Kindling ideas ...
tales from the speakers forum of Wood Festival
The two days of the Kindling stage at the Wood Festival begin months beforehand as I start to pull together potential speakers. There is a simple reason why most of them come from east Oxford - and that is because there is no budget! So - the lure is a free ticket to an always sold out event for you and your family. And Wood is really a family festival - I just talked to a friend who described it as the local school run but in a field - so many people from OX4 descend on Braziers Park and let their children loose from whatever leash they might have been on!
I was very fortunate to have Robin Ince come and be my opener on the Saturday - not only is he a gentle genius, but also famous enough to ensure the weekend started with a full tent. I wrote a bit about his talk on the last update, check back for that. And buy his book!
Next up was Dr Mia Eisenstadt. I had met her at a friend’s party. We were sitting around a fire in the garden and I was hooked on her wisdom. She spoke powerfully about the wonders of the human brain and the impact of trauma and left me wondering about a great deal.
Dr Mila Fitzgerald is the first of three people I met while walking their dogs around Florence Park … she had just finished her PhD in nuclear fusion and my rescue hound Ogli has developed rather a passionate interest in her rescue Gu!! So, while they attempted to fuse (both neutered males!), we talked and I invited her to speak as she is fascinating.
From nuclear fusion to the potential of AI - Dr Niko Vertovec works at the University of Oxford and really spun an interesting tale far deeper than the shock and outrage we see in the media.
Professor Eben Kirksey - still seems strange thinking of Eben as a Prof - I knew him 20 years ago as a PhD student - anyway - he is a social anthropologist and has written fascinatingly about viruses - how they are instrumental in making us who we are. And also introduced us to the concept of CRISPR … this was high level genetics lecture accessible delivered in a field!
Louise Hazan I have known for years, part of the Florence Park gang - her partner Juliette talked on this stage about chickens in her garden many years ago - Louise was raising the really interesting question of who should pay for the damage caused by climate change and how we should go about persuading them to part with their cash - there was an unusual amount of hope in her presentation.
Finally for the day the second of my dog walking contributors, Sarah Ourednickova. She is working on a DPhil looking into the fragility of LGBTQIA+ rights around the world - how progress can be so easily snatched back from some of the most vulnerable in society. She was passionate and compassionate - and I wish I had managed to engineer her a meeting with Robin Ince … I mentioned to him how good she was, sending him a photo of her in rainbow trousers and Trans Rights are Human Rights t-shirt … he said that he bumped into her in the carpark and complemented the outfit, unaware she was a speaker!
At the end of the Saturday session I grabbed some food and as I was enjoying the vegan pie with chips and peas the music playing from the main stage started to seep into my consciousness … dreamy, Californian in feel, pedal steel, chill out style - after food I took myself off to the tent, perilously close to the stage I had thought, but actually perfect for an afternoon slipping in and out of consciousness to Joe Harvey-Whyte and Bobby Lee … track them down - book them for the afternoon slot in a summers field somewhere!
Sunday morning I bounced out of my tent - well, relatively - into action and headed to the sauna. An hour of good sweat interspersed with buckets of cold water truly did clear my head and ready me for the day of hosting.
First up was Penny Boxall - the third of the dog-walkers! She was poet in residence at Wytham Woods so shared some of her work as well as discuss the nature of impermanence - I love the title she gave her talk, ‘decomposing poems’! It all tied nicely with the idea of the soil. Which was fortunate as next up was Lucy Michaels, part of the team who pulled together the beautiful film, ‘6 inches of soil’ - that had a screening the night before at the festival. Regenerative agriculture is something I am excited about, but would love to see if it can be done without killing animals - however gently it is done, animals are still killed to bring pleasure to the eaters of meat.
Next up was me! I talked about Cull of the Wild - Killing in the Name of Conservation - launched as a paperback tomorrow!! It was quite fun trying to squeeze my hour long illustrated lecture into a 20 minute talk with no slides at all! Yes, I did rely a bit on speed - but judging by the questions that followed, people had paid attention!
I had given my hedgehog slot to Lea Grayston-Smith - wrote about her work yesterday.
And then onto the final two - both boat related. First was Claire Fauset - who decided when she turned 40 to start to say yes to adventure - and wow, what an adventure! She became the chief engineer on a boat that sailed across the Atlantic and the Pacific - having to take shelter on a desert island as they got trapped by COVID restrictions, not allowed to dock at any port! It was not all just adventure, but also campaigning and education - as they used their boat as a stage in ports across Indonesia, talking about environmental destruction and how to reverse it.
Finally was a trio - Cara, Sophie and Caroline, sharing their experiences of life raising children on narrow boats.
I love the opportunity I have to bring together such fascinating people onto the Kindling stage at Wood - it is a privilege to hear such words of wisdom and compassion, creativity and fun - I think we all benefit from spending time in the company of people who passionately care about such diverse subjects as covered here! And this year I was supported by Caper Books - a perfect match!
Amazingly, the super-early-bird tickets that went on sale this morning have all gone, and most of the early-birds have gone too for next Wood 2026!! What subjects do you think I should cover then?