Alternative Editorial: Time For Realisation
We've just spent three days at The Realisation Festival in St Giles House, home of the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury. No doubt such a revelation will spark a thousand different responses in our readers - which is welcome. In many ways, with a theme of Unlearning and Re-imagining Difference, that was the hope of the gathering: to invite diverse reactions to the subjects raised (more on that below). And then to move individually and together towards new meaning-making.
We've covered the Realisation Festival before, so for more on the origin and deeper rationale, go here. Briefly, as co-Founder of the Festival, Perspectiva's Jonathan Rowson described in the welcome, there are three aspects of 'real' to consider in the term realisation: getting real, becoming real and making real. For some this range presented a dive into the difference between perspectives, praxis and poiesis. For others it might be understood as the difference between thinking, being and doing.
Even so, for some, the location of the Festival pre-determines its outcome. Who has the resources to even attend? Granting all the bursuries and camping options, who hears about these kinds of events, other than those in the networks it implies? And when these networks do attend, how can such a heavily determining historical setting give way, and enable new thinking?
All good questions and reasons to be doubtful. Yet right at the heart of the story of The Realisation Festival is a trojan horse - a possibility of personal and social disruption. The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury is remembered for many things, but significantly here for his defining the principle of ‘‘innere Bildung’’ (see below) which was later developed in Germany, by Hegel amongst others.
It's worth dwelling on this for a moment - particularly as Bildung was also a founding principle of Perspectiva and therefore a core attractor for this joint project. This from Wikipedia:
Bildung (German: [ˈbɪldʊŋ], "education", "formation", etc.) refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation (as related to the German for: creation, image, shape), wherein philosophy and education are linked in a manner that refers to a process of both personal and cultural maturation. This maturation is a harmonization of the individual's mind and heart and a unification of selfhood and identity within the broader society, as evidenced with the literary tradition of Bildungsroman.
In this sense, the process of harmonisation of mind, heart, selfhood and identity is achieved through personal transformation, which presents a challenge to the individual's accepted beliefs. In Hegel's writings, the challenge of personal growth often involves an agonizing alienation from one's "natural consciousness" that leads to a reunification and development of the self. Similarly, although social unity requires well-formed institutions, it also requires a diversity of individuals with the freedom (in the positive sense of the term) to develop a wide-variety of talents and abilities and this requires personal agency. However, rather than an end state, both individual and social unification is a process that is driven by unrelenting negations.
In this sense, education involves the shaping of the human being with regard to their own humanity as well as their innate intellectual skills. So, the term refers to a process of becoming that can be related to a process of becoming within existentialism.
If 'bildung' was the call of the Realisation Festival, what transpired over these few days was true to the intention of inviting harmony yet releasing unexpected tensions - even agonising alienation - which then generates possibilities for change. In the same way that any individual, given space and resources to bethemselves, might discover they are not the person society expects or requires them to be. Given a chance to drop out of the mainstream which pre-defines their value (aka the rat race in modern terms), they might discover a very different, truer self. Instead of fitting back into the pre-harmonised society, something new starts to take shape as result - most likely imperfectly, urecognisably. But different enough to know that reality is not fixed; it can change.
Some of this bildung disruption can be seen in the story of Nick Ashley-Cooper, the current and 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, also co-founder of the festival. In an interview with AG Co-initiator Indra Adnan on the second evening, Nick shared the turbulent story of starting his life as the 'spare' - the son of the troubled 10th Earl but unlikely to succeed to the title.
Instead, in many ways Nick left to find a path of his own. He found a 'church' and a 'tribe' in the “Madchester” (sic) club scene of the 1980s - a zone known for its embrace of political counter-culture, under the situationist sensibility of Tony Wilson. Here, Nick described, was a freedom and fulfilment he couldn’t experience elsewhere.
However, a series of personal tragedies—which saw first his father and then brother die within months of each other—meant that Nick suddenly took on the title and responsibilities of the dilapidated St Giles. Looking back to that time, Nick now realised that the trauma of that experience was core to his dropping one life for another. To make meaning of his family’s fate, he had to create equal and immense value with what he did next.
At the same time, the person Nick had become as a DJ would inevitably shape a less than traditional future for the pile of bricks his father left behind. His awareness of his own privilege weighs heavy on him. Both as a prompt to live up to the potential that St Giles offers. But also to be constantly considering the bigger picture of society that the later 7th Earl of Shaftesbury brought: a social justice reformer, working for the abolition of slavery, reform of child labour and mental health.
Participants gather in the grounds of St Giles.
Over the three days at St Giles, some of that ancestry—of the need to break boundaries—became evident. The opening session questioned what counts as difference in our society and why it matters. Publisher and Sufist Satish Kumar talked about tolerance of ‘otherness’, while Linda Woodhead, Professor of theology at Kings College, introduced clairvoyance as a different form of intelligence. Indra Adnan shared her own journey, discovering and exerting different forms of agency, and what ‘making a difference’ might entail.
The second day of talks heard Tomiwa Owolade, Kübra Gümüşay and Tom Shakespeare share the pressure of their obligation to be always explaining who they are, to a public that doesn’t recognise their needs alongside the needs of others. Would we one day see that we are all vulnerable and defending our self-sovereignty - each one of us?
Workshops moved our inquiry out of the cerebral into more embodied forms of knowing including workshops on time (led by Ivo Mensch and Dominique Savitri Bonarjee), improvisation and nature (led by Richard Dunne of the Harmony Project) and a voice session on dissonance (led by Christopher Ash).
More than once the question of privilege - specifically the euro-patriarchal form - came into view. In the Antidebate - an experiment in social dynamics hoping to move community intelligence beyond polarisation - those who were gathered found themselves deeply questioning the will to overcome privilege. Maybe in this workshop more than any other, the power of the visceral—meaning the impact of bodies occupying a field, defined by a question—revealed to us how much our neurology determines our decision making.
But in the backdrop of all these workshops, the steady rhythm of gathering—to eat, to enjoy theatre, to dance to DJ sets from both NIck Shaftesbury and Zoya Ahmed —held us together as a community of inquiry. There was a hum of social coherence, only slightly disturbed every now and then by structures threatening to implode, but not yet doing soWe’re left wondering what will happen next at St Giles? The consequences of the 3rd Earl’s advocacy of bildung are certainly showing up in the different way that the 12th and current Earl is developing the legacy of St Giles. Maybe as much or even more in the music festival - We Out Here - taking place in August.
But what of the ongoing consequences of the life and work of the 7th Earl? Will Nick - DJ and serial festival developer, nurtured in the church of club culture - also give rise to real political reform in his lifetime? There’s every chance that staying on the path of getting real and being real will realise quite a different future—both for those who hold the most privilege and the least.