We’ve been hitting the road with the revolutionary news – popping up at festivals and events around the UK.
The summer tour kicked off with Caspar as a panellist and Liz as workshop host at the Media Democracy Festival at the University of Westminster, London, introducing the campaign to the crowd of attendees hosted by Media Reform Coalition.
With Tom and Rianka also on the crew, conversations centred around media corruption and control, and the Media Revolution theory was centred in the popular ‘How to Un-F**k the Media’ workshop. Between sessions, we even got chatting about the revolution with Green Party’s potential leader, Zack Polanski, at the water fountain! An inspiring start to our festival season, captured by Turn Left – members of the Independent Media Association in this brilliant video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrpoqIRtbx4
Panel discussion at Media Democracy Festival, with Hardeep Matharu, Tom Chivers, Milica Pesic and Caspar Hughes
From there, the revolution roadshow rolled on to Byline Festival in Keele, with four members of the core team taking to the stage and hosting an interactive workshop for attendees to learn more about the coordinated collaboration plans for Media Liberation Day. We were honoured to be on the line up alongside brilliant speakers like inspirational author and professor Mike Berners Lee and the brilliant Kate Raworth from Doughnut Economics. We created a workshop session using ‘speed dating’ for people to engage in responses to the media’s problems, and explored how we can reshape our media landscape by working together in unexpected ways.
But we didn’t stop there. Next up was the Big Change Tent at Buddhafield Festival, because, apparently, talking about the intersection of media activism and mindfulness is a perfect match, and the talk attendees were all incredibly engaged – sticking around after the talk had finished to sign up to the email list (hello) and even offering to become volunteers!
And finally, at Green Gathering – the off-grid eco-focussed festival in Wales – Liz rolled out our vintage typewriter and took up the role of ‘field reporter’, creating a live festival news feed, littered with exaggerated disinformation as an interactive artistic intervention action! The headlines from ‘The End Times’ – (the made-up newspaper of the day) were then performed on stage later in the Campaigns field. The stunt event caught the attention of festival co-founder Steve Judd, who described the action as “exactly the kind of thing the festival was set up for”.
Media Revolution really can pop up anywhere—and we love surprising you all in the best ways.
So, there you have it. We’ve been on the move, meeting what feels like thousands of new revolutionaries along the way, a summer tour that has seen us flit from university halls to festival venues – always innovating and always finding new ways to connect.
As the summer season draws to a close, we’re not packing away the typewriter just yet – keep an eye out for it popping up in more unexpected places as we move into the Autumn, and ever closer towards Media Liberation Day and beyond!
Turn Left – round up of Media Democracy Festival on YouTube
If you have an event, festival, talk, panel, school or university or even a podcast, in person meeting or event-of-any-type that you would like Media Revolution to attend, whether that’s our base in the UK or further afield – please get in touch with us.