HAMPSHIRE, 17 – 19 AUGUST 2012
Welcome to the 21st century.
The future hasn’t worked out quite the way the grown-ups said it would…
We find ourselves in a world of economic contraction, ecological collapse and social upheaval. How do we make sense of our lives in times like this? Where are the stories – old or new – that help us reground ourselves? Faced with the loss of much we took for granted, where are the practical projects that offer hope and meaning for the times ahead?
Uncivilisation 2012 is a gathering of people searching for answers to these questions. For one weekend in August, the woods and chalk downland of the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire will be home to a festival of literature, music, art and action. It will be a place of encounters and conversations, learning and sharing, stories, ideas, music and performance. There will be campfires, wanderings in the woods, children’s activities, and workshops in everything from writing to scything.
On this site, you can learn more about the guests who will be speaking, teaching and hosting conversations at the festival – as well as the musicians and performers who’ll be getting us on our feet.
There’s also practical information about transport and accommodation options.
The story so far…
The Dark Mountain Project started out as a conversation between two writers. Both of us had been involved with the environmental movement and had seen its radicalism drain away, as the concept of “sustainability” came to mean “sustaining our current way of living” at all costs. Meanwhile, we sensed that the books being celebrated in the Culture sections of the newspapers would look irrelevant or offensive in a generation’s time, given what was already known about the economic, social and ecological chaos breaking over these societies.
These thoughts led to a manifesto, an invitation to face the darkness of our situation and to meet it as not simply a problem in need of technological or political solutions, but a deep challenge to the imagination. How do we find our way through the end of the world as we know it, and into the unknown world ahead?
The manifesto started a web of further conversations, on websites and blogs, in the pages of two Dark Mountain books of essays, stories and poetry, and in the work of writers, artists, musicians and makers of all kinds for whom this project has sparked something. UNCIVILISATION: The Dark Mountain Festival is a chance to bring these conversations together in the flesh, to meet each other, share ideas and stories and puzzle things through together.
The first UNCIVILISATION festival took place in Llangollen in May 2010 – and this year’s gathering in Hampshire is a chance to take those conversations deeper and further; and to have a lot of fun whilst doing so.
Tickets for this year’s festival are now available – book early, as places are limited.
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