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Current Projects
great northern youth voices
Big Lottery funded documentary-making training and production project
for young people not in employment, education or training.
Sustained Engagement
Ingenious project involving engineers
in conversation with the public.
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Welcome to The Great Debate website.
The Great Debate is a group of people dedicated to providing
courses, day schools, discussions and workshops for the general public
on topics ranging from Darwinism and human nature, to free speech and
environmental thought. We also run a
schools
programme that includes
public discussions, debating workshops in schools and
thegreatnortherndebate project.
We are committed to education, discovering knowledge and
developing informed opinion through discussion and research.
The Great Debate is a partner in the
NECTER regional network.
The Great Debate is organised by director and chair
Caspar Hewett,
co-director Mo Lovatt,
treasurer
Dave O'Toole
and the team:
Oliver Moss,
Lucy Madden,
Charlie Winstanley,
Jon Pugh
and secretary, Jon Bryan.
In our thirteen year history we have organised more than fifty public
debates, over twenty day events, and over twenty courses, seminars and talks,
attracting a wide audience
drawn from the general public of ages 14 to 80. Current activities include
film-training for young people not in employment, education or training,
debate workshops for schools and a programme of events engaging engineers
in conversation with the general public.
The Great Debate website includes listings of events,
articles, reviews and useful links to other sites.
We hope that you will find our website to be a useful resource.
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Comment on The Great Debate:
"Fun is not usually a word that complements intelligent discussion, but
without wishing to devalue the serious nature of the enterprise that's
exactly what The Great Debates are. For more than three years I have
been going to the debates on all sorts of subjects and never been
disappointed. The speakers are always willing to engage with the
audience even if what they have to say is a little off the wall.
Attendance is usually free, which means all my poor friends can come along
as well. The atmosphere is friendly and inclusive, during intervals
there is the possibility of free flowing intellectual engagement."
Abdul Hamed, Sept 2010
More comments
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news
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The Great Debate continued to roll out
our programme of debate workshops for schools
throughout the North East in the 2011/12 academic year. This included
a series of workshops in schools and a School Debating
Competition sponsored by Newcastle University.
The Great Debate's ongoing contribution to
ESRC Festival of Social Science continued in
2011 with a one day event entitled
Facing the Future
held at Newcastle University on
Saturday 5th November 2011. The event included debates on
population and whether or not we should rely on technical fixes to
environmental problems.
More ...
The Great Debate won a bid to the Royal Academy of Engineering
in partnership with New Economics Foundation (nef), Action for Involvement and
the British Science Association for Sustained Engagement.
The project is engaging engineers in discussion with
the public using Crowd Wise, a methodology for consensus-building
developed by nef.
The Great Debate organised two events in the North East in
2011 and will organise a further two in 2012 related to engineering topics.
More ...
2011 as a whole was the best year for funding in The Great Debate's history.
In addition to the Newcastle
University School Debating Competition, ESRC funding for
Facing the Future
and RAE funding for
Sustained Engagement (see above)
we obtained two grants for
great northern youth voices, our venture into
documentary-making training for young people not in employment, education or training.
So huge thanks to the Big Lottery Fund for the £10,000 startup grant for this project,
which has enabled us both to buy the minimum of kit needed to make this aspect of our
work sustainable and provided the funds to run a set of pilot workshops
and to Dulverton Trust for providing a further
£5000 which will enable us to coninue running workshops into 2012.
More ...
The Great Debate Green Phoenix Festival programme, held in August 2010,
was a great success. Unphased by a last minute change of venue we engaged
over thirty speakers in argument with a public audience, bringing some
180 people through the doors of the Devonshire Building for a
hectic and stumulating three day event.
More ...
thegreatnortherndebate, our flagship project, was
recognised by the
United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies as a Regional Centre of
Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development project. Thanks to everyone
who has been involved in our Development, Sustainability and Environment
series for helping to make this happen.
More ...
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New on The Great Debate website
Facing the Future
The Great Debate: Facing the Future was
a day of active debate and documentary-making
held as part of ESRC Festival of Social Science 2011.
Participants were encourages to take a critical look at current discussions
around population and the limits to social and technical engineering.
View videos of:
Vox pops
with participants /
Interviews with
speakers
Visions for the Future of the City
Videos from workshop exploring the question "How do we create a sustainable and
resilient city in 2050?" held as part of the
Sustained Engagement project at Newcastle University,
22nd October 2011.
View Videos
Economic Growth: Bane or Boon?
Head to head debate between Daniel Ben-Ami,
author Ferraris for All: In Defence of Economic Progress
and Jonathon Porritt,
author Globalism and Regionalism, Living within our means,
Capitalism as If the World Matters held at Northumbria University,
19th October 2010. View Video
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Limits to Growth in the 21st Century
Discussion held as part of
The Great Debate Green Phoenix Festival Programme, August 2010 with
Daniel Ben-Ami,
author Cowardly Capitalism,
Ferraris for All: In Defence of Economic Progress;
Richard Dyer,
Transport and Climate Campaigner, Friends of the Earth;
Phil O'Keefe, Professor
of Economic Development and Environmental Management,
University of Northumbria.
View Video
Food and Water Security, March 2010
Debate held as part of
Getting
Real About Climate Change with
Prof Tony Allan,
Stockholm Water Prize Laureate 2008, founder of London University's
Water Issues Group;
Dr Jennie Barron,
research fellow in water management at
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI);
Dr Julia Brown,
Portsmouth University; and
Dr Ben Campbell,
social anthropologist, Durham University.
View Video
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Living in a Changing World
Video made by young participants of the documentary-making project
Living in a Changing
World, funded by Mediabox, 2010. The interviews
featured were filmed at The Great Debate:
Getting Real About Climate Change workshop held as part of the
Economic and Social Research Council Festival of Social Science/Newcastle
Science Festival in March 2010.
View video.
Getting
Real About Energy
Debate held at
EGU conference in Vienna, May 2010.
With Dermot Roddy,
Science City Professor of Energy, Newcastle upon Tyne,
Director, Sir Joseph Swan
Institute for Energy Research;
Hervé Coutrix,
Vice President, Geosciences Structural and Sedimentological studies, TOTAL;
Niel Bowerman,
co-founder and former Executive Director,
Climatico,
co-founder, The Climate Justice Project.
View video.
More videos and articles can be viewed by clicking on these links:
Videos
Articles
You can also join our
facebook group,
view our videos and hear about our events there.
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The Great Debate is a North East partner of the National Institute of Ideas
Debating Matters Competition. Click
Here for further details.
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To sign up to our mailing list, please send us an email at
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Previous contributors to
The Great Debate have included
Tony Allan,
Christopher Badcock,
Susan Blackmore,
Rita Carter,
Frank Furedi,
Anthony Giddens,
David Glass,
Will Hutton,
Sir Bernard Ingham,
Clive Lord,
Kenan Malik,
Jonathon Porritt,
Matt Ridley and
Raymond Tallis.
Previous events
have been organised in association with
RCE North East,
Discovery Museum,
North East Centre for Lifelong Learning,
Northumbria University,
Newcastle University,
the Institute of Ideas,
RSA
and
WORLDwrite
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