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The
Realisation
Festival
8th — 11th
July 2021

Time and space
for the soul,
for the benefit
of society.

The Realisation Festival arises from a conviction that we live at a critical juncture; a time of reckoning that we need to experience more deeply and reflect on candidly, carefully and courageously. FIND OUT MORE

We are inviting a small group to be part of the first festival to help shape and evolve it, with a view to growing in subsequent years and developing a programme of festival-related activities throughout the year. Tickets cost £295 and include all food, talks and activities during the festival. Would you like to be part of it?  BUY A TICKET

Speakers

Anna Katharina Schaffner

Writer, Coach and a Professor of Cultural History

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Anna Katharina Schaffner

Writer, Coach and a Professor of Cultural History

Anna is a writer, coach and a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Kent. She has published journalism, academic works and a novel (The Truth About Julia, Allen & Unwin, 2016). All her life, Anna has been deeply interested in psychology and how we can improve ourselves individually and as a collective. She believes that we have much to learn from the past and other cultures and that inner and social change are connected. In her forthcoming book The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths (Yale University Press, 2021) she explores ten ideas about self-improvement that stay the same across time and space. Time-honed and tested, they were as relevant two thousand years ago as they are now. Anna is Director of Emergence.

Bayo Akomolafe

Public intellectual, Teacher, Essayist and Author

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Bayo Akomolafe

Public intellectual, Teacher, Essayist and Author

Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) was born in 1983 into a Christian home, and to Yoruba parents in western Nigeria. Losing his diplomat father to a sudden heart complication, Bayo became a reclusive teenager, seeking to get to the “heart of the matter” as a response to his painful loss. After meeting with traditional healers as part of his quest to understand trauma, mental wellbeing and healing in new ways, his deep questions and concerns for decolonized landscapes congealed into a life devoted to exploring the nuances of a “magical” world “too promiscuous to fit neatly into our fondest notions of it.”
Now living between India and the United States, Bayo is a father of Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi. He is married to EJ, his dear life-partner of Indian descent.
In 2014, Dr. Akomolafe was invited to be the Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization, a project of Ancient Futures (USA). He left his lecturing position in Covenant University, Nigeria to help build this Alliance. Bayo has been Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, where he taught on his own formulated concepts of ‘transraciality’ and postactivism. He has also taught at Sonoma State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Schumacher College (Totnes, England) – among other universities around the world. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality.
The convener of the concepts of ‘postactivism’, ‘transraciality’ and ‘ontofugitivity’, Bayo is a widely celebrated international speaker, teacher, public intellectual, essayist and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. He is also the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains’. www.bayoakomolafe.net

Mark Vernon

Writer and Psychotherapist

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Mark Vernon

Writer and Psychotherapist

Mark is a writer, psychotherapist and associate of Perspectiva. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including his latest, A Secret History of Christianity, and forthcoming in September 2021, Dante’s Divine Comedy. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. Mark works on events with Perspectiva, as well as the notion of spiritual intelligence, which is not about problem-solving but the roots of awareness.
For more information see www.markvernon.com

Indra Adnan

Co-initiator, The Alternative UK

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Indra Adnan

Co-initiator, The Alternative UK

Indra is Co-initiator of The Alternative UK political platform, part of a global network originated by Alternativet, founded by Uffe Elbaek in Demnark. They publish a Daily Alternative media and run community collaboratories around the UK, building Citizen Action Networks (CANs) to reconnect people to the local eco-systems of solutions available. Central to the vision of an Alternative politics is the interdependency of the complex individual, the community and the planet: I, We, World.

Indra is concurrently a psycho-social therapist, founder and Director of the Soft Power Network, a writer and events producer. She has consulted to the World Economic Forum, Indian, Finnish and Danish governments, NATO, the Scottish Executive and the Institute of Contemporary Arts amongst others. She writes regularly for The Guardian and The Huffington Post and her publications Soft Power Agenda, New Times and Is the Party Over? are available on www.indraadnan.com

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What are the big questions
of our times asking of us?

We will meet over three and a half days in a beautiful country house that’s been at the heart of political, philosophical and social reform for generations.

In the spirit of a festival, retreat and critical dialogue, The Realisation Festival arises from a conviction that we live at a pivotal but precarious juncture; a time of reckoning that calls for candid, careful and courageous reflection in order to ‘realise’ a more beautiful, imaginative and thoughtful society.

VIEW THE PROGRAMME

Time and space
for the soul,
for the benefit
of society.