was what one snowy Washington DC St Patrick’s Day celebrant didn’t report back to us after one two many Irish Champagnes.

In the ultra-climate, post-freedom, alt-gender, super-truth, pre-culture, trans-surveillance, info-reality, neo-Brexit society that we now live in what could be better than a non-partisan festival with an eclectic mix of talks, comedy, music, film, theatre, workshops, tours and exhibitions to encourage people to discuss and debate.

There’s even a competition asking for submissions of short poems on a political theme: limerick, haiku, iambic pentameter … you decide! The vast majority of events are free.

In partnership with Stratagem, Slugger’s own sold out event on Thursday night will pitch 7 Ways to Make Northern Ireland Great Again.

Between Tuesday 21 and Saturday 25 March, John McCann’s new play Famla will be performed by Tinderbox Theatre Company in The MAC. A haunting, hilarious and heart-breaking story of hidden secrets and hidden truths.

Some highlights from the programme of events that stretch over 7 days in 35 venues with 300 speakers and performers. Unless mentioned, events are free though you may need to follow the links to register if venue space is constrained.

Monday 20 March

Nat O’Connor explores the question of Could Northern Ireland become an independent member state of the EU? in the UU’s Belfast Campus between 12.30 and 2pm.

A Musical Journey presented by Beyond Skin in The Black Box from 7.30pm until 10pm. Expect music, rhythm and definitely drums from different cultures and backgrounds as band members and musicians celebrate identities and address stereotypes. Access All Areas is the follow up to the Music Unite project. £5.

Tuesday 21 March

Tuesday is Dialogue Day, with ten venues across the city hosting civic conversations over a cup of tea or coffee (buy your own!) between 10am and noon. The theme this year is ‘Surviving or thriving in turbulent times’. Check the programme for venues in case you turn up in Stormont House canteen and are disappointed it’s not participating this year!

Between 5pm and 6.30pm, the same venue will discuss Modern Medical Ethics: Moral Support or Professional Challenge as Duncan Wilson delves into the emerging field of bioethics and ponders how the changing political context and interdisciplinary input from law, philosophy and social sciences is helping or hindering the medical profession.

Why We Need Feminist Economics sees Katrine Marçal use wit and her considerable analysis to unpack the themes of her book Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? which challenges the gender-blind nature of mainstream economics. The hive Community Space on Grosvenor Road between 7.30pm and 9pm.

Wednesday 22 March

Students or Consumers? Has education become a business? Are students now consumers? Does the pressure on universities to balance their books now suppress their supply of education for the public good? QUB Students’ Union from 2pm until 4pm.

Where do young people access news – and does it matter for how they see the world? Online news outlets rely on algorithms to personalise our news feeds and we tend to live in like-minded social media bubbles. Social media is now a main source of news for young people. A panel will ponder how important stories and issues around immigration, international aid and refugees can be understood in those environments? UU Belfast campus between 3pm and 4.30pm.

Brexit and the Border: So What? has been organised by the Open University with a panel encompassing academia, media, economics and farming ready to discuss the impact – if any – on peace, politics and trade. Ulster Museum (Belfast Room) between 6.30pm and 7.30pm.

Thursday 23 March

As a teenager, I read far too much Tolkien with its myriad of ancient and made-up languages. So one day during a school summer I invented my own. It had some simple tenses, a grammar structure, and a book of vocabulary. All typed out with a manual typewriter on A4 sheets. Later in life I was told that this wasn’t a normal thing for a teenager to do. And it may explain why I loved Dave Duggan’s 2014 play Makaronik of which 10% of the script was performed in the made-up Empirish language. But it turns out I’m not alone. Researchers from the UU will converge on their Belfast campus between 10am and noon to host a hands-on workshop called Inventing a Language is a Lot of Fun where they’ll explore the universal properties of human language and create an alien language that can still be spoken by human actors. See you there!

Imagine if the Peace Walls Came Down? Not so implausible given that that’s the commitment by 2023 in the NI Executive’s TBUC/Together Building a United Community strategy. This workshop in the UU Belfast campus will conduct a thought experiment and imagine the consequences for local communities, services, planning, security and more of taking the walls down. 5.30pm to 6.30pm.

Friday 24 March

Democracy Day takes over The MAC with a slew of events organised by Building Change Trust that assesses How Healthy is Democracy in Northern Ireland? and looks at welfare reform, participation and deliberation, open policy making, civic activism, a citizen jury, a fake news quiz, citizen assemblies, digital tools for democracy from Iceland, Estonia and Scotland before putting Democracy on Trial.

Then head over to the Conor Lecture Theatre in the UU Belfast campus to hear Bill Adair, creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning US fact-checking platform PolitiFact deliver a much-anticipated lecture entitled Are We Living in a Post-Truth Democracy?

Saturday 25 March

Between 2pm and 5pm at QUB’s Sonic Arts Research Centre Franziska Schroeder will give you a speedy introduction to using a microphone and an audio recorder to allow you to interview the public about how they think their lives might change post-Brexit. Then you’ll be helped to edit the audio into a short piece that will be played back at the end of the practical Sounding Out on Brexit workshop. All free.

Why is Elvis in your Toast? The Open University’s Patrick Wright explores pareidolia and how seeing images in objects can be a result of historical influences as well as our innate fears and anxieties. Between 6,30pm and 7.30pm in the Crescent Arts Centre.

Sunday 26 March

2017 marks five hundred years since Martin Luther nailed his Nine Five Theses to the door of his Wittenberg church and set in train the Protestant Reformation. Join a panel in the UU Belfast Campus between 3pm and 5pm who will be Reflecting on the Reformation and discussing whether this was really about religion or was a forerunner of Brexit showing disillusionment of the periphery with the perceived corruption of the cosmopolitan centre!