Tickets for Realisation 2023 (29th June to 2nd July) are now on sale and can be bought here via TicketTailor.

We don’t offer any discount on tickets – the price is already heavily subsidised by the generosity of our supporters in particular Perspectiva, and does not represent the true cost of attending the Realisation Festival. However we are able to offer a limited number of bursaries if your circumstances mean that you would be unable to attend otherwise.

If you’d like to apply for a bursary place, please fill in this short form. If you have any questions email Olivia on realise@realisationfestival.com

Please note that the majority of our bursary places cover the price of the camping ticket only, so you will need to bring camping gear, or cover the cost of an upgrade to a Glamping Bell Tent or Room yourself.

A non-profit gathering for the mind and spirit, featuring stimulating talks and embodied workshops at a breathtaking location. A chance to link the “I”, “we” and “wider world” through critical dialogue and soulful exploration.

You’ll hear incredible speakers, take part in stimulating conversations, enjoy delicious food and live music. Workshops will encourage you to think, feel and explore what change looks like, and reimagine what we are capable of.

The Realisation Festival is for anyone who wants to engage with transformative and innovative ideas about the world and society, and who long for an opportunity to share their experiences, thoughts, experiments and practices.

The nearest station to St Giles House is Salisbury (about 30 minutes drive). We will meet specific trains at Salisbury station on Thursday 29th June, please let us know if you’ll need a place in a shared minibus.

Alternatively, if you want to make your own way from the station, there are usually plenty of taxis outside Salisbury station. A taxi to St Giles costs around £45.

If you are driving, the postcode is BH21 5ND. We would encourage you to liftshare if possible – please let us know if you can offer anyone a lift.

The full address of St Giles is:

St Giles House
Wimborne St. Giles
Wimborne, Dorset
BH21 5ND

+44 (0)1725 517 214

The beautiful St Giles House, Dorset, an extraordinary countryside location that, as the home of the Earls of Shaftesbury, is imbued with centuries of social and political transformation. The Seventh Earl, the Victorian social reformer, is the most famous.

St Giles House
Wimborne St. Giles
Wimborne, Dorset
BH21 5ND
+44 (0)1725 517 214

Realisation is about education and awareness, which can be troubling as well as tremendous. So the gathering is an opportunity for people to think, to speak, to listen, to feel, to share, to disagree, to wrestle and then to sit around a table and eat together. Put it like this: if realisation is the answer, the question is this: “Where can I go to truly challenge my understanding of and contribution to the life we are living?”

This is a moment to individually and collectively consider how to breathe new life into the future path ahead. We need to become “unstuck”.

It is a fascinating space to hold the gathering, in part because of its connection with the natural environment, which informs questions around our relationship with nature and the planet. But also because it is such an historic place: if we want to move forward, we can look back at what was and is, to see what can be. Let us spend time here and see what it tells us. We need non-ordinary resources, and St Giles offers qualities of mind, spirit and heart.

We hope so, in part because it is as interested in the inner life of people and society – inner formation, if you like – reckoning that spirit and soul are fundamental to how people engage with matters of crucial importance.

Maybe the solutions to the various challenges we face will look very different from how we currently imagine them to be.

We are aiming to keep prices as low as possible. The price of your ticket to Realisation 2023 is £375, however this does not represent the true cost of the event which is heavily subsidised so that we can keep prices at a realistic level (and therefore any additional donations are very welcome). We have some bursary tickets if you are on a low-income – email Olivia, our Event Manager, to find out more. All meals, and wine at dinner, are included and you may choose to upgrade your accommodation.  Find out more here.

Yes. For example, slavery is part of its history: the philosopher John Locke and his patron, the First Earl of Shaftesbury, envisioned a society that included slavery in the Carolinas. The First Earl had a plantation in The Bahamas for a short while and one in South Carolina until about 1713. In the nineteenth century, the Seventh Earl, along with William Wilberforce, was a strong proponent for the abolition of slavery as well as a number of other social reforms. The Realisation Festival is committed to a meaningful and genuine reckoning with how colonial history still informs the present. We believe that this discussion is an essential part of the unlearning and reimagining that informs the gathering.

It is a small gathering of around 100 people where the difference between speaker and audience is minimised and the opportunity for cross-pollination of ideas is maximised. The festival rests upon the belief that we don’t only need more ideas and conversations, but time and space to retreat and cogitate with others about ideas that are already shaping society.

Yes. For sure. We can’t know, of course, but are working so that it might provide a focus for a movement that values the clarity which comes with a renewed consciousness. This is not just an airy aspiration. The philosophical word for it is “bildung”, a notion which was born at St Giles, through the work of the Third Earl. It means education in the broadest possible sense, bringing personal fulfilment and civic transformation. To put it another way, bildung entails a dynamic worldview that values independence of mind and spirit, grounded in ecological and social interdependence. We believe the idea needs urgent attention, and can shape social projects, public policy and institutional values.