The Festival of Opinion Culture will be held for the third year in a row this year and will kick off the event already on the 30th of May with a discussion day in Narva, bringing a multitude of topics and debates closer to people across the land.

The pre-festival aims to create an environment that would foster socially beneficial projects and new ideas, to develop the discussion and communication culture in Estonia and to inspire people to chip in on matters that affect their daily lives.
There will be several inspirational discussions held on the 30th of May. Eduard Odinets, Irene Käosaar, Kristina Kallas, Triin Ulla and Sergei Sedorenko will ruminate on the status of Russian schools in Estonia. A brainstorming session titled “Searching for the story of Estonia’s future” will attempt to formulate what can the people of Estonia themselves do for the future of their country.

“The Narva festival will focus primarily on the future of Narva’s development,” explained Mall Hellam from one of the most important supporters of the festival – the Open Estonia Foundation. “Well-known speakers Artemi Troitski and Vasja Oblomov will open the day’s discussions with an overview of the situation in Russia from the viewpoint of the cultural elite, hopefully this will serve as a great introduction to an exciting and informative day,” said Hellam.

The program of the actual Festival of Opinion Culture to be held in August in Paide looks just as interesting and varied. There will be discussions on gender roles, civil society, health, business, ethics and a number of other topical issues. One new addition is the unique approach to creating special areas for particular topics.

“We won’t be discussing about education, the environment or economy in general, but aim to identify more specific themes and problems that every discussion area could dissect, highlight and seek solutions to,” explained the festival’s theme area program leader Maiu Uus.

Just like in previous years, the festival will rely on people who dare and want to engage in discussions on topics that have an impact on Estonia. “Previous experience has shown that the festival in Paide tends to attract people who care about this country and wish to be heard. It’s almost like a song festival of thoughts and debates, bringing together a variety of people from different backgrounds,” said Hellam. She added that the festival presents a unique opportunity to meet other people eye-to-eye, to establish contacts, to argue and discuss matters frankly and under one’s own name, and also to gain new insights on expression and debating skills.

Altogether 250 ideas for discussion were submitted to the ideas gathering campaign in February, these will form the foundation for over 30 theme areas. The festival’s full program will be available in the coming weeks.

Translation from Estonian to English: Priit Koff

This year’s Festival of Opinion Culture shall not remain only within the perimeter of the Vallimäe Hill in Paide, but will expand even further to the town’s central square and Tallinn street in partnership with the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Katrin Koov and her students of architecture and urban planning from the Estonian Academy of Arts have suggested a preliminary vision of new locations within Paide to where the festival could extend its activities. After an active brainstorming session in Paide last Saturday, the festival’s organising team came up with some ideas on new locations for discussion groups and which activities would be best suited for Paide’s main street and the central square.
The new discussion group areas were also given appropriate names – expect to hear thought-provoking debates at places such as Kooliorg (School Valley), Hekiaed (Hedge Garden), Keldrimägi (Cellar Hill) and Konvendimüür (Convent Wall).

From civil society to gender roles, innovation to health and ethics to governance. These are just a few of the 25 themes to be discussed at this year’s Festival of Opinion Culture.

The festival’s team has put a lot of effort into selecting the final topics – 250 crowdsourced ideas have been divided into 25 groups and these groups shall form the basis for the program in the coming weeks.

We reviewed the keywords that describe each idea in every theme. Whether the issue is the status of teachers or the school environment in general. Larger topics such as education were given subthemes, as every issue can be approached from different angles,” explained the festival’s program leader Maiu Uus. Each topic should ideally convey a particular message as well, as was the goal when mixing together the different ideas under each theme. “We were looking for a new approach to topics this year, aiming to identify more specific themes and problems that every discussion area could dissect, highlight and seek solutions to,” explained Uus. “For example, we would like to bring together discussions on different matters that are collectively raising questions about the vitality of Estonia.”

In addition to already traditional topics such as children and families, entrepreneurship and well-being; there will also be discussions on scientific issues, relations between men and women and gender roles in general, worklife, health, security etc.

Translation from Estonian to English: Priit Koff

We are pleased to announce that the opinion culture festival team has commenced the preparations for the third opinion culture festival – this year’s event will be held on August 14th and 15th, still in Paide.

We will soon be updating our website with more information, but keep thinking about is in the meantime and read more postings from last year or check out the photo feed on Flickr. The photos are available here and the blog posts here.

Be seeing you!