At 14:00 CET the British documentary film In Transition opened yesterday’s discourse programme Change! and showed examples of the worldwide Transition Movement, which is still quite unknown in Austria. Instead of waiting for a change coming from national politics, the inhabitants are working on their own to reorganize their cities and communities. Their goal is to fight the climate change and the danger of peak oil with creative, positive ideas, which work on a local level.

The following workshop Transition Austria tried to clarify in what way this concept could be implemented in Austria.

In order to delve even further into this topic, Rob Hopkins was talking about the urgently needed change of energy production and explained the concept behind the 250 Transition Towns worldwide. An audio download of the talk is available here.

Thereafter the panel discussion Good food for everyone? raised the question, if it is even possible to buy the right things in a world with a wrong economical system. Many companies stress their responsibility for environment, but use this image in order to sell eco-lifestyle-products, which damage just that environment. Among others Kathrin Hartmann, Irmi Salzer and Franziskus Forster were discussing this paradox. An audio download is available here.

In contrast to eco-illusions evoked by major corporations the concluding documentary film The 4^th Revolution – Energy Autonomy showed real solutions for a sustainable change.

At 20:00 CET the new format Elevate Music Talks started. De Babalon, Pursuit Grooves and Oneohtrix Point Never discussed about their individual approaches to music production and their adoption of ideas.

At the same time the music and literature programme began and offered artists like Oswald Egger, Christof Dienz, Mount Kimbie, Claro Intelecto, Joy Orbison and many more.

Here are photos of the second festival day.

A video roundup of the opening event is available, too.

Here the newspaper Kleine Zeitung is covering the second day of the festival.

Elevate Civil Society!

We all know about the progressing change of the earth´s climate. However, the established media treat this topic rather marginal and tend to eliminate this unpleasant fact from their news. The Elevate Festival makes a difference: CHANGE! is the motto of the panel discussions and film screenings taking place on Friday 22.10. at Forum Stadtpark. CHANGE! will remind us that climate change actually is happening and that counteracting it is inevitable, but it will also show how this can be achieved.

Thus, Elevate invited guests, who have been dealing with this issue for several years and who constantly work on developing strategies to counteract climate change. At the opening event on Thursday 21.10., Nnimmo Bassey – chairman of Friends of the Earth International, awarded with the Right Livelihood Award 2010 – and Bill McKibben – environmental activist, author and founder of the climate-action platform 350.org – will hold their opening speeches on the issue of climate change.

Discourse programme on Friday:

The documentary film „In Transition“ provides an introduction and insight into the philosophy and operating principles of the transition movement. After the filmscreening, a workshop will offer the opportunity to gather more information on local transition movements in Austria, and ideas for own initiatives may be developed. Subsequently, Rob Hopkins, the founder of the transition movement himself, will give a talk via video-livestream and demonstrate with examples of his work, how this new form of co-operative living may contribute to an improvement of the world climate and to counteract the climate catastrophe we are facing.

The following discussion panel will deal with CHANGE concerning nutrition habits. „Good food for everyone?“ questions together with representatives of NGO´s, producers and activists the ideological facade of so called Lohas, aka Livestyle Ecologists, in relation with new trends in eating behaviours and consumerism. One of the guests is Kathrin Hartmann, author of the book „Ende der Märchenstunde“.

Finally, the documentary film „The 4th Revolution – Energy Autonomy“ will shine a light on the difficulties promoters of alternative forms of energy production still have to deal with, when facing the superior forces of major corporations and criticises the capitalistic approach to the question of money versus (our) future. After the filmscreening, there is an open space for discussions and meeting the panelists.

>> Programme Overview Friday / CHANGE!