This year’s Festival of Opinion Culture shall not remain only within the perimeter of the Vallimäe Hill in Paide, but will expand even further to the town’s central square and Tallinn street in partnership with the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Katrin Koov and her students of architecture and urban planning from the Estonian Academy of Arts have suggested a preliminary vision of new locations within Paide to where the festival could extend its activities. After an active brainstorming session in Paide last Saturday, the festival’s organising team came up with some ideas on new locations for discussion groups and which activities would be best suited for Paide’s main street and the central square.
The new discussion group areas were also given appropriate names – expect to hear thought-provoking debates at places such as Kooliorg (School Valley), Hekiaed (Hedge Garden), Keldrimägi (Cellar Hill) and Konvendimüür (Convent Wall).

From civil society to gender roles, innovation to health and ethics to governance. These are just a few of the 25 themes to be discussed at this year’s Festival of Opinion Culture.

The festival’s team has put a lot of effort into selecting the final topics – 250 crowdsourced ideas have been divided into 25 groups and these groups shall form the basis for the program in the coming weeks.

We reviewed the keywords that describe each idea in every theme. Whether the issue is the status of teachers or the school environment in general. Larger topics such as education were given subthemes, as every issue can be approached from different angles,” explained the festival’s program leader Maiu Uus. Each topic should ideally convey a particular message as well, as was the goal when mixing together the different ideas under each theme. “We were looking for a new approach to topics this year, aiming to identify more specific themes and problems that every discussion area could dissect, highlight and seek solutions to,” explained Uus. “For example, we would like to bring together discussions on different matters that are collectively raising questions about the vitality of Estonia.”

In addition to already traditional topics such as children and families, entrepreneurship and well-being; there will also be discussions on scientific issues, relations between men and women and gender roles in general, worklife, health, security etc.

Translation from Estonian to English: Priit Koff