Ideas Market 2012

Saturday 20 October, 10.30am until 5.00pm, Level G

Come and have a coffee while browsing a range of stalls promoting ideas to get you thinking and talking – with Liberty League, Debating Matters, WORLDbytes, Manifesto Club, Young Journalists’ Academy, Academy of Ideas and more.

The Liberty League

The Liberty League is the UK’s young pro-liberty network. We work to encourage classical liberal and libertarian activism, helping to inform, develop and recruit students and young professionals by setting up and aiding existing groups committed to the defence of freedom.

We are a non-partisan organisation, with individuals and groups in our network hailing from across the political spectrum. Please come and talk to us about getting involved with the pro-liberty movement; setting up groups, attending our conferences, or simply staying informed.

WORLDbytes

A unique online Citizen TV channel set up and run by the education charity WORLDwrite. Dedicated to challenging the status quo and advancing new knowledge, the charity promotes excellence in citizen reporting and provides free film training to volunteers to make this possible. Covering the ideas and stories rarely told, without the constraints of commissioners’ whims, mainstream ratings wars or fear of upsetting conventional wisdom, WORLDbytes’ motto is ‘Don’t shout at the telly, change the message on it’.

We cover a huge range of issues but as an education charity committed to international understanding and global equality we do have some basic principles that we promote on our news channel WORLDbytes. We believe in:

  • Open Borders and celebrating more people on the planet
  • Economic growth & serious development for all globally
  • Challenging all forms of prejudice, anti-democratic and anti-human trends
  • Freedom of speech and advancing civil liberties
  • Challenging distrust, fear and intervention in everyday life
  • Supporting our peers globally managing their own affairs without foreign intervention
  • Advancing new knowledge, ideas and critical thinking

To find out how to get involved please click here or come and meet us at the Ideas Factory.

THE MANIFESTO CLUB

The Manifesto Club campaigns against the hyperregulation of everyday life. We support free movement across borders, free expression and free association. We challenge booze bans, photo bans, vetting and speech codes - all new ways in which the state regulates everyday life on the streets, in workplaces and in our private lives.

Our rapidly growing membership hails from all political traditions and none, and from all corners of the world. Come to our stall to find out more about our new brand of civil liberties campaigning – and sign up to our flagship campaign against the vetting database.

YOUNG JOURNALISTS’ ACADEMY

The Young Journalists’ Academy is a programme for London state school pupils who have the passion and the guts, but not ‘the right contacts’, to break into journalism. We run a journalism summer school in Canary Wharf along with schemes like YJA in Schools, the YJA Graduates network and training for Journalism Ambassadors. On our site (http://www.yja.org.uk) you can find out more about what we do and get some great tips and inspiration from YJA Graduates and professional journalists.

NO2ID

NO2ID is a single-issue group focussed on the threat to liberty and privacy posed by the rapid growth of the database state, of which “ID cards” were the most visible part. We are entirely independent and non-partisan.

National ID cards are gone. But the infrastructure survives as ‘biometric visas’ for foreign residents. Mass-surveillance has not disappeared. The coalition’s promises to “roll back the database state” are ineffectual. Indeed official demands for personal information are multiplying. Hence NO2ID continues in order to to oppose mass surveillance and data-sharing schemes, and to fight for enforceable privacy protections in law.

DEBATING MATTERS COMPETITION

The Academy of Ideas’ Debating Matters Competition provides an experience of engaging in rigorous, well researched and well thought through public debate to young students throughout the UK. Through establishing an environment where large numbers of schools and students benefit from the intellectual challenge posed by the Debating Matters experience, we aim to raise aspirations for educational standards more generally.

Debating Matters offers a fresh, accessible and engaging format for debating contemporary issues. With its focus on substance over style, the competition takes ideas, argument and young people seriously. One of the central tenets of Debating Matters is that young people are intelligent and robust enough to have their ideas held up to critical scrutiny. This scrutiny is provided by a panel of judges in every debate – a mixture of scientists, journalists, lawyers, businessmen, policy advisors and artists. Debating Matters judges are encouraged to be bold and to challenge the students: asking probing questions and providing honest criticism of their arguments. It is this essential interaction between students and our judges which makes Debating Matters unique.

Come and talk to us about getting involved – whether as a school, judge or a sponsor – and help us to extend the Debating Matters challenge to more young people.

JOIN THE INSTITUTE OF IDEAS

The Battle of Ideas weekend is the annual culmination of the Academy of Ideas’ ongoing project. The IoI runs a range of forums that meet monthly to discuss developments in: education, the economy, social policy, current affairs, parenting, the arts, and academia; as well as a monthly book club, a national schools debating competition (www.debatingmatters.com), and other public events. We also produce occasional publications and an award-winning online reviews magazine (www.culturewars.org.uk). IoI associates get a significant reduction on ticket prices for our events as well as other benefits. Most importantly, associates help us continue our work in expanding the boundaries of public debate.

For more information about the Academy of Ideas, contact Geoff Kidder on 020 7269 9220 or see further details here.

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