How the Light Gets In – A Philosophy Festival at Hay

‘Hay on Sky’, the daily show on the Hay Literature Festival on SkyArts, delineates one extreme in the Hay-on-Wye literary universe. The Philosophy Festival, ‘How the Light Gets In’, the other. This ‘fringe’ or alternative festival taking place with the support of the official Hay Festival is located at ‘The Globe at Hay’, an arts gallery and coffee shop which was originally inaugurated as a Methodist chapel in 1752. The festival comprises philosophy sessions and music sessions and workshops. Speakers include Zygmunt Bauman, Simon Blackburn, Alex Callinicos, Steve Fuller and David Goodhart. The philosophy sessions are similar in format to the literature events taking place at the Hay Festival and comprise talks or discussions followed by a Q&A round limited to one hour. Obviously they are more academic in style, language and content than the literary events. The audiences are also smaller – the Globe can hold around 60 participants, if they are seated in a comfortable coffee-shop-style arrangement, which is what the philosophy festival favours. Its style is more that of the literary salon than of the modern literature festival, and the people it attracts are academics and students.

The philosophy festival was launched by Hilary Lawson, author of Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament, director of The Institute of Arts and Ideas (IAI) and Vice-Chair of the Forum for European Philosophy. The Institute of Arts and Ideas was established a year ago, in 2008, and has its seat at Hay. Its manifesto (that can be read on its website at www.artandideas.org) is ‘to build on and reflect the independent spirit that typifies the remarkable town of Hay’. Despite its obvious academic aspirations – judging from the Philosophy Festival – the IAI does not want to be identified with the arts with a capital A and with culture with a capital C, and says so in its manifesto. The name chosen for the philosophy festival, ‘How the Light Gets In’, is also an indication of this. I must admit,  when I was first offered a leaflet on this by a punk-looking young female student, I first thought of esotericism (!).

The post-modern and hybrid character of this event is also evidenced by the second institutional home of Hilary Lawson, the founder of the Philosophy Festival, i.e. The Forum for European Philosophy. This is an LSE spin-off established as an educational charity and organizing lectures on philosophical and inter-disciplinary subjects. Its June programme includes a public lecture on ‘Religion and the Market’, featuring John Micklethwait and John Gray, a lecture on ‘Turkey: East or West?’ by Hakan Yilmaz and a roundtable on the idea of Europe in philosophy, art and literature.

Sponsors of the Philosophy Festival at Hay include the monthly liberal magazines ‘Prospect’ and ‘The Liberal’.