Tickets: free but ticketed- available on the day, box office open from 14:45 (max. 2 per person).

At one time you had to go to a gallery to participate in the art world. Now, from The Kelpies to UK-wide project Art Everywhere, public space is increasingly being filled with various objets d’art. Strathclyde Partnership for Transport shares this new enthusiasm and wishes to ‘feed our souls’. Its ongoing programme of modernisation of the Glasgow Subway includes plans for ‘quality pieces’ in each of the 15 stations. But is the public really in need of such nourishment? What role does expertise play in choosing ‘public’ art, and how comfortably do these choices sit with the vogue for bottom-up audience participation? Should authorities instead stick to providing more traditional civic amenities such as parks and fountains rather than spending resources on artistic engagement, often of questionable merit? Or is there something to celebrate in the notion of great art being freely available to all in our daily lives?

There will be drinks on arrival before the discussion from 6:00pm.

The news earlier this that Newcastle was planning to completely cut its arts budget was a stark reminder of the challenges facing the arts in the recession. Yet while culture secretary Maria Miller provoked fury by insisting that the funding should be viewed as ‘venture capital’ rather than hand-outs, some have welcomed the opportunity for the arts to liberate itself from the strictures of state funding and box-ticking criteria. Should the arts be more willing to embrace the freedom of alternative funding models, or will the market prove even more hostile to challenging, experimental work? Have arts organisations made mistakes in justifying their work in economic terms for so long, or were such arguments a necessary evil? Will public access to the arts be dealt a mortal blow by the cuts, or will it only really impact work which is already struggling to find an audience?

Tickets: £7.50/5 via thecockpit.org.uk or 02072582925

Eintrittspreis: EUR 4,90

Kontakt: Redaktion NovoArgumente, www.novo-argumente.com, Tel: 069 260 185-33, Johannes Richardt.

Gefährdet die sich öffnende „Schere zwischen Arm und Reich“ den sozialen Frieden und die Demokratie? Es scheint Konsens, dass eine Gesellschaft, in der die Einkommensunterschiede groß sind, ungerecht und nicht wünschenswert ist. Armut wird mit sozialer Ausgrenzung gleichgesetzt und spätestens seit Beginn der Finanzkrise wird davor gewarnt, dass dies Auswirkungen auf unsere Demokratie haben könnte. „Ein Gefühl der Ohnmacht und der Ungerechtigkeit hat sich in unserer Demokratie ausgebreitet“, warnte die Politologin und ehemalige Bundespräsidentschaftskandidatin, Gesine Schwan, schon bei einer Gedenkrede im Juni 2010. „Die Gefahr von Unruhen steigt“ ist auch das Ergebnis des jüngsten Berichts der ILO vom Juni dieses Jahres.

Die Forderung nach mehr Gerechtigkeit wird oft als eine Fortsetzung früherer, progressiver Bewegungen verstanden. Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit war der Schlachtruf der Französischen Revolution und auch die Bürgerrechtsbewegungen forderten politische Gleichheit. Aber steht die Debatte über soziale Gerechtigkeit wirklich in dieser Tradition?
Zum Kampf für politische Gleichheit gehörte z.B. die Forderung nach dem allgemeinen Wahlrecht, nach Meinungsfreiheit, Versammlungsfreiheit, Gewerbefreiheit, Freizügigkeit, Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz. Heute scheint es bei der Frage der sozialen Gerechtigkeit vor allem darum zu gehen, wie das Geld zu verteilen ist. Statt um Gleichberechtigung geht es vielfach um Gleichstellung und Verteilungsgerechtigkeit.

Es stellt sich die Frage, wie die Forderung nach mehr Gleichheit mit dem Recht auf Freiheit zusammenpasst. Der Ruf nach sozialer Gerechtigkeit kann sich auch gegen individuelle, religiöse oder unternehmerische Freiheiten richten. Gleiche Rechte für Frauen ist eine progressive Forderung, aber gilt das auch für die „Frauenquote“? Eine Wahl zu treffen, heißt zu diskriminieren. Was bedeutet dann aber eine gut gemeinte Antidiskriminierungskultur für unsere Wahlfreiheit und für unsere Meinungsfreiheit?

Sollten wir nicht auch das Recht haben, ungleich zu sein? Wollen wir wirklich in einer Gesellschaft leben, bei der die staatliche gesteuerte Verteilung von Geld, Jobs und sonstigen Auszeichnungen ausgeweitet wird, bis alle eins sind?

Social media may not yet have the ability to topple governments, despite some initial hyperbole around the Arab Spring, but it has certainly revolutionised communication. So when comedian Beppe Grillo, leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement, won a quarter of the popular vote in February, his success was attributed to his social media strategy. Viral campaigning, such as creating Twitter storms like #endfossilfuelsubsidies, is now a regular strategy for NGOs and advocacy groups. Digital marketing specialists are increasingly influential in both business strategy and public policy. From 02’s widely-praised handling of its recent signalling black-out to Barack Obama’s high-profile tweeting from within the White House, having an online presence is viewed as essential communication tool for building trust and managing reputations in business and politics. Meanwhile, the use of the hashtag #Utoya by sympathetic tweeters was shown on an interactive map of the world to reveal a compassionate, global virtual community in the face of tragedy.

But for every positive example of online ‘clicktivism’, there are numerous examples of the darker side of blogs and Twitter in hate speech and ‘trolling’. Fjordman’s anti-Muslim blog was closed down after it was cited as an inspiration by Anders Breivik. Norwegian politician Sandra Borch has drawn attention to ugly comments on her own blog, and worries about increasing cyberbullying by ‘anonymous cowards’. Reputations can be maligned online even with little evidence, while malicious gossip is easily circulated and given the veneer of truth. In business, slips and mishandling of online strategy have seen the likes of McDonald’s, Vodafone, Qantas, LA Fitness and myriad tweet-happy local politicians suffer reputational fails. Careless tweets have also led to people being sacked, and teenagers in the UK have been arrested for offensive, sometimes drunken tweets.

Are concerns about the dark side of social networks anything more than a moral panic, or are new technologies debasing society? Are social media platforms for building relationships and trust or destroying reputations and cruel abuse?

In 2012, Norway’s government allocated 27.8 billion kroner for such development, a higher percentage of GDP (just over 1%) than any other country. The UK government has pledged to increase its aid spending to 0.7% of GDP. Nevertheless, a recent report from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs found 62% staff in the country’s embassies and consulates believe Norwegian interests are better served by private investment rather than ‘soft’ ideals. Moreover, some argue Norway’s direct financial interest in several African countries (such as Statoil and Statkraft in Angola, Algeria and Tanzania) is more also beneficial than aid for those countries themselves. This echoes the views of Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, who argues trade and investment are more beneficial than hand-outs.

With historic aid recipients such as India and China becoming economic giants, critics argue aid is outdated: China has reduced its population in poverty from 452m to 278m through economic growth; China, Brazil, and South Africa are now aid givers; and the embarrassing controversy about India’s rejection of British aid in 2012 means the UK will no longer provide aid to India from 2015. Indeed, in current circumstances, some ask whether countries like Britain can afford aid. A 2012 spoof music video asked Africans to donate radiators to the freezing children of Norway, and struck a nerve. Many Africans are fed up with seeing their continent presented as beyond hope. And Western aid, often with strings attached, is even blamed for creating dependency and low expectations. The Make Poverty History campaign and UN Millennium Development Goal sought to halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, but seemed less committed to creating the conditions for economic growth.

So is Oxfam right that aid is indispensable if poor countries are to work their way out of poverty? Or should it be scrapped in favour of a trade-based approach? Is even trade less effective than foreign direct investment? Or is such investment no more than self-serving exploitation of the developing world by multinationals? What purpose does aid serve: a safety net for the world’s poor? A vehicle for good governance? To serve donors’ national interest as soft foreign policy? Or to make us in the West feel better about ourselves? Should aid be a government issue at all, or best left to charities to organise independently?

Tickets: £5.00 via www.birminghamsalon.org (NB: change from brochure information)

Public health advice to women who plan to become, or who are, pregnant increasingly emphasises the effects of their choices about their lives, or their circumstances, on long term outcomes for the child, with everything from coffee consumption to snacking examined for negative effects. Policy documents suggest that how the mother lives and behaves from conception onwards can affect how her child learns, earns, and becomes part of society and at the same time there is increased emphasis on the need for intervention and support services. By implication, a huge responsibility for the problems of society is now focussed on the pregnant woman. Is it right that she be expected to bear this burden, either alone, or with expert help and advice? Or is it reasonable for society to demand certain responsibilities for the unborn? Are we becoming too focussed on the developing fetus at the expense of the mother’s autonomy?

Not many areas of public life are immune from demands for more transparency today. Governments pride themselves on their openness and accessibility. The media put intense pressure – even running sting operations – on politicians to make sure that private interests are declared. Senior figures in public life are expected to reveal their salaries. So virtuous is being transparent considered today, that the most high-profile anti-corruption organisation in the world is called… Transparency International. Whistleblowers – once considered disloyal - are the new moral heroes. Lobbyists the new zeroes. It seems that the mantra – if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide – has become universally accepted.

But is this an unqualified Good Thing? After all, as private individuals we still expect a degree of confidentiality although there are arguments – for example in the case of medical records – for us to be less precious about it. Might it not be the case that demanding transparency could have the perverse outcome of breeding secrecy and an increase in secretive off the record corridor discussions? Can government actually work without the freedom to discuss alternatives behind closed doors? Are we overly obsessed with the process by which decisions are reached rather than the actual outcomes? Why are we so uncomfortable with idea that we can leave people to get on with things without auditing them every step of the way? Has society run out of trust? Do we really think that people will do wrong if they aren’t watched? Is it right to assume that those who trumpet their transparency are necessarily squeaky clean? Would you share ALL your secrets?

The third part of a series sponsored by New York Salon (www.nysalon.org) and The New School (www.newschool.edu) investigating some of the key areas of contemporary life.

This event is free and open to the public. For further information please email jean@nysalon.org

In recent years, there have been several seemingly random acts of violence committed by young males in the US – shootings in Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook, Connecticut and a bombing at the Boston Marathon. Following each case, there has been heated discussion about how these acts should be interpreted. Was there a political dimension, whether in the tradition of right-wing domestic terrorism or Islamist international jihad? Or were the killers following the well-established script of high school shootings by disaffected teenagers? Typically, the latter seems much closer to the truth. What all of these acts have in common is seemingly nihilistic and motiveless suicidal violence. Shootings or bombings seem to be an end in themselves, an attention-seeking outburst by disturbed young men.

In the case of the Boston bombings, however, the US authorities arguably overreacted badly in forcing a million people to hunker down in their homes for an entire day, perhaps because this case bore more of a resemblance than most to the Islamist terror script. In retrospect, it seems that script was deliberately manipulated by perpetrators who turned out to have more in common with home-grown high school shooters after all. But the resulting restrictions on freedom of movement, not seen even after 9/11, helped spread a terrible message of fear throughout the city of Boston. Moreover, many who objected to anti-terrorism measures after 9/11 on civil liberties grounds are nonetheless quick to call for tighter gun controls in the wake of nihilistic shootings. Is this hypocritical, or merely common sense?

Is there a tension between the rights of individuals – to own guns, or even to communicate without fear of surveillance – and the security of the many? And should we see random acts of violence as the work of mentally unbalanced individuals, or symptomatic of a cultural malaise? How, if at all, does the discussion about more recent outrages differ from that about the pre-9/11 Columbine shootings of 1999, for example? And what if anything does this tell us about US society today?

In recent years, the arts have increasingly turned towards neuroscience to understand its purpose and value. From Jonah Lehrer’s controversial Proust was a Neuroscientist to Harry Witchel’s You Are What You Hear, there is a huge interest in the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics. Yet some remain extremely sceptical both to the extent of what scientific findings actually reveal and, more broadly, science’s ability to explain art’s importance. Can brain scans ever really explain to us the beauty of a concerto or a sonnet? Does Mozart’s and Shakespeare’s power ultimately reside in their ability to touch the right neural buttons? Or are critics guilty of mystification and philistinism in refusing to countenance a biological underpinning to ‘the art instinct’? Can scientific research help us better separate good art from the bad? Is this another case of exaggerated ‘neuromania’ exaggerating its claims, or are there other reasons for why art has turned to science to validate itself?

While performance poets and popular songwriters used to revel in their status outside the poetry establishment, the critical acclaim afforded to veteran performers such as John Cooper Clarke, feted lyricists such as Bob Dylan and rising stars such as Kate Tempest point towards its contemporary respectability. Yet if the celebration of such artists by the literary world is no longer controversial, there seems less consensus over whether their work fits into a poetic tradition. Some point towards the rich history of collaboration between the ‘sister arts’ of poetry and music, and see performance artists and rappers as a contemporary extension of the Bardic tradition or the lyric poets. Yet some critics and performers remain sceptical over whether such judgements are being made on a purely artistic basis, or whether they’re driven more by a desire to prove poetry can still be popular and relevant in the 21st century. Where is the line drawn between a witty rap or a catchy lyric and the intense lyricism of poetry? Does music enhance what is innately powerful and unique about poetry or embellish poetry with a veneer that makes it less intellectual and less challenging? When poetry becomes sung performance what happens to the interior experience of how we encounter poetry as individuals?

Paul Morley grew up in Reddish (a real place)… and has always thought of himself as a northerner without really knowing what it meant. This book is his “journey” (without sounding too southern about it) of self- and regional- discovery. From Wordsworth’s poetry, Larkin’s reflections and Formby’s ukulele he seeks to show that northern-ness goes deeper than just t’accent.

Morley wants The North to be seen as ” a great original piece of writing… (but not) so experimental that you alienate an audience.” Come and judge if this is northern soul or soft-southern identity politics.

This discussion will be in English.

Tickets: 10,00 CHF available on the door.

For more information please contact: Paul Seaman

From Google and Facebook to government surveillance, our data is being mined behind our backs. But should we be surprised? When the product is free, we should realize we (in the form our data) are the product. Is surrendering our personal data and privacy the price of entry to gain access to free content (freemium)? And if we’re doing nothing wrong, do we mind what others know about us? Or is ditching freemium for premium, paid-for-content the way to regain control over our data and our privacy? Given that all business is based on confidence, how can consumers and corporations forge trusting relationships in the networked society? Are ‘the crowds’ being empowered or not? What’s the future role of social media
 and old media? Or are both trust and privacy dead? Is that what we call the price of progress?

Following the final festival plenary, have a drink on us and carry on the debates informally in a special drinks reception at which SABMiller, the festival’s International Champion, present: Beers of the World.

Today, amid the explosion of writing and publishing on and offline, prioritising what texts are important to read is, at the very least, daunting.  Moreover, works central to our literary heritage, are often portrayed as arcane and irrelevant.  This estrangement from the intellectual legacy of the past and disdain for the canon of literature has allowed instrumentalism to hold sway: novels are charged with telling the correct stories; the classics are interpreted in light of contemporary policy priorities. But is King Lear really a guide to homeless and mental-health issues?  Are the poems of Wordsworth and Keats best read as environmentalist tracts? Might we kill a love of reading if we treat literature as merely a means to non-literary ends?  Why should we read, what should we read, and why does literature matter?

To end this year’s Battle of Idea we have asked three festival speakers to talk about literary classics that have inspired them and why reading Great Books from the literary canon is still important in 2013.

This session is followed by a End of Festival complimentary drinks reception at which SABMiller, the festival’s International Champion, present: Beers of the World.

In 2013 the world is celebrating two of the greatest opera composers in history – Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, both born in 1813. Karl-Erik Norrman‘s new audio book celebrates both composers at the same time. Verdi and Wagner never met in life time, but here they meet, in Café Florian in Venice and walking through the beautiful city. They both have dramatic life stories to tell each other - from private life, from politics and from composition. They were both engaged in the political unity endeavours of their countries. Italy was united in 1861 and Germany in 1871. This unusual work is both a story about two great Europeans and a “double biography” in the form of a dialogue/duel between two composers who compare their roles in the history of opera.

The audio book The Gala Concert, Verdi/Wagner 200 years, a drama in 36 chapters, was written by Karl-Erik Norrman in 2009-10. He was also the producer of the recording in Stockholm in 2011 (voices of three actors and many musical excerpts from Verdi- and Wagner operas). The audio book (3 CDs , playtime 181 Minutes) was released in Stockholm by Tundell/Salmson, Stockholm, in spring 2013.

David Cameron has announced £50m will be allocated for an ‘historic’ commemoration of the centenary of the First World War. But while we can all agree that the war itself was an epochal event, what will be the meaning of a commemoration? Can you commemorate a world war without celebrating the savage butchery of millions? Critics such as Plaid Cymru’s Jonathan Edwards suggest it would be more appropriate to remember the end of a conflict, rather than its beginning. So is there anything to be said for a commemoration next year?

A recent survey indicates that only six out of ten people feel that they have sufficient knowledge of the First World War, with that number falling with reducing age. Perhaps therefore, the centenary is an important educational opportunity. But are we sure what lessons should be learnt? Cameron argues that however frustrating and difficult are today’s debates in Europe, at least ‘we sort out our differences through dialogue at meetings around conference tables, not through the battle on the fields of Flanders’. But is the implication that ‘to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war’ any more than a cliché? Some insist that the ‘Great War’ was one of the greatest mistakes of the 20th century – in which lions were led by donkeys. Is this the full story or a myth as simplistic as any jingoistic account?

We are told one core aim of the centenary is to honour those who served and remember those who died. But who should be remembered and honoured? There is already controversy about whether the names of every German soldier who died should appear alongside the British dead soldiers at the Cenotaph, or how much emphasis should be placed on the achievement of the allies; France’s losses were double Britain’s, and by the end of the war, the largest army on the Western Front was American. Can and should the centenary avoid squabbles about victors and losers? Or might such debates help us learn more about the reality of the First World War rather than a one dimensional version of history?

The rise of China has been one of the most notable features of the 21st century so far. As the most populous nation on Earth develops, all kinds of new issues are arising, both external – such as tensions with Japan and North Korea, relations with Pakistan and various African countries – and internal, with housing bubbles, popular concerns over pollution, the extent of media liberalisation, the clampdown on corruption and the rate of urbanisation, as well as migrant labour rights, ethnic minority protests, one-child policies and educational reform. China is moving fast and so is the debate. What are the key issues to be watching in general, and in particular, what are the implications of the first twelve months of the new government? And what does this tell us about the nature of the Chinese Dream?

According to ‘Reducing Obesity and Improving Diet’, a policy document produced by the Department of Health in March 2013, most people in England are overweight or obese - 61.3% of adults and 30% of children aged between 2 and 15. The associated health problems are costing the NHS more than £5 billion every year. The reasons given for people ‘going large’ are not always clear, and numerous reasons have been suggested: that the modern Western diet is too high in carbohydrates / fat / sugar [delete as appropriate], that we no longer sit down together for a home-cooked family meal, but graze all day or eat ready-meals in front of the TV, that we don’t cook anymore so our understanding of nutrition and seasonality is lacking, that we drink too many fizzy drinks, that processed food is as addictive and we have become food junkies. To tackle the problem, there have been numerous government health initiatives, and doctors and health organisations have called for a wide array of health interventions, including sugar and fat taxes. While these make headlines, it seems they’ve failed to affect our waistlines, with some predicting that obesity will continue to rise and place further strain on the NHS.

On the other hand, studies show the number of people who are overweight or obese has not risen for over a decade, and there are concerns that school health campaigns are making our children unhealthily weight-obsessed. Some studies even suggest those labelled ‘category 1 obese’ are likely to be just as healthy as those deemed ‘normal’. So what’s the truth behind the obesity epidemic - are we right to be worried about becoming a nation of fatties? Is being fat necessarily a harbinger of ill health and early death? Just what is making us more obese? And do we all need a nudge to make sure we fill up our plates with carrots and stick with the gym?

‘Inequality is the defining issue of our time’, said US president Barack Obama in 2012 – an especially significant judgement following years of economic malaise. A year later, the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, continued the theme: ‘Excessive inequality is corrosive to growth; it is corrosive to society… the economics profession and the policy community have downplayed inequality for too long.’ British politicians seem to agree. Prime minister David Cameron has delivered various speeches on the dangers of inequality while Labour leader Ed Miliband has pledged to fight it, too. But is the fight against inequality really the unequivocally good fight many present it as today?

There certainly seems to be a widely held conviction that inequality is bad for society: it creates envy; it fosters resentment; and ultimately, it leads to social unrest. But is this true? Moreover, is there something to be said for inequality? Would a society in which markets and individuals are freer, a society in which inequalities are therefore inevitable, allow wealth creation to flourish? Should we in fact be encouraging competition rather than enforcing equality?

Others argue that the focus on combatting inequality actually damages the lives of the less well-off. That is, the prioritisation of the re-distribution of existing wealth and earnings over a focus on the creation of new wealth, means that we will all be poorer in the long run. But is this true? Does the focus on shifting around existing wealth detract from attempts to grow the economy as a whole, and increase wealth in general? Indeed, does the elevation of inequality as the defining issue of our time indicate that Western politicians are not only incapable of creating a wealthier society, but even of making a case for one?

The worlds of art and money have always been intertwined, and art collectors – from the dukes and popes of the Renaissance to the likes of Charles Saatchi today – have been important arbiters of artistic taste. While many works in private collections are bought in the glare of publicity and displayed in galleries, art and artefacts often disappear from view, adorning the walls of private homes or even put in storage as investments.

What is the role of modern day Medicis? Do they buy art as true aficionados or are they driven by commercial motives? If buying an artwork for investment purposes, even to mitigate against tax, helps fund a vibrant art market, keeps contemporary artists out of the garret and safeguards important artworks for posterity, does it matter if art is bought for non-artistic reasons? How do we assess their contribution to our understanding and valuing of art? Even if a collector is driven by purely private gain – financial or pleasure – might there be a public gain? After all, the end result of many a great collection is the creation of a museum or gallery wing. The nucleus of most of the world’s great museums, from the Hermitage in St Petersburg to the New York Met, began as private collections.

Nevertheless, some contend private art collectors who are indifferent to artistic worth artificially confer ‘great art’ status on unremarkable work. Might the huge sums of money distort public judgment about what constitutes ‘good’ art? Or, for all the fashionable disdain for big money, rich moguls and market-driven arts, is public funding of art any more reliable a guarantee of artistic excellence? However we judge art’s merit, in an era in which accessibility is a mantra, should great art be made available to all, regardless of ownership? Are some works of art so important that they belong to everyone?

Today it seems authority is not a quality possessed by many. In fact, examples of its absence abound: the BBC, ‘an institution once so loved and trusted it is known as ‘auntie’, has struggled to deal with post-Savile rumour and innuendo; British parliament, stumbling from one scandal to the next, is routinely treated with scepticism and often cynicism; even the police, as their uncertain response to the 2011 riots demonstrated, are seemingly wracked by self-doubt.

But is this seeming crisis of authority, and the concomitant crisis of trust, really such a bad thing? After all, modernity itself was born of a revolt against traditional forms of authority, manifest in church and state. Thanks to the Enlightenment questioning of authority, and the challenging of extant moral codes, people began to win the freedom to make their own way in life, to dare to know for themselves. Is it not possible to see the absence of deference today, the perpetual doubting of institutions and individuals in positions of authority, in a similarly positive light? Surely the desire to unmask those in authority, to blow the whistle on state security agencies, to question the cash-led motives of MPs, is a necessary check on the untrammelled exercise of authority?

Or is there another problem here? Does today’s crisis of authority run deeper? Does it also implicate the freedom and autonomy of the individual itself, the very capacity the Enlightenment revolt against traditional forms of authority was meant to liberate? Indeed, does today’s crisis of authority stem not so much from Enlightenment notions of autonomy, reason and judgement than it does from an attack on them? Certainly, individual initiative, the freedom to exercise one’s own judgement, to be the author of one’s own actions, does appear to be have been circumscribed by rules, codes of practice and other bureaucratic mechanisms designed to reassure the public and others that individuals are not misbehaving. Has this regulation - the solution often proposed to the widespread mistrust of authority - exacerbated the problem? Has the authority of individuals been so undermined that we are deemed incapable of handling our most informal relationships and encounters without external guidelines and monitoring? Has what looks like the end of deference culminated in the termination of our own self-respect?

Food production was once the preserve of the countryside. But today enthusiasts promote the benefits for all communities - including city-dwellers – of becoming more intimately involved with food by growing and distributing and well as cooking and eating it. In ‘dying cities’ like Detroit, abandoned plots and urban voids have been reinvented as food gardens, farmers markets and pop-up food joints, while trendsetting London has allotment waiting lists and roof spaces filled with planters, chicken coops, bee hives and compost bins. Growing your own is all the rage. The Capital Growth initiative created 2,012 new growing spaces in London during the Olympic year and the ‘Food Milton Keynes Project’ advocates personal food production on the scale of the wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. The trend is also being scaled-up, with architects designing futuristic skyscrapers with hi-tech farms, and 30-storey ‘Pig Cities’. One such pioneer, CJ Lim, argues such ‘hybridization of agriculture and urbanity’ creates ‘long-term urban and ecological sustainability’.

CityThinking.org encourages us to ‘become an urban farmer and feel smug about it’. But urban agriculture is seen as the solution to a range of social and political problems. Recent food scares like the horse meat scandal have made us all think a bit more about what we’re eating; some suggest that growing our own food is an innovative solution that empowers citizens and challenges the monopoly of industrialised agriculture. Additionally, the urban agricultural movement claims to have answers to lots of questions currently being raised about cities; food miles; mental health; neighbourliness (or lack of it); inter-generational relationships and even social mobility.

While many enjoy pottering about on an allotment or growing tomatoes in a window-box, to what extent can urban agriculture be a solution to the myriad problems it purports to resolve? When a Detroit activist says his aim is to ‘grow people’s relationship to the land and to themselves’ is this possible - or even sensible? Will it help us overcome the perceived failings of a globalised food system, and imbue cities with the alleged virtues of village communities, or is it just another urban fad?

Advice on how to bring up your children, alongside warnings about the dangers if it is not followed, is omnipresent. How parents behave towards their children, how we talk to them, play with them, how many activities we enrol them into and whether we put too much pressure on them, or don’t help them enough are now seen as the factors that determine the kind of adults our children will become and the opportunities that they will have when they grow up. But much of the advice on offer is contradictory; what was fashionable one day is blamed for creating the wrong kind of behaviour and outcomes for our children the next. Accused of rearing a new generation of cotton-wool kids, do we let our children roam free or might we be branded negligent? Do parents who indulge in a regular tipple at home allow children to see normalised responsible drinking or is this a recipe for breeding binge-drinkers? Are you a model mother if you read nightly to the kids, help with homework, tirelessly take them to galleries, ballet, tennis – or are you a monstrous Tiger Mum?

We all want the best for our children, but even if we take all the parenting lessons and read all the manuals now on offer, will it help us to be a perfect parent, and how much does how we parent matter?

It is not just the old member states of the EU that are suffering in the European crisis. As well as in Portugal, Greece and Spain, there is considerable discontent in the new member states further to the East. Hungarians and Bulgarians have been on the streets to protest against austerity and corruption. Last year the Romanian government was mired in scandal. Even Poland – maybe the most successfully integrated of the eastern economies – is heavily reliant on EU infrastructural spending and the German ‘halo effect’. For most of these countries, joining the European free market can hardly be described as a great economic boon, so little wonder maybe there is talk of a ‘transition backlash’ and the parallel growth of political extremism and disillusionment from Tallinn to Tirana. What alternatives are on the table?

Although the old divide between West and East seems to have persisted, with Western hostility to further immigration and disdain for any form of politics of national renewal such as have been seen in Hungary, there does also appear to be a differentiation made between eastern countries. Some – like Poland, the Czech Republic and Croatia – are seen as setting a better example than others: more West-Eastern rather than East-Eastern. The rest are told to try harder, try another year. Why though should closer integration into the EU be the only game in town? Why does Poland say it’s the EU or war? Especially when membership comes at such a high price in terms of financial austerity and political conformity to the diktats of the Brussels bureaucracy. What awaits Croatia, which became the newest member state this summer, and the other former Yugoslav states waiting to join? As comfortable a place at the conference table and as much independence as Cyprus now enjoys? Will the new member states turn away from the EU and look for other opportunities, political and economic? With all the discontents associated with the EU, and with native political elites, is there a will in Eastern Europe to take a different road? And, if there is, might it lead in a positive direction or take a turn for the worse?

Western aid to the developing world has been a constant since the 1940s, but justifications for it have varied. After 60 years and $3 trillion of development aid, the poor world remains poor, and aid is increasingly questioned. Even in Norway, which allocates a higher percentage of GDP to development aid than any other country, it is argued that private investment is more beneficial than aid. In the UK, critics question why the aid budget is ring-fenced when other budgets are being cut. Adrian Lovett, director of the anti-poverty movement One, is concerned that money that could be going to Africa is being poured into European bank bailouts. Meanwhile, with many historic aid recipients becoming economic giants, aid can seem very outdated. China has reduced its population in poverty from 452m to 278m; China, Brazil, and South Africa are now aid givers; and the embarrassing controversy about India’s rejection of British aid in 2012 means the UK will no longer provide aid to India from 2015. Many Africans are fed up with seeing their continent presented as a land of too little food, and too much war, disease and corruption. Last year a spoof ‘reverse aid’ Christmas music hit asking Africans to donate radiators to help the freezing children of Norway, got more than two million hits on YouTube.

Despite such scepticism, aid agencies argue development aid and economic growth go hand in hand. Charities have responded to criticism by working increasingly with in-country NGOs, supporting projects identified by them, helping them to become self-sustaining. Is this a progressive development, or is it distracting the countries best brains from focussing on self-determined needs and governance? Are wealthy countries morally obliged to provide aid indefinitely?  Should aid be a government issue at all, or best left to charities? Would leaving development to multinationals and foreign investment mean abandoning the world’s poor to the vagaries of the free market, or would it allow poor countries to reduce poverty and create jobs by growing their own economies? Is aid a safety net for the world’s poor? A vehicle for good governance? Soft-power foreign policy? Or does it just make us in the West feel better about ourselves?

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Whether being hailed as agents of radical change or fretted over as potential victims of grooming and cyber-bullying, the first generation raised with the internet is a constant source of scrutiny. Does being constantly in the spotlight of social media – where nothing is truly ever deleted – fundamentally change the experience of growing up? As Kent’s now ex-youth police and crime commissioner Paris Brown discovered very publicly earlier this year, online indiscretions can have serious offline consequences. So are the supposed digital natives dangerously cavalier about matters of privacy and sharing or are they simply embracing the new realities of digital privacy in the age of Google Glass?

Has the digital age equipped youngsters for a brave new world of unheralded connectivity or left them floundering in an information overload? Is social networking a toxic influence that distracts young people from making real friends, or simply a tool that makes it easier to keep in touch? And is today’s generation gap defined by when you first surfed the information superhighway? Will life ever be the same again?

Culture has a very wide range of meanings: from the anthropological sense of the culture of a people or nation to the more restricted sense of high culture, and the tradition of Western high culture in particular. But however we understand the word, there continues to be debate about whether culture is primarily something done to you or something you acquire through your own efforts. The latter sense – for example in the German Enlightenment theory of Bildung or character development through culture – emphasised a process of self-cultivation. The 20th century on the other hand threw up a number of ‘experiments in living’ – from the Bloomsbury Set to the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s – that saw bourgeois culture as something to be challenged or overcome. Often such movements situated their resistance in terms of a return to nature or through an emphasis on felt experience: sense rather than reason. Even so, most still assumed that culture was something human and something relatively recent: ie, stretching back about 3,000 years at the most.

But are these ideas, about the requirements of special education and hard work or struggle against indoctrination, just an unhelpful delusion? Increasingly evolutionary biologists argue that human societies across tens of thousands of years have created culture: in the form of song, drawings, cave paintings and carvings. The recent Ice Age exhibition at the British Museum might seem to suggest that the ‘modern mind’ was created 40,000 years ago and the evidence is in the bone carvings that survive. Perhaps culture is far more natural, and far more universal, than we may previously have thought, and its evolution across time - the changes in form and technique - may owe more to nature, and natural selection, than is often recognised. Is culture something that we can be (or not), or something that is? Do we choose to be cultured or does culture determine us?