Join us for a day of thought-provoking and progressive talks from some of the world’s most inspiring thinkers and activists.

Full timetable available here.

Speakers

Kalpana Arias
Kalpana Arias is a technologist, urban greening activist, gardener and food growing educator, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays On Earth, a social enterprise advocating for contact with Nature. She campaigns for urban Nature and Nature rights through urban rewilding projects and tech policy reforms, has been researching technological ecologies for over 7 years, delivered a global TED talk, has spoken at the United Nations, and is a trustee for GROW mentoring charity. Kalpana is currently an environmental consultant for corporations and governments and works with leading charities, institutions, brands and grassroots change-makers.

Vidyamala Burch
Vidyamala Burch is a co-founder of The Breathworks Foundation, an international mindfulness and compassion charity. She is an ordained Buddhist. She developed the Mindfulness-based Pain Management (MBPM) programme based on her own experience of living with health challenges following spinal injuries and surgeries in her teens. There are now more than 700 teachers based in over 40 countries teaching this method. Vidyamala was awarded an OBE in 2022 for services to Wellbeing and Pain Management, and was named on the Shaw Trust Power 100 List of the UK’s most influential disabled people for four years running. She is the author of Living Well with Pain and Illness, and a co-author of Mindfulness for Health and Mindfulness for Women.

Liz Bonnin
Liz Bonnin is a science and natural history expert and broadcaster, celebrated for award-winning projects including Drowning in Plastic and Blue Planet Live. She was elected the first female president of The Wildlife Trusts and has helmed over 40 prime time programmes, including Super Smart Animals and Nature's Epic Journeys, as well as hard-hitting environmental documentaries such as Meat: A Threat to our Planet? She presented the podcast series What Planet Are We On? for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live, looking at the impact we are having on our planet, and the practical solutions we can adopt to create a more sustainable future. Soon Liz will return to her Caribbean roots for a series to discover the region's lesser-known, remarkable wildlife and meet the extraordinary people who are endeavouring to save it.

Jane Davidson
Jane Davidson is the chair of Wales Net Zero 2035, charged with examining potential pathways to accelerate climate action in Wales in a just and Nature positive way in accordance with the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act. Her know-how and passion were forged during her time as a Welsh government minister, a university pro vice-chancellor and a land restorer. She is the author of #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country (2020) and its update #futuregen: Gwersi o Wlad Fechan (2022). She lives on a smallholding in west Wales.

Robin Greenfield
Robin Greenfield is an activist and humanitarian dedicated to leading the way to a more sustainable, just and equal world. He embarks on extreme projects to bring attention to important global issues and inspire positive change. His work has been covered by media worldwide, including National Geographic, and he’s been named ‘The Robin Hood of Modern Times’ by France 2 TV. Robin’s life is an embodiment of Gandhi’s philosophy that we should be the change we wish to see in the world. He believes that our actions really do matter and that as individuals and communities we have the power to improve the world around us. Robin donates 100% of his media earnings to grassroots nonprofits and has committed to living simply and responsibly for life.

Satish Kumar
Satish Kumar is a peace pilgrim, a lifelong activist and a former monk who has been inspiring global change for more than half a century. In the 1960s he undertook a pilgrimage for peace, walking for two years without money from India to America for the cause of nuclear disarmament. Now in his eighties, Satish has devoted his life to campaigning for ecological regeneration and social justice. He is a world-renowned author and international speaker, founder of The Resurgence Trust, and editor emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist – the change-making magazine he edited for over 40 years.

Sam Lee
Sam Lee is a folk singer, conservationist, song collector, passionate conservationist and activist. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, he has shaken up the music scene, breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. He has helped to develop its ecosystem, inviting in a new listenership and interrogating what the messages in these old songs hold for us today. In 2021, Sam released his debut book The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird, telling the epic tale of this highly endangered bird and the nightingale’s place in culture folklore, folksong, music and literature throughout the millennia.

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining)
Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, Earth and global healing. Pat draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation in being functional members of the Hoop of Life and upholding the honour of being human.

Helen Moore
Helen Moore is a internationally acclaimed ecopoet, socially engaged artist, writer, and Nature educator who lives in an intentional community in North Dorset. Co-creating with more-than-human Nature, Helen shares work that's at times fiercely satirical of capitalist insanity, and which returns to deep communion and compassion. Inspired by history, science, landscapes, dreams, activism, Helen Moore shapeshifts to share wild, ancestral voices, and visions of regenerative cultures. She is currently working with University of Gloucestershire to create a global network of ecopoets and is writing a prose memoir about her more-than-human teachers.

Asad Rehman
Asad Rehman is the executive director of War on Want, where he organises to put an end to poverty and injustice. Prior to this he was the head of international climate at Friends of the Earth. Asad has over 25 years of experience in the non-government and charity sectors. He has served on the boards of Amnesty International UK, Friends of the Earth International, Global Justice Now, and Newham Monitoring Project.

Kim Samuel
Kim Samuel is an activist, educator, scholar, and leading voice in the global movement for belonging. She is the founder and chief belonging officer of the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness (SCSC), a “think-and-do tank” that partners with leading advocacy groups and research organizations to combat social isolation and build belonging around the world. Kim is currently a visiting research fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and a visiting scholar at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). Kim is the author of On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation, an exploration of the crisis of social isolation and our birthright of belonging, published by Abrams Press in 2022.

Tickets: £25 per person or £15 concessions.
Ticket holders who cannot attend for the whole day or would like to listen to a talk again will be able to access the event online afterwards.

With thanks to our supporters of the Festival of Wellbeing: the Network of Wellbeing and Weleda.