The World Transformed


The World Transformed is a political festival which takes place in September, at the same time as the Labour Party conference. Beginning in 2016, organisers describe its purpose as "to create a space in which ideas can be freely exchanged and collectively developed".

Background

The festival was created with an aim of bringing together the activist and intellectual parts of the left together, and was inspired by the Dialectics of Liberation Congress held in 1967 which took place at the Roundhouse in London. Some of the festival's organisers were Andrew Dolan, Joseph Todd and Sasha Josette. With the first festival in 2016 Todd said he wanted the presence of the festival to take over the city it was happening in, much like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The second festival in 2017 based in Brighton was successful, incorporating 9 different venues and had between 5,000 and 8,000 attendees. The organisers considered incorporating the Brighton Dome into the festival. In 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the festival, describing it as "a powerful new space on the Labour Party conference fringe for people to debate policies, exchange ideas, and expand our political horizon with arts, music and culture." The attendees were largely young people who had previously taken little interest in party politics before the election of Corbyn as Labour leader in 2015 and were coming together to discuss how to build on Labour's advances in the 2017 general election. Its development has led to delegates from left-wing organisations and parties from across Europe and the USA.
Following the 2018 World Transformed event, many local events not directly organised by Momentum began to emerge. The events have been seen to foster political education, active participation, skills training, critical thinking and intellectual curiosity. Whilst some are one-day events, others such as the events in Bristol and Birmingham are multi-day festivals.

List of events

List of locally organised World Transformed events