How The Light Gets In founder: Here’s the one exception to our free speech rule
How The Light Gets In festival is on Hampstead Heath this Saturday and Sunday
What’s the biggest taboo in British society?
“Interesting,” says Hilary Lawson, founder of How The Light Gets In philosophy and ideas festival, which takes place in London this weekend.
These are the sorts of questions posed at the event, which also offers the less cerebral pursuits of good food, booze and live music within a woodland setting. The event, for which City AM is a media partner, runs twice annually. In Hay-on-Wye in May and in London in September.
“I think our attachment to thinking there is a correct view about the world is the most dangerous thing that underlies our culture,” continues Lawson, a philosopher and founder of the Institute of Art and Ideas.
“The idea there’s one way of doing it, it’s correct, and everyone else is wrong. That seems pretty serious. No, actually, we’re not in a position to be able to say how things are. To somehow nail your flag to the mast and say this is how it ultimately is. I think that’s profoundly dangerous. It’s generating a divisive world. We’re trying to do something about that.”
How The Light Gets In founder: it’s a strange business, being alive
Radical for uniting the left and right, this weekend’s event features speakers including former Conservative MP Michael Gove, documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, Reform UK’s Laila Cunningham and left-wing critic Catherine Liu.
Lawson hopes you might just have the most interesting conversations you’ve had all year. “We start from the point of view that everyone’s a philosopher,” says Lawson. “That we’re all alive, and it’s pretty strange business being alive. You’ve got to work out what you’re doing. What’s important? What do you think about society? What do you think about yourself? We all solve them in our own particular way. We are just putting those big questions front and centre.”
Read more: Inside the radical festival uniting the left and right
What’s off limits? Terrorists
“People are often asking, ‘Who’s your target audience?’ Our target audience is everybody who is interested in what makes the world go round.”
There’s something about the verdant How The Light Gets In festival setting that induces good conversation. Breaking people free from silos seems easier to do in a field than on social media.
“Most journalistic organisations could place where they are on the political spectrum. Most universities have got a sense of what they think they’re really about, where they think the current truth is. That’s not where we are,” says Lawson. “We are about exploring ways of making sense of the world, and we will explore any way of making sense of the world which is credible enough. And we have pretty high bars for what’s credible.”
The limits of AI, the search for immortality, and feminism versus the Manosphere are some of the debates being tabled this weekend, alongside discussions on ego, the architecture of desire and danger and risk in an anxious world.
“Take science, for example, which is often portrayed as where the truth is. Physicists, of course, are constantly disagreeing with each other about almost everything,” adds Lawson. “We try not to be too affected by the current dominant view. I think that’s what’s really motivating us: where are the new ideas?”
Hay festival beef is childish
So, in a radical forum for free speech, what’s off limits? Well, terrorists aren’t welcome – that’s the one example Lawson can drum up immediately. “There are people who think this is the right way to do it. And of course, some of those people are not just mindless. They have a framework, a story about why this is a viable way. Of responding to a dominant power structure, which they disagree with. But we, I think, rightly, we’re not going to have someone who advocates terrorism at the festival, even if there are, even if there is a case that they could make. So there are limits… But there aren’t very many.”
At the lighter end, there is beef between How The Light Gets In and Hay Festival, the more established literary festival. Both events take place in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye at the same time, with Lawson’s provocateur joining the party in 2009 (the first Hay took place in 1988).
The Hay festival has exclusive appearance rights over their writers, blocking them from appearing at How The Light Gets In during the same year. Hay festival itself is hardly uncontroversial: many of the bookshops in Hay itself criticise the festival for its commercial partnership with Waterstones, which they say damages Hay’s independent spirit.
The ethics of business – very How The Light Gets In
“Oh gosh,” Lawson says of the competition. “I don’t understand why they should choose this. It seems to me that in terms of the space that we’re trying to create here, they’re very, very different. We’re not competing over the same thing, and I think it’s a little bit childish to try and say, ‘Oh, well, people can’t come here.’ It’s of no concern anyway. We have loads of people here. We don’t need to take the festival speakers. I think there are some signs that the new team there are are being a bit more grown up about this, but it’s not it’s not a key thing for us.
“I had a meeting with them 18 months ago. But my view is good luck to them, you know, that they can make the book festival ever more successful. That’s not a problem for us. It’s a great thing in terms of the local economy. It’s really good for everybody that we offer different things. It’s totally different.”
The ethics of business – just the sort of debate you might hear at How The Light Gets In.
How The Light Gets In takes place this weekend on Hampstead Heath. Weekend tickets via the official website are £188, Saturday day tickets £124 and Sunday £74