Latvia – Arvamusfestival 2017 https://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/ Sat, 12 Aug 2017 14:46:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 This Danish man just came up with an awesome idea to bring people together https://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/viral-festivals/ https://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/viral-festivals/#respond Fri, 11 Aug 2017 18:35:31 +0000 http://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/?p=13725 → ]]>

Why have festivals like the Opinion Festival become popular with so many people, what can be done to attract more people to take part in the discourse, and what can the festival do better? There was also a great idea on how to get divided people to talk more freely.

A discussion, ‘The power of democracy festivals’, explored these questions on Friday, with a twist on the conventional format of discussion allowing the panel and audience to split into small groups and discuss various questions in circles.

Visitors from Finland, Denmark, Latvia and Lithuania came to Paide to talk about their experiences of organising or taking part in what are known as ‘democracy festivals’ – events encouraging public participation in discussions on a variety of topics. One of the things mentioned, in the debate moderated by journalist Liis Kängsepp, was that there is no one right way of encouraging good discussion and a closer community. Mads Akselbo Holm, the organiser of Folkemodet in Denmark, came up with perhaps the most intriguing idea in terms of getting people from two sides of a divide to come together.

Holm said it could be as simple as getting two opposing politicians, for example, to cook a meal together. Explaining the idea, he said, “maybe they don’t agree on matters of policy, but they can both agree that they like the country they live in, they can both agree they were born in that country, and maybe they both share a favourite dish.” The tantalising prospect of battling members of government and opposition putting down their briefing notes and picking up spatulas and frying pans is certainly unconventional, but could it work?

Mari Haavisto, organiser of SuomiAreena, the Finnish equivalent of the Opinion Festival, felt it was important that the city of Pori, around three hours’ travel from Helsinki, was the host of the event. It comes in the same space of time as the city’s jazz festival, and the two combine to bring a pleasant party atmosphere to an otherwise relatively quiet area every summer, something that might be lost if SuomiAreena were relocated to the Finnish capital. The Opinion Festival has become synonymous with Paide, and it is also true that Järve county, in which Paide is situated, is proud and happy to host the festival. Something of the close community spirit could be lost if it were held in Tallinn or Tartu, contributors felt.

One commenter added that he felt that the Opinion Festival was at least as much about meeting new people, and getting a new perspective on life, as it was about the open discussion that takes place every year. The principle of inviting and accepting all forms of debate, as long as they do not cause violence, was also mentioned, as part of the spirit of a truly open festival of ideas.

Ukraine will hold its first democracy festival this year, and the concept seems to be going viral all around Europe. What is true in every case is that changes can be made, in the interactivity of the events, and how they reach out to people. That’s part of a journey of constant improvement.

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World Peace Just Happened https://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/world-peace-just-happened/ https://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/world-peace-just-happened/#respond Sat, 13 Aug 2016 11:10:18 +0000 http://2017.arvamusfestival.ee/en/?p=11851 → ]]>

‘What Can We Do For World Peace?’ is possibly the biggest question on the planet, and at the Opinion Festival on Saturday morning, an intrepid group of academics, educators and activists attempted to answer it.

Although it is fair to say that, over the course of 90 minutes, it was not possible to reach a consensus on how to achieve world peace, or even if it is possible, the most interesting part of the discussion was, as is often the case in such theoretical talks, the individual stories of the speakers.

Piet Boerefijn is the Director of the Estonian Food Bank, which has set up food relief in towns and cities all over Estonia to help the people who cannot afford to feed their families. However, at first, this was not a personal mission of his – the Dutchman came to Estonia shortly after the restoration of independence for a totally different reason.

“When I first came, it wasn’t with the idea of helping Estonia. Actually, I read ‘The Czar’s Madman’ by Jaan Kross and wanted to see the house from that book, a manor house close to Põltsamaa. The manor had a big wall around it, and a small fence. I looked through the fence, and it came out that the house had been turned into a home for mentally-disturbed people. It was like a zoo, it was awful inside, it was 1992 or 1993.”

“I thought it would be revolutionary if only someone could bring some new beds, or install some extra toilets. We took some mattresses from hospitals in the Netherlands for free.” Estonia was a far different country to the one that foreigners in 2016 experience, Boerefijn explained. “At that time Estonia was extremely poor. It was still the Soviet Army there. Often they would get their salary in roubles, not the Estonian kroon, and that meant they couldn’t buy anything. So what did they do? They sold their weapons, so you could buy your weapons from the Russian Army in Estonia.”The recollections of Ekke Nõmm, Director of the Estonian School of Diplomacy, were, as you might expect, more moderated and mild. Nõmm, a fuzzy-haired man who seems permanently calm, talked about his experiences running a private university that receives international funding to train global diplomats.

Nõmm believes that accord can be found between people of most nationalities if they can learn to relate to each other on a personal level. “After a year [studying together], they’re friends, they understand each other better.” There are still tensions, mostly due to pressure from the students’ parent countries. “There was one group, with whom we went for a discussion in Kadriorg with the President. We had a photo taken with the him, and I arranged it that on one side were two Armenian women, on the other two Azeri men.”

“We had the photos taken, it all went well, we went back to school, and then after an hour, the Azeris called me and said, ‘please don’t use this photo in a professional capacity,’ because it might mean trouble for them. They were worried about going back to Baku, and their superiors perhaps saying, ‘you’re becoming too friendsly with the Armenians.’ So this shows the divisions that are there, but by bringing these people together I think we can somehow do something for world peace.”

In attempting to explain the still-existent divisions between first-language Estonian- and Russian-speakers in Estonia, Nõmm had a theory. “A lot of this had to do with the fact that the Russians in Estonia had to do a tremendous mental switch, from being masters of the universe, rulers of the empire, and from there, they had to change to a minority in a small country. I agree that Estonians are typically quiet and modest, and Russians are more outgoing. I suppose a Russian by nature would expect a friend to be outgoing, but Estonians aren’t like that in their nature. So when Estonians say, ‘ok, learn the language, do your job, and we’ll all be happy,’ because embracing and hugging is not in their nature, Russians might interpret it as unwelcoming. Also, the fact that the Russians live in their own media-sphere: I would consider that to be the greatest problem.”

Liga Rudzite is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology, and media falls into her research. She said it is not only Russian media that is biased. “I think we are biased – even our free media. We speak about Latvia always on Latvian terms, and if I were a Russian of course I wouldn’t use Latvian media because I would use what spoke more personally to me.”

Discussions continued, with world peace still some way off at the time of writing.

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