Events

Events principles

Our events are...

Not just about ‘experts’ at the front - everyone has a story to tell and things to learn. We respect lived experience as well as expertise. At our events everyone is given a chance to speak their mind, swap ideas and listen.

About learning (for us and everyone else) - Our events are experimental and we want each to better than the last. So we find ways to gather proper feedback and listen to it. And find ways to upskill each events team member - staff, freelancers and volunteers.

About social justice - we want our events to be interesting and fun. We also run them to change things and explore what we (people of Bristol) can do to make things better. This impacts on event design. How are injustice around race, sexuality & gender, (dis)ability, age, class, faith playing out in this event? How is this event creating better ways to look at things and do things? Are we challenging the status quo or propping it up? How are we paying dues to those people in the wider conversations that our event is tapping into?

Public and collective: Our events let people talk face to face about tricky issues. We have the chance to connect with different types of people and have our minds changed. We want to experience a sense of contact in a society that is more and more atomised and where conversations about the world rarely extend beyond polarised private or online spaces. We want to find the magic in our event design and facilitation that makes this possible.

As open as possible - Who comes to the events and why? How does the venue, date/time, event design and topic attract and exclude different people in our city? Some conversations aren’t for everyone and that’s ok, but we need to know who we’re excluding and why. Keep things as open as possible (see social justice).

Community building - we want people to feel connected to the Cable and our mission. We want readers, members and journalists to link up so that the Cable spreads further and further across Bristol.

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