VOICES FROM THE FLOOR:One of the organising committee asked me to be a facilitator. I am one of those people who believe that the kind of values that underpin our society in recent years are not reflective of the broader population. We have a huge weakness. We have a very poorly developed civil society response.
We have to develop a society response.
This is a way to create a space for people to start saying ‘we have a different set of values and we can imagine an alternative future’. Let’s move to the politics of hope. I’m tired of the negativity.
Let’s try to find a way forward. It’s aspirational but you can’t make something happen unless you do something. I would be sceptical about what we can achieve and this might not work but we’ve got to try. I don’t think our concerns are sufficiently reflected in the media.
People are disenchanted about politics, the media, the economy.
I’m an academic and I’ve been at conferences and there are keynote speakers and then questions for a few minutes but they run out of time for everyone else. It’s equal status here, no keynote speakers but everyone gets to have their say. It’s so refreshing.
It does seem to be equal numbers of men and women here, unlike in politics. It is tapping into something that’s real. Civil society is dominated by women who are volunteers and who are holding the fabric of society together.