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